Martin Shkreli’s ex Christie Smythe missed couple’s therapy to visit ‘Pharma Bro’ behind bars
Christie Smythe, the ex-journalist who left her husband and job for “Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli, confessed that she missed her first marriage counseling session to visit the convicted felon behind bars — as she blasted critics of her former flame.
Smythe, 39, told The Sunday Times that she and her now ex-husband were set to begin therapy the day she was first able to visit Shkreli at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.
The former Bloomberg reporter admitted she arrived 52 minutes into the hour-long session after going to prison to see the infamous inmate while she was still working for the news outlet.
“I didn’t count the minutes — he did,” Smythe told the paper. “We still went to marriage counseling later and it was a disaster, of course. Nothing was counseled.”
She said it was “emblematic” of her entire relationship, which she ended to be with Shkreli.
Smythe and Shkreli, both 39, met after she was assigned to cover him for Bloomberg News in 2015.
The hedge fund manager became a deeply hated figure for jacking up the price of anti-parasitic drug Daraprim as CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals in 2015.
Smythe ended up breaking the news of his arrest for securities fraud, which he was convicted for in 2017, but later resigned from her job due to her involvement with him.
The ex-journalist was pummeled online after Elle magazine ran a story in 2020 about how she “upended” her life for “one of the most hated men in the world.”
Shkreli was so angered by the article that he dumped Smythe from prison via a statement given to the magazine through his lawyer. However, she told The Post in May they still talk and are friends.
“I hope to see him and give him a hug. I’ll always have feelings for him,” she said following his release from federal prison that month. “He was very angry with me when I went public but I was worried he’d get sick in prison and nobody would stand up for him because he was so hated.”
On Sunday, after the Sunday Times article — titled “I left my husband for the most hated man in America” — went viral, she defended her ex-lover online.
“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,” she fumed on Twitter.
Smythe is currently writing a serialized memoir about the love affair on Substack, is the editor-in-chief of a new media company called The Business of Business, and said she has a new boyfriend.
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