After an early career as a model and stockbroker, Martha found her niche with a catering business she started in her restored farmhouse on Turkey Hill Road in Westport Connecticut. That led to a cookbook, Entertaining in 1982. More cookbooks followed. By 1990 she had launched Martha Stewart Living which at its peak had a circulation of 2,000,000. The television shows, flower business, website, and her other entities were consolidated into Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia which went public in 1999, transforming Stewart into America's first self made female billionaire. Peter Bacanovic was her broker at Merrill Lynch who sold her nearly 4000 shares of a new issue of a biotech stock called ImClone Systems which was developing cancer drugs. They had developed an experimental monoclonal antibody called Erbitux. The FDA did not approve the drug. Martha and Samuel Waksal, the company's founder sold their stock. Unfortunately their timing was off as they completed the sale the day before the FDA announcement saving Martha $45,000 when the stock plummeted.. This led to arrests on multiple charges of insider trading and securities fraud and sentencing. She ended up serving five months in what seemed to be a very luxurious Federal prison in West Virginia where she evidently spent her time losing weight, working out, making crab apple jelly and crafting nativity scenes in pottery class causing her friends to comment on how good she looked when she returned. Since then she has returned to New York and resumed her former career.
