🕵️ Grifted: Success That Survives the Scam
💊 Martin Shkreli: The Pharma Fiend Who Smirked Through the Scam
Hook:
He jacked up the price of a life-saving drug 5,000%, turned court dates into content, and became the poster child for what happens when unchecked ego meets FDA loopholes. Not convicted for the drug scandal — but for the other con running in the background.
Lessons:
🧬 Weaponizing legal loopholes in life-or-death markets
🧠 Cultivating infamy as brand armor
📉 Grifting in stereo — when the front-facing scandal hides the deeper fraud

🎯 Series Theme
True stories of fraud, failure, and financial fantasy—told not just to entertain, but to equip.
In each installment, we unpack how the biggest business betrayals happened—what people believed, what was really going on, and what you can do to avoid becoming the next victim, bystander, or scapegoat.
This series is part corporate true crime, part survival guide for professionals who want to lead, build, and invest without getting conned.
🧪 This one’s for the real ones—the paid subscribers who see past the memes and into the mechanics.
Because beneath the headlines and smirks, Martin Shkreli wasn’t just a pharmaceutical troll—he was a hedge fund founder running overlapping scams with spreadsheets full of smoke.
You know the price-hike story.
But let’s unpack the other con.
The one hidden behind drug patents, ghost trades, and a villain who never broke character.
Let’s dig in.
💉 Grifted: Martin Shkreli – The Pharma Fiend Who Smirked Through the Scam
A tale of hedge funds, HIV meds, and a villain so on-the-nose, he broke the algorithm.
🧠 The Rise 📈 – The Boy Genius With the Big Bet
He didn’t wear a lab coat. Just smugness and startup swagger, and the unearned confidence of a man who thought rules were a suggestion—for other people.
Martin Shkreli wasn’t just another kid in finance. He styled himself a savant. A hedge fund founder in his twenties. A biotech visionary with a smirk that entered the room before he did. If you asked him, he didn’t just disrupt industries—he corrected them.
First came MSMB Capital, his hedge fund. Then Retrophin, a pharma startup where he pitched himself as a Robin Hood for rare diseases—buying up old, neglected drugs and promising innovation. Finally, he launched Turing Pharmaceuticals, where the formula stayed the same: acquire a life-saving drug no one was watching, then crank up the price like a scalper with a monopoly on hope.
He wasn’t curing cancer. But he sounded smart. And that was enough.

Why did people buy in?
Because the press loves a cocky contrarian.
Because investors love niche monopolies.
And because patients? Patients don’t read press releases.
Shkreli had the look of a genius and the logic of a vulture. And in an industry where complexity is currency, that was more than enough to raise capital—and eyebrows.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Collaborate with Mark ✅ to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.