A Question for Christie Smythe

Elle recently ran a profile of a reporter ruined by love. The take-away? Don't fall in love with a source.

One-time Bloomberg news reporter, Christie Smythe, who was quite the heavyweight back in the day, actually broke the story of "pharma bro" Martin Shkreli's impending arrest on a securities fraud charge. As she was covering the subsequent litigation, the subject became a source, the two became intimate, and Smythe lost everything. Her marriage, her career, ... everything. She is still so devoted (to a man whom any objective observer will recognize as a classic manipulative sociopath who simply wanted some good press) that she has had her eggs frozen, imagining that she and Martin will want to have a child together upon his eventual release from prison.

He's not going to want to know your name, Ms Smythe. I know and respect your work, I'm a colleague, and I say this with respect: you've been duped.

The story interests me more because of its connection to the Shkreli case, though, than because of Smythe's personal fate.

Without wanting to shade into the manipulative-sociopath terrain of a Shkreli myself, I have to admit that some of the loose threads of the Shkreli matter continue to bug me.

Seeing Smythe in my twitter feed, discussing the story in Elle, I decided to ask her to catch me up.

I directed two linked tweets @ her. They read as follows:

Ms Smythe, could you give me a reading on the "failure to deliver" issue here? If I recall correctly, the indictment claims that Shkreli had taken a short position on Orexigen Therapeutics without ever borrowing/locating the shares. A classic "naked short" move...

I dropped out of covering the matter soon after that -- did the naked short angle play a role in the eventual conviction and sentencing or did it drop away as an irrelevance? Thanks

I'll let you know if she replies.

Happy New Year everyone.

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