Pharma Bro Martin Shkreli Offers Advice for SBF on Surviving Prison: Shave Your Head and Study Rap Music

The “Pharma Bro” has some advice for the “Crypto Bro” on surviving prison: shave your head and study up on rap music and “criminal culture.”

Sam Bankman-Fried, the 30-year-old former billionaire founder of the collapsed crypto firm FTX, was arrested in the Bahamas earlier this month and extradited to the United States. FTX is in bankruptcy proceedings after losing billions of dollars of customer funds that were allegedly funneled to a cryptocurrency firm Bankman-Fried also founded called Alameda Research. The eight charges against Bankman-Fried include wire fraud, wire fraud conspiracy, securities fraud, securities fraud conspiracy, and money laundering.

According to federal sentencing guidelines, Bankman-Fried is potentially facing up to 115 years in prison.

Enter Martin Shkreli, the 39-year-old pharmaceutical executive who drew widespread scorn for drastically hiking prices on his company’s drugs (not to mention a slew of other trollish behavior). Convicted in 2017 of securities fraud (unrelated to the price gouging controversy), he was sentenced to seven years in prison and fined millions of dollars. He was released early in May 2022.

Shkreli spoke with crypto journalist Laura Shin on her podcast, Unchained, about Bankman-Fried’s case, and offered some frank advice for Shkreli on surviving prison.

“Sam isn’t exactly going to be somebody that fits into prison,” said Shkreli, offering advice that included “shaving his head” to remove his recognizable voluminous curly hair and “deepening his voice,” because prison was “a very testosterone-filled, masculine place.”

Bankman-Fried would “have a lot of issues,” Shkreli explained, “because he’s a bit of an effeminate guy,” and has an “autistic sort of sense, or sensibility,” which was “not something that goes over well in prison.”

“He also doesn’t know anything about the streets and sort of criminal culture,” he continued, and he needed to “pick those things up as quickly as he can.”

“He should be listening to as much rap music as possible. He should be trying to learn everything there is to know about gangs, about the tough neighborhoods in every city,” Shkreli said. “This sounds funny, but this could save your life.”

Other advice included suggesting that Bankman-Fried try to “rebrand” or “reinvent” his background, even if other prisoners knew it was a lie, so he could be “from Oakland” instead of a “rich white kid” from Stanford. Shkreli cited his own hometown of Brooklyn helping him connect with other prisoners from New York City.

The full episode is embedded below (the relevant section starts around the 27:00 mark):

Watch the videos above, via Twitter and YouTube.

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!