Way out in the sticks of central Pennsylvania, not far from the West Branch of the Susquehanna River, Martin Shkreli is busy plotting his comeback. This is not his choice of headquarters — he would rather be scheming from his deluxe apartment in Manhattan’s Murray Hill neighbourhood — but options are somewhat limited when you’re inmate 87850-053 of Allenwood Low Federal Correctional Institution.

Shkreli, or the Pharma Bro, as he likes to be called, is currently serving a seven-year sentence for securities fraud. At the time of his trial, New York media, which loves a villain, painted him as a grinning demon who rampaged his way through the pharmaceutical industry, hiking the price of an AIDS drug from $13.50 per tablet to $750.

So improving his image as a ruthless capitalist is high on the agenda when he gets out, according to a string of posts and comments he has made while inside. He also keeps a

, but this is mostly financial observations and book reviews. Since his sentencing in 2018, he has been posting on and off on Reddit under his username — 

 — via two friends named Mo and Reida. Shkreli sends messages via a prison email service to his mates, who paste them online for him, and feed Shkreli with comments and questions from his army of fans. They make for fascinating reading, and give a glimpse into what he hopes to do when he becomes a free man again.

In one set of comments, Shkreli, 38, describes his portrayal by mainstream media as a “concoction” that he enjoyed creating. Shkreli-heads will remember him giving press interviews while cruising around his apartment on a hoverboard, telling female journalists he had crushes on them, and posting on Facebook to offer $5,000 for a lock of Hillary Clinton’s hair for DNA sequencing (at the time, he was out on bail which the judge revoked, and Shkreli found himself “in what could only be described as ‘

Shkreli says his media persona was a “fun ruse, but also a self-propagating and hard to control monster..."

Shkreli says that the media version of himself was a “fun ruse but also a self-propagating and hard to control monster”. He asks for help in reactivating his old YouTube channel, where he used to host marathon livestreams that discussed finance, biotech, politics, and his cat Trashy. “Most people who saw videos of me came away with a favorable impression,” he writes. “Without those videos, the NBC narrative prevails.” In exchange, he promises to give one lucky helper “a million shkrelibucks (not actually worth anything)”.

Shkreli&#8217;s previous incarnation as a video livestreamer


Like the biblical Apocrypha, Shkreli’s prison letters might not all be bona fide religious truth, but there are still insights to be gleaned from the text, particularly about his life inside. His prison nicknames, if we are to believe him, are Pill Gates, Goldman Stacks, Big Junk, Subprime Stunna, 2B2F, Bond King, Hunnit Trill, and Warren Bustit. In one jokey post, he asks his fans: “Please do not refer to me as a convicted felon. I am a justice-experienced individual.”

Conditions aren’t “that bad”, he says. “Not what it looks like on TV. more of a very weird college where no one studies or knows how to read. also, no women.” In another post, he elaborates: “Prison is aight. kind of like a weird urban party.”

Many of his posts are on Wall Street Bets, a raucous forum behind the GameStop fiasco earlier this year, which Shkreli used to moderate and is now received with god-like status. A lot of their questions ask how Shkreli is coping, safety-wise. “No fights,” he says. “I’m rather respected here. i’m not sure that’s a good thing!” He also describes striking up a friendship with a “rambling autist” named Jake, a fellow Wall Street Bets user, with whom he exchanged stock chat during their time together.

“Prison is aight. kind of like a weird urban party," Shrkeli says

On being asked how he has fared in the prison showers, he says: “I actually literally dropped the soap the other day in the shower. some mexican dude picked it up (i was not going to pick it up!) and handed it to me through the shower curtain (the showers are individual stall-like things). i think he said ‘here u go papi’, but i can’t be sure. i said ‘no, uh, that’s okay’ and then i kinda had to take it because his hand was not evidently taking no for answer–i mean, was he going to put it back down on the floor? shower floors in prison are obviously disgusting. i resumed showering with it. no fucks given. maybe half a fuck.” Phew.

It seems Shkreli has become adept at staying out of trouble. Although he is an avid chess player, he avoids playing with the best inmates, because they tend to be “chomos” or sex offenders. “Not wise to play with them,” he says. Other diversions come in the form of Taylor Swift’s album

 (he likes every song on the record but ‘Cardigan’),

 about releasing a rap album in 2022 called GOD’S GIFT.

Curiously, given his support of Donald Trump, Shkreli says he’s woke now, and has tried to teach his fellow inmates lessons about not being homophobic, racist, or misogynist, something he says there’s a lot of in prison. Admirable stuff, and he says it’s “surprising and amusing when you are the most conservative guy ‘on the street’ (jail slang for ‘when you’re not in prison’) and the most liberal guy in jail.” He adds: “It is a pretty weird feeling lecturing everyone on not using certain words! Or accepting the humanity of LGBT people.” Unfortunately for his attempted lessons in social values: “It didn’t work”. “I’ll be out of here fairly soon and this will be the last time I’ll have to defend respecting women to ingrate inmates.”

Late last year, shortly after it emerged that

, a Bloomberg reporter covering Shkreli’s trial had become romantically involved with her subject, he fielded questions from Reddit followers asking for more info. Smythe had told Elle magazine that the pair had become “life partners”, describing a touching story of prison romance, but the twist came when Shkreli, upon hearing about the planned article, stopped speaking to her. He declined to answer fan mail about the matter in December 2020, when Reida posted: “I have no tea to spill.” However, a month later, on being asked if Shkreli would resume contact with Smythe (“she really loves you man”, said the comment), Shkreli cruelly wrote: “I dunno i have to make a run at emma watson or kim kardashian. eh maybe not kim.”

“I'll be out of here fairly soon, and this will be the last time I'll have to defend respecting women to ingrate inmates...”

Any hint of remorse? He once told me in a prison letter

: “Life is a big joke and I’ve had a blast. No regrets.” But he does now admit that a video he released to diss Ghostface Killah from the Wu-Tang Clan was “not properly rehearsed”. In the clip, he appeared wearing a suit with three masked men and threatened to erase Ghostface’s contributions from a one-of-a-kind Wu-Tang album Shkreli purchased for $2 million. It’s a little cringey. “I hold L,” says Shkreli.

“What life lesson did you learn the hard way?” asks one Redditor. “dont poke the bear!” responds Shkreli. Another asks: “You have one minute to decide the one place you’d rather be at other than where you currently are. Where are you going?” Shkreli’s answer? “HOME!”

, he had access to a smartphone and kept calling the shots at Phoenixus AG, his drug company, from his prison cell — even sacking his chief executive by phone. However, thanks to his felony conviction, he says his “options for [starting] new companies are somewhat limited”.

 for a sort of secretary to “email me and snail mail me papers, press releases, clinical trials, patents, stock prices, tweets, twits and whatever else is interesting and things not so interesting that i ask for, constantly”. His requests to regain access to his YouTube account suggests a return to streaming once on the outside. “I won’t be bitter,” he says.

According to his profile on the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Shkreli is not due for release until October 2023. In one comment, he says these dates are “always 100% inaccurate”, and he hopes to be released between November 2021 and February 2022. Wait till they get a load of him.

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