During Martin Shkreli’s federal trial this week for alleged securities and wire fraud, a former investor explained how she got involved with the now-infamous ex-pharmaceutical CEO and what followed. In short, she testified that she was swindled by Shkreli after he made big promises to overcharge vulnerable patients.

As lawyers painted dueling pictures of Shkreli as a con-man and a “ strange ” yet brilliant financial mind, the investor, Sarah Hassan, laid out a story from 2010 that started with buzz in the hedge-fund world. She described a smooth-talking Shkreli, false name-dropping, and a winning business plan of sticking it to patients with rare diseases.

After investing $300,000 in one of the hedge funds Shkreli managed at the time, Hassan put in another $150,000 into Shkreli’s then-new pharmaceutical company Retrophin. According to the New York Times, she described his successful business pitch like this: “You can make a lot of money on orphan drugs because the price per patient is quite high.”

It’s an accurate description of how Shkreli eventually made a name for himself outside the financial world in 2015. At his other drug company, Turing Pharmaceuticals, he bought the rights to an old generic anti-parasitic drug that is often given to babies and people suffering with HIV/AIDS. Then, without competition to worry about, he raised the price overnight by more than 5,000 percent, from about $13.50 a pill to $750.

The move earned him quick disdain from the public, lawmakers, and health advocates—which spilled into the courtroom this week, making it difficult to find impartial jurors. But apparently in 2010, plans of such moves enticed investors.

Of course, those investments didn’t go the way that Hassan and others hoped. Shkreli is accused of lying to hedge fund investors, including Hassan, about stock losses. He's also accused of starting a second hedge fund to cover up the losses. Allegedly, Shkreli then founded Retrophin and siphoned nearly $11 million of the publicly traded company’s cash and stocks to cover losses in both the hedge funds.

Hassan testified that during all of this, Shkreli seemed to name-drop her father, Fred Hassan, to bolster business. The elder Hassan is a partner at private equity firm Warburg Pincus, the former chairman of pharmaceutical company Bausch & Lomb, and chief executive of pharmaceutical company Schering-Plough. Shkreli, Hassan alleged, made it appear that the elder Hassan had also invested in Retrophin when he had not.

In 2013, Hassan testified that she demanded her cash from the hedge fund investment. Shkreli told her that the cash was gone, now invested in Retrophin. In cross-examination, Shkreli’s lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, noted that she eventually got triple her investment back in cash and Retrophin shares.