I quite like Martin. I talked to him a few time on YouTube, whilst he was live streaming. He's whip-smart & knowledgeable. He does, however, have a couple of major flaws. 1) He trolls. Hard. 2) It seems he lies. Which I picked up from a previous news article. (He claimed to have ~$50mm under management @ his previous hedge fund. It was more like $1.6mm. Something like that). I can forgive the trolling. It's over the…
Trolling is lying. Either you believe terrible things, or you lie about believing them to make people angry. Normal lying is usually intended for personal gain, trolling is just lies intended to hurt other people.
> Prosecutors argued that Shkreli lied to investors in two hedge funds and the pharmaceutical company Retrophin, all of which he founded. Shkreli told investors he graduated from Columbia University, that his hedge fund was large and profitable, and that he had hired an auditor, they said. These were all lies, according to prosecutors. yeah seems like a great dude...
I mean, everybody came out okay - Shkreli really made his investors a lot of money! Yeah, he lied, but he did some incredible work: typical fraudsters take your money and run - he doesn't fit that mold. Honestly, the issue was that he's an utter asshole, including to his investors. Investors are willing to put with a lot if you triple their money, but Shkreli managed to cross that line. That made him an easy target f…
> typical fraudsters take your money and run - he doesn't fit that mold.
So if everything happened identically but he failed to make them money _then_ it would be bad? I don't understand.
I quite like Martin. I talked to him a few time on YouTube, whilst he was live streaming. He's whip-smart & knowledgeable. He does, however, have a couple of major flaws. 1) He trolls. Hard. 2) It seems he lies. Which I picked up from a previous news article. (He claimed to have ~$50mm under management @ his previous hedge fund. It was more like $1.6mm. Something like that). I can forgive the trolling. It's over the…
Trolling is lying. Either you believe terrible things, or you lie about believing them to make people angry. Normal lying is usually intended for personal gain, trolling is just lies intended to hurt other people.
>Trolling is lying
Not at all, I think one of the most famous "troll" things he did was buy the master Wu-Tang album and threaten to destroy it so no one could ever hear the album.
There's no lying or anything meant to "hurt" anyone there, but you can imagine that it rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.
> This case isn't about that. That wasn't your question, was it? You asked why he's human garbage, I explained why. I wasn't defending or attacking this case, I was explaining why some think he is human garbage.
Edit: Whoops, different person. See bottom. > Nowhere was I (or you) saying anything about this case. Your specific words in your original response were "He's human garbage, let him rot." That response was to me saying I think the details of the case lead me to believe that I think he should a light sentence. You very specifically noted through that euphemism that you think he shouldn't get a light sentence in this c…
For what it's worth, I've colored the usernames on my HN discussions so I don't make mistakes like this. Maybe HN should do that natively.
I mean, everybody came out okay - Shkreli really made his investors a lot of money! Yeah, he lied, but he did some incredible work: typical fraudsters take your money and run - he doesn't fit that mold. Honestly, the issue was that he's an utter asshole, including to his investors. Investors are willing to put with a lot if you triple their money, but Shkreli managed to cross that line. That made him an easy target f…
Just because his investors made money doesn't excuse him. Suppose you lent 10,000 to a friend and the friend promised to return it within a year. A year later, your friend doesn't pay you back and makes a bunch of excuses. Instead, he takes the 5,000 he has left to the casino, gambles it on the roulette wheel and by luck manages to turn that into 30,000 and pays you back 1.5 years later. I don't think you would be ha…
Your analogy is slightly off... suppose you lent $10,000 to an acquaintance known for being able to double it, and they promise to return it doubled in a year. A year later you ask for your money and he gives you $6,000 from someone else he convinced to do the same thing along with $6,000 from a different venture that was taking off and $8,000 work of equity for that startup. You didn't quite get what was promised, it seems a little shady, but at least he didn't rip you off.
I have seen videos where he explains: insurance pays for the medicine, not individuals, and people who can't afford/have insurance gets them freely from government programs/their company programs.
There is a reason why most international insurers will cover your health concerns everywhere in the world except the U.S. The American health system has out of control expenses that are putting immense strain on its every seam. Making distributors or insurance companies pay much more because "fuck them" (as Shkreli proudly said) only adds to a very serious problem in American healthcare.
Good, more people should do this until it breaks and reforms. And not just do it, but do it with his face and smile. Because companies have been doing this for a long time, but there's no one to direct the anger onto.
Interestingly, his fraud seems to fall into two categories. Lying about his fund's bonafides and status on one side, and working hard to make sure those same investors got what they were expecting by founding a company, making it successful and paying them out from the profits. It sounds like he definitely lied to investors, but he apparently didn't intend to steal their money, and took pains to make sure he did not…
I haven't followed everything closely, but did anyone lose money in the end?
The NY Times article[1] presented by an early top level comment implies that no, they didn't. The investors who invested all made money — by the defense’s tally, more than triple what they invested. 1: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/04/business/dealbook/martin-...
I don't particularly like the guy, but I do believe him to be pretty smart. How can he be convicted of fraud if he got them a 3x return?
Because he defrauded them in order to get their 3x return.
Put simply, if I burn my house down in order to collect the insurance money, I've committed insurance fraud whether or not I pay that money back, and no amount of profit on the payback negates the illegality.
I quite like Martin. I talked to him a few time on YouTube, whilst he was live streaming. He's whip-smart & knowledgeable. He does, however, have a couple of major flaws. 1) He trolls. Hard. 2) It seems he lies. Which I picked up from a previous news article. (He claimed to have ~$50mm under management @ his previous hedge fund. It was more like $1.6mm. Something like that). I can forgive the trolling. It's over the…
Trolling is lying. Either you believe terrible things, or you lie about believing them to make people angry. Normal lying is usually intended for personal gain, trolling is just lies intended to hurt other people.
Maybe that's true. I unfollowed him on Twitter b/c of the trolling.