Ge­nius or chron­ic liar? The Mar­tin Shkre­li fraud tri­al gets un­der­way with two rad­i­cal­ly op­posed por­traits

It took a lit­tle ex­tra time to dis­miss po­ten­tial ju­rors who were ready to con­vict Mar­tin Shkre­li of greed, but the fraud tri­al of the trash talk­ing Twit­ter troll and biotech en­tre­pre­neur got start­ed Tues­day af­ter­noon as the de­fense and the pros­e­cu­tion took turns pre­sent­ing two rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent in­di­vid­u­als.

For de­fense at­tor­ney Ben­jamin Braf­man, Shkre­li is the mis­un­der­stood “ge­nius” who ul­ti­mate­ly helped fat­ten the bank ac­counts of the wealthy in­vestors who abused his trust and made fun of his sex­u­al­i­ty. But pros­e­cu­tors por­trayed Shkre­li as a chron­ic liar who re­peat­ed­ly and il­le­gal­ly mis­used mon­ey from in­vestors and Retrophin, the biotech he launched and lost.

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