Andrea Peyser

Well, no, a colleague actually had seen the documentary, put two and two together and called me up. And said, and offered, you know, said I should write something. And I did. And I had too much fun, I have to say. I was kind of amazed that 20 years later, she is still ruminating over this thing. She can't get it. I've been living in her head rent free. for all these years.

And then in the end, she's using it to get mileage out of it, to get people to watch her documentary, which is kind of amazing. You know, she always has an angle. You know, that's Martha.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, she called me dead. And not only did she call me dead, she said, thank goodness you're dead. And it's like, hey, I got a message for you. I am not.

Actually, I had like mixed feelings because it was a little sad. You know, she's taken so many people out of her life. She doesn't have really anybody at this point. You know, she's divorced. She Her boyfriend dumped her. Her daughter's got kind of a weird relationship with her. And it's a little sad.

She was really imperious. I mean, if I went over and tried to talk to her, she looked at me like I was a bug. And that's how she treated people. That was who she was. But the trial was kind of fascinating. I did not expect it. I thought it would be a very financial trial, very boring, very technical. And it turned out to be kind of uproarious. I dubbed it Circus Marthimus.

Well, Fanuel was a fabulous witness. I mean, he was a young man, and his testimony was halfway how she committed a crime, and the other half was how she treated him. I mean, she berated him. She called him names. She called him an idiot or whatever. I felt sorry for him. The other twist was her friend, Marianna Pasternak. You're right.

She said, isn't it nice to have stockbrokers to give you these twists? Now, she had been Martha's best friend, but she felt that she had testified truthfully and she put the nail in the coffin. It was game over after that testimony.

Because she wasn't going to purge her herself. They still cared about each other, but they never spoke after that, or at least they hadn't at that time.

That he would have done anything for Martha. You know, he phoned her up and started to say that Sam Waxell, CEO of Imcloner, that he was selling his shares. And that bit of information was insider information. She jumped on it and sold her income shares. Now, the woman at that time was a billionaire. And she saved something like $45,000 with that tip.

The woman has no conception of how she is viewed by people. But she's plugging along, you know, on her own, but plugging along.

She did, but her company is really the only thing she cares about, aside from her dogs and cats. So it's a little sad, but yeah, her comeback was kind of amazing. She was able to, you know, leverage... all this controversy into comedy. She's never, ever, ever admitted to any wrongdoing. To this day, she says, I'm completely innocent. Well, she wasn't exactly.

Not a bit. I mean, she berated a kitchen staffer for using too small a knife to cut her oranges. Now, I mean, most of us would say, I think you should use this knife. It might make it easier to cut the orange. Instead, Martha gave a tirade on it. And then she told the filmmakers to cut it out. But they didn't.

I don't think so. They said that she just opened the doors to them. and left it up to them. I still think that the documentary was somewhat sympathetic to Martha. It was. The only people they talked to were people who said she's an innocent and that they went after her. They didn't go after men, which isn't true because they went after Bukhanovic.

They've been cracking down on white-collar crime for a while now. But Martha does not accept it. She says she's innocent. And I think a lot of the media went along with her.

Yeah, I did watch the documentary. Once I heard that I was in it, I had to jump in. And I was kind of like, wow, this woman is dancing on my grave. It was crazy.

I got a ton. I heard from people I hadn't heard from in years. It was picked up everywhere, you know, from People magazine to a Polish language newspaper. I heard that I was on the cover of it, by the way.

Well, I DVR'd it and I watched it. I had no idea that that was going to happen. But that was like the pinnacle of my fame. What can I tell you?

Well, no, I am extremely brat. Martha is brat. I am extremely brat.

And I'm proud of that, you know, because it was hilarious. I think the brat thing got under her skin a little bit because, you know, it makes me look good.

Baloney. She said it was a New York Post lady. She didn't say it was a New York Times reporter. I really bugged her all these years. So I think that's where she's coming from.

Well, I don't know if it's the end of Martha, but she's really leveraged this criminality to the hilt. And yeah, her company survived. She's not no longer a billionaire, but she's still a multimillionaire. I think I read she's worth 220 million or something like that. So she kind of landed on her feet, you know.

No, but I bought a sofa from the Marvin Stewart collection.

It was a very nice sofa. And I was like, well, I might as well buy it. Yeah.

Well, I really do think that she wants to get mileage out of it. I mean, she's willing to laugh as long as she's in control. When she loses control, that's when she gets angry. But she feels that she's in control of of the situation. The documentary, which she had criticized, she realized was helping her, her relations with Snoop Dogg and Justin Bieber.

I mean, that all led her on the comeback trail. It's only when she loses control, when somebody else gets the best of her, that she shuts down.

Oh, well, I don't know what the next one is. I've written about her. Well, I first I wrote about her and then the paper wrote about her. You know, I think I think it's enough publicity for her, frankly.

I'm happy that she's doing well. You know, she won't say the same for me, but I am happy.

Well, she can watch me dead because I'm alive, you know?