Monday 27 June 2022 12:24 AM Ex-Bloomberg journalist dumped by 'Pharma Bro' Martin Shkreli missed marriage ... trends now
A former Bloomberg journalist who divorced her husband of almost a decade after falling in love with 'Pharma Bro' Martin Shkreli, before being unceremoniously dumped by him two years later, has revealed she missed a marriage counseling session to visit Shkreli in prison.
Christie Smythe, 39, became a source of fascination after she revealed in December 2020 that she had left her job and her husband for the reviled businessman, who in 2015 bought an Aids drug and hiked the price from $13.50 per pill to $750.
He was arrested in December 2015 on securities fraud, connected to his work at a hedge fund, and in March 2018 was sentenced to seven years in prison for the financial crimes.
On Sunday Smythe spoke to The Sunday Times about the last turbulent seven years, and said she was so devoted to seeing Shkreli, also 39, that she missed a marriage counseling session.
Christie Smythe, 39, left her job and her husband for Martin Shkreli in July 2018. In December 2020 he dumped her via a statement in a magazine
Smythe had previously said she was eagerly waiting for him with open arms after he was released from prison almost two years early, on May 18. She now says she has a new boyfriend - although she still defends Shkreli, and says they plan to meet up
Shkreli is seen immediately after his release from prison last month, with a man named Edmund Sullivan, who claimed to have picked him up and posted photos of the two together in the car
She continues to defend Shkreli, despite him dumping her after the 2020 article in Elle, via a statement issued to the magazine.
On Sunday, after The Sunday Times article was published, she tweeted: 'If you say all people deserve second chances and a shot at redemption EXCEPT Martin Shkreli (or except whomever the internet has decided to hate at a given moment), you really don't mean that.'
Smythe freely admitted that, by 2017, she was devoted to Shkreli - something which concerned her then-husband.
She said she had finally convinced her spouse of almost a decade, Devin Arcolo, a financier, to attend the counseling in November 2017.
But the session clashed with the first visit to see Shkreli in jail, in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.
She arrived 52 minutes late for the hour-long session.
'I didn't count the minutes — he did,' Smythe said.
'We still went to marriage counseling later and it was a disaster, of course. Nothing was counseled.'
The couple's marriage irrevocably broke down.
Smythe is pictured with her former husband, Devin Arcoleo. He was concerned about her closeness to Shkreli, and the couple began counseling in November 2017: by July 2018, the marriage was over
And in July 2018, she resigned from Bloomberg - the news agency that had assigned her to report on Shkreli, in 2015.
'I was feeling extremely frustrated by having to keep everything bottled up,' she told the paper.
'I was just, like, 'Everyone is so worried about what? That I will fall in love with him?'
'After that thought sunk in, I was like, 'You know what, maybe I do love him — screw everyone.' '
Smythe had first begun corresponding with Shkreli in 2015, in the early days of the controversy of the Aids drug, Daraprim.
His 5,000 percent increase in the cost of the life-saving treatment was reviled by everyone from Hillary Clinton to Bernie Sanders to Donald Trump.
Shkreli is seen in December 2015, after he was arrested for securities fraud. He was sentenced to seven years in prison in March 2018
He smiled at members of Congress in February 2016, while they questioned him about a drug that treats toxoplasmosis, a parasitic infection that threatens people with weakened immune systems
