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New York Post
‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli ordered to give up one-of-a-kind Wu-Tang Clan album he paid $2M for
By Matt Troutman,
2 hours ago
The “Pharma Bro” is done bringing the ruckus over a one-of-a-kind Wu-Tang Clan album.
A federal judge this week ordered notorious price-gouging heel Martin Shkreli to turn over all copies of the famed hip hop group’s unreleased “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin” album to his lawyers by Friday.
Shkreli purchased the album — often called the world’s rarest — for $2 million in 2015 but later had it seized by the Department of Justice as part of a massive forfeiture action against him amid his seven-year security fraud sentence.
A cryptocurrency collective, PleasrDAO, bought the album for $4 million from the feds in 2021, but ended up suing Shkreli this year, accusing the fraudster of keeping digital copies of it and spreading them on social media.
Martin Shkreli was ordered to give up any copies he made of a one-of-a-kind Wu-Tang Clan album. Getty Images
“(Of course I made MP3 copies, they’re like hidden in safes all around the world . . . I’m not stupid,” Shkreli bragged during one livestream, according to court documents.
“I don’t buy something for two million dollars just so I can keep one copy.”
The Wu-Tang Clan put a single copy of the 31-track double album, which is encased in a Baroque bejeweled box, up for auction after spending six years creating it.
The unreleased “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin” album recently sold for $4 million. VIA REUTERS
The iconic group, formed in the early 1990s on Staten Island, sold it with the condition it never be reproduced commercially for 88 years and only be played for small crowds.
Shkreli’s purchase further cemented his image as a sociopathic scoundrel — a reputation he earned by jacking up the price of a lifesaving antiparasitic drug by 5,500%
The lawsuit by the cryptocurrency collective extensively details various outrages swirling around Shkreli, including offering $5,000 for a strand of Hillary Clinton’s hair.
Wu-Tang never intended for the 31-track album to get a commercial release, at least for 88 years. Charles Sykes/Invision/AP
Brooklyn federal court Judge Pamela K. Chen granted a preliminary injunction in the case and ordered Shkreli to release a list of names of anyone who received the music.
“We are pleased that Judge Chen recognized that immediate relief was necessary to thwart the continuing bad acts of Mr. Shkreli,” said PleasrDAO attorney Steven Cooper in a statement to The Associated Press.
With Post wires
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