Shkreli Accused of Being Good at Fraud

There is a fairly standard trajectory for a lot of securities frauds. A brash youngster comes along and thinks he will be good at trading. He raises money from people who also think he will be good at trading. Maybe he lies to them a bit -- about how good he already is at trading, or about how much money he's already raised -- or maybe, at this stage, everything is completely on the up and up. In any case, he gets the money and starts trading. Then he starts losing. This is bad. It's bad for his bottom line, of course -- he's getting paid to invest his investors' money well, not badly -- but more importantly, it is bad for his self-conception. In his own mind, he is a winner; he is supposed to be good at trading. It is unbearable to him that he isn't.