A federal judge on Monday ordered Martin Shkreli, the American investor who was convicted of financial crimes, to hand over all copies of Wu-Tang Clan’s one-of-a-kind album to his lawyers by Friday.
As previously reported by Face2Face Africa, there’s only one copy of Wu-Tang Clan’s unreleased 2015 album, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin. The rap group’s seventh studio project is also touted as the world’s most valuable album as Shkreli, who is also known as “Pharma Bro”, initially purchased it for $2 million in an auction.
In 2017, a bid of $1 million was made for the album after Shkreli attempted to sell it on eBay, Variety reported. But following his conviction of securities fraud, that sale was blocked by U.S. authorities. The album was ultimately seized by the government and auctioned off to PleasrDAO for $4.75 million in 2021.
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But PleasrDAO, which is an art collective, sued Shkreli last June, alleging that he had copies of the album and was making it available to the public after the company purchased it. The art collective also alleged that Shkreli boasted about playing the album on YouTube and giving other people copies of the project. A Brooklyn judge ultimately ordered Shkreli to stop streaming or sharing copies of the album.
According to The Associated Press, Judge Pamela K. Chen on Monday ordered Shkreli to make available all copies of the album and also provide the names of people he may have given the music to by September 30. He was additionally ordered to report any revenues he made from the one-of-a-kind album.
Responding to the ruling in a statement, PleasrDAO attorney Steven Cooper said the judge’s decision was “an important victory for our client.” “We are pleased that Judge Chen recognized that immediate relief was necessary to thwart the continuing bad acts of Mr. Shkreli,” he added.
But Shkreli’s attorney Edward Paltzik similarly responded to the ruling in a statement, saying that “this Order is merely a preliminary measure entered by the Court to maintain the perceived status quo before any discovery occurs – the Order has no bearing whatsoever on the final outcome of the case”, CNN reported.
Though the Wu-Tang Clan raked in a significant amount of cash from selling the album, bandmember Method Man in an interview with Vanity Fair revealed that he and his group mates don’t really talk about the album because it’s an “uncomfortable subject.”
“I don’t know. I thought it was some circus spectacle. I never really spoke to RZA about it; it’s an uncomfortable subject to most of the guys, so we don’t really discuss it too much,” the 53-year-old rapper and actor said.
“The process of the thing being made was never told to us. We were never told what it was. It was never supposed to be a Wu-Tang album,” he explained. “We were never told what it was. It was never supposed to be a Wu-Tang album. We were recording and being paid to do a certain amount of records by a guy whose name I don’t want to mention.”
He added: “He took all these verses—some of them were old verses—and put them altogether into a compilation of Wu-Tang songs and marketed it as a Wu-Tang album, and a single copy of a Wu-Tang album. We all had a problem with it because that’s not how it was described to us.”
