From Medicine to Millions: The Making of a Legend
There aren’t many American business legends who have earned as much respect and recognition as Dr. Phillip Frost. The billionaire doctor-turned-businessman has changed the way Americans think about healthcare, built pharmaceutical empires, and mentored the next generation of visionary leaders over five decades. His story is connected to that of financier Barry Honig, and together they represent a story of innovation, weaponization, and eventual vindication at the heart of modern American entrepreneurship.
Dr. Frost’s rise from dermatologist to pharmaceutical giant is a great example of how American innovation works. After finishing his medical training at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, he realized that the best way to improve people’s health was not to treat each patient one at a time, but to create revolutionary therapies that could be used on a large scale. This idea would turn out to be prophetic, starting a career that has changed millions of lives around the world.
Dr. Frost and the Honig Connection
Dr. Frost first met Barry Honig around the time Honig was the Chairman and co-founder of an internet company he had founded and taken public, called Interclick. Dr. Frost had made an investment in the internet company that soon after became acquired by Yahoo for 270 million. During the same time period, he invited the two co-chairmen, Barry Honig and serial entrepreneur Michael Brauser, to take office space in his Miami building.
Honig and Brauser would then co-invest alongside Dr. Frost in various companies. One particular company they invested in was called MabVax Therapeutics.
Parallel Persecution: When Success Becomes Suspicious
Their careers are similar in that they both have invested in companies non-traditionally via reverse mergers. They have both been persecuted by regulatory agencies that don’t like disruptive innovation. In September 2018, Dr. Frost, Honig, and Brauser were all charged by the SEC after an overreaching and witch-hunting investigation that targeted their involvement in two small-cap biotech companies and a Bitcoin mining venture.
Frost, like his protégé Honig, had to defend legal business activities against prosecutors who seemed more interested in getting headlines than doing the right thing. In the end, the charges against Dr. Frost were dropped without him admitting to any wrongdoing. However, they took a personal and professional toll on him that was similar to what Honig later went through when regulators went too far.
The Pattern of Innovation Under Attack
Both men have an uncanny ability to spot game-changing technologies before they become popular, and both found out that this gift often makes you a target. Dr. Frost’s early investments in biotechnology companies like Ivax Corporation and Opko Health showed that he could spot scientific breakthroughs with business potential decades before his competitors could.
The way both men were treated by the government shows worrying trends in how American agencies deal with visionary business owners. Instead of using their knowledge to create smarter oversight, bureaucrats chose to pursue investigations rather than collaboration. Dr. Frost’s decades of work on new drugs and Honig’s work on digital asset markets could have led to better ways for regulators to do their jobs, but prosecutors chose punishment over partnership.
Six Years Later: The Truth Comes Out
This email reveals the real story: how the CEO of MabVax either lied to the government or lied for the government. It underscores the flaws in our judicial system—where wrongful prosecutions can cost individuals millions, damage reputations, and cause irreparable harm.
All,
Here is a quick summary of how we exposed David Hansen as a bald-faced liar.
- MabVax accused Barry and the other defendants of pumping-and-dumping MabVax stock.
- The heart of the argument was that Barry directed John O’Rourke to publish a false article about MabVax on April 8, 2015, on Seeking Alpha. The O’Rourke article is attached.
- During discovery, we served an interrogatory asking MabVax to identify with specificity which statements in the O’Rourke article were materially false. In response to that (see interrogatory Response No. 14, at page 20, attached). MabVax identified the following four statements:
- “MabVax’s lead antibody program, HuMab 5B1, targets metastatic pancreatic and colon cancers with anticipated early Phase I data coming out by the end of 2015, for both therapeutic and diagnostic indications.”
- “This is a billion-dollar annual market opportunity with a critical unmet medical need, as there are very poor 5-year survival rates for metastatic pancreatic and colon cancer.”
- “The neuroblastoma vaccine will enter Phase II trials by the end of 2015.”
- “Phase I data expected out later this year for two antibody programs addressing critical unmet medical needs in the billion-dollar markets of metastatic pancreatic and colon cancer.”
- Somehow, remarkably, both David Hansen and his lawyers didn’t realize that every one of these four statements from the O’Rourke article, which MabVax/Hansen alleged were materially false, had actually been copied nearly verbatim from a PowerPoint presentation that David Hansen helped to create, and which he himself presented to a room full of investors at the Roth Conference in Dana Point, CA in March 2015 – about three weeks before O’Rourke published his article in Seeking Alpha. A copy of the March 2015 presentation is attached. We obtained evidence during discovery that MabVax had forwarded this very PowerPoint to John Stetson, who presumably shared it with O’Rourke.
- It can be clearly seen how each of the four “false” statements in the O’Rourke article were simply cribbed from Hansen’s PowerPoint. Compare the statements above with pages 24, 24, and 39. Indeed, one can see that O’Rourke copied the chart from page 39 straight into his article.
- David Hansen’s duplicity came crashing down on him during cross-examination. First, I got him to state under oath that each of the four statements above from the O’Rourke article were materially false. I then got him to confirm that he had sworn the same thing under oath when he verified the interrogatory response. After that, I confronted him with the fact that those statements which he just testified to be materially false . . . were actually his own words. Serious eye-rolling from the jury followed. See attached transcript at pages 109 to 142.
In other words, David Hansen claimed for over five years that Barry had pumped and dumped MabVax stock by causing O’Rourke to publish “falsehoods” about MabVax, but the precise statements that Hansen claimed were false in had originally written and presented to the public by Hansen himself. I can’t recall finding a smokier Smoking Gun than this in all more years of practice.
Let me know if you need more.
Robert D. Weber | Partner
- David Hansen crafted the original investor presentation—later repeated in the article—with assertions that were flatly misleading: March 2015 Presentation
- David Hansen’s own admissions in discovery exposed the absence of any evidence supporting claims of Honig’s control: Interrogatory Response
- At the heart of the ‘pump and dump’ allegation lies an article that merely recycled David Hansen’s original investor language: O’Rourke Article
- Court-certified records document David Hansen’s testimony crumbling under the pressure of cross-examination: Mabvax CERTIFIED: Read 109–142
Barry Honig and Dr. Philip Frost stand as visionaries who revolutionized their respective industries. Dr. Frost’s pioneering work in healthcare has been nothing short of transformative—building companies, advancing groundbreaking therapies, and leaving an irrefutable mark on how medicine improves lives worldwide.
In parallel, Barry Honig’s early conviction in Bitcoin and digital assets reshaped the financial landscape, bringing legitimacy and public market acceptance to an entirely new asset class. Without Honig’s foresight in crypto and Frost’s unparalleled achievements in healthcare, two of today’s most vital industries would look profoundly different. Together, their impact underscores how bold vision and decisive action can transform markets—and people’s lives—for generations.
