They met at a libertarian conference in Las Vegas in July 2015, where they discussed Milton Friedman, Anton Chekhov and John Locke.
He was the philosophizing founder and chief executive of Overstock.com, a publicly traded e-commerce retailer that sells discount furniture and bedding. She was an ambitious graduate student from Russia.
It was the start of a three-year relationship between the e-commerce executive, Patrick Byrne, and the young woman, Maria Butina, that became romantic at times. She is now serving 18 months in prison after being accused by federal prosecutors of trying to infiltrate powerful political circles in the United States at the direction of the Russian government.