Bad Magic | The Data are the Data | S4-E5

the parking garage of Serhat's clinic. This was as close as Zeb and his camera were allowed

to come to the building itself. In the dim light, he spotted his friend, Jeffrey Drew,

waiting for him. Jeffrey was about to undergo yet another blood draw at Serhat's clinic.

It had been almost two years since Jeffrey started his HIV trial. He had been getting

his blood drawn regularly, and each time he was told that his HIV levels were undetectable.

The experimental treatment seemed to be working. But Jeffrey was starting to get impatient.

He wanted to know if Serhat's donor cell injections had retrained his immune system to fight the

virus. As Zeb turned on his camera that morning in the parking garage, Jeffrey was having

trouble summoning his usual charisma.

like, I'm feeling bratty. I don't want to be here, do this anymore.

any better. The two men sat in Jeffrey's car, talking.

got angry, you know, and he felt a little used and abused.

I didn't even get a fruit basket.

two years. It was too late to stop now.

Even if someone else made billions from it, he was still hopeful his contribution could

make a difference in the fight against HIV-AIDS.

Then one day, Zeb heard from Jeffrey. He'd gotten some good news.

Fauci and have a conversation about HIV, and he's going to sit before some organization.

They're going to look at his data, and they're going to either grant us the money to do a

nationwide government-funded trial or not.

kept putting him off.

Eventually, in the spring of 2022, Zeb heard from Jeffrey.

worry about. Like, was anything he thought he knew about the doctor actually real?

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This is Episode 5, The Data Are the Data.

Over 5,000 miles away from Los Angeles, Enochian investor Ulle Abelgaud sat in his home in

Denmark, staring at an email he'd just received. His mouth hung open in shock.

On his screen was an article saying that the company co-founder had been arrested on murder

for hire charges.

As he told the Danish podcast Dr. No,

I walked out to the bathroom and threw up. At first I didn't believe it.

Abelgaud was used to the boom-and-bust rollercoaster of investing, and he'd stared down major losses

in the past without even blinking.

But this arrest was different. This time, someone had been killed.

And the motive prosecutors were pursuing connected right back to the biotech company.

He found the many sides of the company's scientific founder hard to square.

As he told the podcast,

It is difficult for me to understand that you can call yourself a doctor without being one.

You can be arrested for participating in and hiring assassins, and at the same time be a genius.

Abelgaud turned off his phone and locked himself in his bedroom.

He knew many people would be calling him with questions, and he wouldn't be able to answer any of them.

The market was watching Enochian, but that could change any day,

so they needed to get their report out as quickly as possible.

They worked around the clock checking and rechecking every claim in their article,

making sure that every accusation was backed up with evidence.

Anything short of that meant

on top of all the research expenses, on top of the legal bills,

and in a case like Enochian, you might also have an incredibly wealthy murderous psychopath

who's not very fond of you.

It had to be ironclad.

Thomas from Hindenburg knew he needed to put the team's findings to Enochian's executives

before the story published.

Hey, your top scientist has been arrested on murder-for-hire charges.

What have you got to say?

I mean, that is a real, real buzz.

Neither would a key member of the board of directors, Carol Brosgard,

or the man who brought Serhat into the company, Chairman René Sendlov.

They were stonewalling.

And the strategy was working.

Because each day that Thomas failed to get someone to comment,

Enochian's stock was climbing back up.

By May 27th, two days after Serhat's arrest, the stock had almost erased its losses.

And if it kept climbing, it could be financially disastrous for Hindenburg.

We're sorry. Your call cannot be completed as dialed. Please check the number.

Two days before Hindenburg planned to go to press,

Thomas was still trying to find someone to talk to at Enochian.

and finally came across a U.S. phone number, probably several years old.

But hey, I think it was a Florida number from recollection.

And so I think, well, what the hell?

Put in the call. Guy answers the phone.

Hey, is this René? Yeah, yeah, it's René.

the man who had merged his company with Serhat's.

Thomas said he was a journalist and René stayed on the line.

at the time that you announced it, that you were dealing with a felon?

It had never been clear how much René and Enochian knew about Serhat's criminal charges.

René's response caught Thomas off guard.

But he only had to pay a fine of 400 bucks.

And I knew exactly what that was about.

And I didn't see that there was any need to discuss that.

Thomas didn't think that was the whole picture.

If anyone looked at the case file,

they'd see a series of high-value financial thefts and frauds

that might concern any potential business partner.

So he tried again.

René Sindleff said to me, he says, regardless of anything that's happened,

I still have to admit he's a genius, whether he's a doctor or not.

Just how do you do it?

You hired him because you thought he was a doctor.

Everything pointed to the fact that he's a doctor.

He can't be a genius, whether he's a doctor or not.

He's either a genius and a doctor,

or he's an absolute con man that you've fallen for.

But Sindleff seemed to believe that both things were possible.

If he is guilty, he needs to be punished for it.

And if he's not guilty, well, good for him.

How as chairman of a US-listed company can you be telling me

that you do not care if your founder and scientific founder

is guilty or not of conspiracy to murder?

but he declined to comment.

It was June 1, 2022, a week since Serhat was arrested.

The markets were going to open in just over an hour,

and Enokian stock was down just 60 cents from where it was before.

Nate sat in his office chair reading the story one last time.

So we focused on how he had apparently fabricated

every bit of his educational background that we could find,

that he didn't graduate with multiple PhDs,

that he didn't have any medical degrees or license.

He was, in fact, a low-level Turkish street magician

who had fled the country after charges of defrauding locals in Turkey.

And we also highlighted, of course, his massive white-collar crime spree

that he undertook right when he got to the US,

just really a buffet of various different flavors of white-collar fraud.

from Denmark and Pennsylvania.

to show that this is not the Michelangelo you think you have.

This guy is a complete con artist.

he pressed the button to publish their investigation into Serhat Gümrükçü.

And the reaction when I came back was pretty much instantaneous.

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It made its way to Guy Rokin, the podcaster,

who'd interviewed Serhat.

from someone who I don't know,

being like,

Hey, have you seen this article?

Your podcast episode is referenced.

I open it up,

and the title is

Miracle Cures and Murder for Hire,

How a Spoonbending Turkish Magician

Built a $600 Million NASDAQ-Listed Scam

Based on a Lifetime of Lies.

And boy, was I,

I was just blown away by this article.

he'd gone to in the Hollywood Hills.

Suddenly, all the magicians that were there

made more sense,

but nothing else did.

is some next-level shit for me.

That is, and then,

and then those, like,

the medical fraudulence

and the degree of just,

I mean,

it, it, it's,

it's really baffling.

began hearing from people

all over the world.

Holy shit, like,

what are you even talking about?

Fake magician who lies about scientific research

is not the norm for,

you know,

criticism of a public company

listed on the NASDAQ.

Enochian's share price dropped again.

Hindenburg's report had spooked investors,

and their short sell had worked.

we did make more than the cost of research

for our short.

but the risk had paid off.

wrong on timing.

There's all sorts of reasons

why a stock can go up.

So it is often a very risky,

I mean, always really a risky endeavor.

But yeah, no, this one,

this one was one that,

that worked for us.

was immediate.

The day the story went up,

its CEO, Mark Dybul,

wrote a letter to Enochian's shareholders.

I have spoken to some of you

about the serious and disturbing news

that broke last week

about Serhat Gumrucu.

there has never been a formal role

for Gumrucu in the company.

And his remaining informal role

as a scientific advisor is concluded.

So they kind of say,

we stand by his credentials,

but he's not got a hand

in the day-to-day running of the company.

that they strongly refuted our findings.

But noticeably, in the press release

where they claimed that everything was great,

they stopped referring to Serhat

as Dr. Serhat.

They just started calling him Serhat

at that point.

quote, misleading propaganda,

intended to drive the company's stock price down.

They said there had never been

a formal role for Serhat in the company

and that his informal role

of scientific advisor had concluded.

And they were insistent that their patents

still had the potential to cure deadly diseases.

In other words,

they were saying that even if Serhat

was a multiple fraudster and suspected murderer,

his ideas still had merit.

Dybul wrote,

the science is the science.

The data are the data.

But how could Serhat's medical miracles

be believed if it lied about everything else?

One of the people focused on that question

was Zeb.

He was wondering what it meant

for his friend Jeffrey.

was, is Jeffrey okay?

I started to trace back in my mind

all of the times where he appeared sick

or run down.

I started to question, like,

was his undetectable status real?

You know, like, why?

It just, everything started to flash in my mind.

And Jeffrey was very quick to reassure me

and everyone that he was okay.

But I don't believe that he was super okay.

by going back on his old medication.

Even when he'd been too sick to leave his house,

he hadn't given up on Serhat's cure.

So Jeffrey called Serhat's clinic

and called and called.

No one there could tell him what to do.

So he went back on a regimen of antiretroviral drugs

and ended his HIV treatment trial.

We reached out to Mark Dybul from Enochian

about Jeffrey's treatment, and he responded,

We had no involvement in the administration

of this treatment to Mr. Drew.

Moreover, Enochian had no involvement

with any treatment conducted by Serhat's clinic

and did not work with the Serhat Research Institute

on any HIV treatment.

Mark Dybul, however, was aware of Jeffrey's treatment

and Enochian stood to benefit financially

from any positive outcome.

As far as Zeb could tell,

the whole thing was a huge loss for his friend.

the just pride that he felt

for potentially being a part of something

that would help so many people was just massive for him.

And so when all of that got taken away

and suddenly he got put back on medication,

it was devastating.

sacrificing his well-being in the search for a cure.

Had it all been a sham?

and what the ramifications of this will be

and will he be able to withstand cancer

or some other type of sickness or disease that comes with life.

It's incredibly infuriating.

but he declined to comment.

Not long after Serhat's arrest,

Zeb's documentary on Jeffrey was taken down

by the streaming service that bought it.

For Zeb, that was tragic.

Jeffrey's story has been totally lost.

And his act of service and his just willingness

to put his life on the line to honor his fallen brothers

and sisters that have died from this disease

has totally been lost.

another statement was posted on Enochian's website.

The company said they'd been reviewing Serhat's test results.

Quote,

The results of this investigation verified key primary data

for the company's HIV and cancer pipelines.

But that wasn't all.

The company also disclosed that Serhat had faked

the results of animal studies

for their COVID and hepatitis B treatments.

In this case, the data wasn't the data.

As a result, the company will initiate legal action

against Gumrukciu over the falsified data.

Enochian was now taking to court

its own inventor and co-founder,

the man they described as a genius.

and they had no idea that it was just a big fraud all along

and how could this happen?

Just such a horrific surprise.

And my thought was that this was just entirely disingenuous

to show if anyone asks, like, look,

we were also surprised by this.

We had no idea.

I mean, we were in line to make, you know,

tens of millions of dollars from these lies,

and there were red flags all over the place,

but how could anyone have seen this?

Enochian's share price had fallen to $2.11 a share,

and the company and its investors

had lost hundreds of millions of dollars as a result.

was Serhat Gumrukciu himself

and his family members and related entities.

So the biggest loser in the stock market

was Serhat himself,

which is exactly how it should be in our view.

The CEO and several other executives

and board members had stock,

so they also lost significant amounts

of their paper holdings.

was worse for the patients

and the people who loved them.

Those who had placed their hope in Serhat's hands.

wherever he could find it

and looked for the absolute most vulnerable people

he could find and came in with a smile on his face

and a calm voice and credentials and the white lab coat

and pretended that he was going to solve

their most horrific problem

in exchange for a lot of money.

And people bought it.

as he offered these treatments?

Certainly money.

I think he was motivated also by fame.

I think possibly motivated by a desire for respect

amongst peers or intelligent people.

That same look that his old school friend

saw in his eyes long ago back in Turkey.

That same hysteria when he first saw a magic trick.

The delight of deception.

they're also motivated by a joy in tricking people

and using his wits to get money from people.

Like a predator that feels a sense of joy

from his prey.

Joining me now is Dr. Mark Dybul.

In late 2023, Enochian's CEO was excited

to make an announcement.

He is the CEO of Renovaro Biosciences.

Dr. Dybul, great to see you. How are you?

Enochian had a new name and a new focus.

is focused on platform approaches

to strengthen our own immune system,

to renew the immune system, to retrain it