The feds have Martin Shkreli’s Wu-Tang album

 

A federal court is forcing Martin Shkreli to hand over the Wu-Tang album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin to the government. Shkreli, a pharmaceuticals CEO who earned the nickname “Pharma Bro” for cavalierly hiking the price of an HIV treatment, was convicted of securities fraud in August 2017.

Though he has yet to be sentenced, a judge ruled today that Shkreli must forfeit $7.36 million, part of which will come from boring assets that no one cares about, like an E-trade brokerage account, a Picasso painting, and an unreleased Lil Wayne album. More importantly, he will be giving up the Wu-Tang album, which he bought at auction in 2014 for$2 million, which was, according to a 2015 statement by Wu-Tang’s RZA, “well before Martin Shrkeli’s [sic] business practices came to light.”

Once Upon a Time in Shaolin is a unique record: only one copy exists, in a silver-and-nickel-plated box with 174-page liner notes bound by hand in leather. By the terms of the sale, whoever owns the sole copy can legally do whatever they want with it, aside from releasing it commercially; there’s an 88-year ban on that. So the owner could hold exclusive listening parties or even release the album for free. It’s not clear whether the terms of the original purchase agreement can bind the government or any future buyer. Shkreli claimed to have already sold the album in September, but the buyer hasn’t stepped forward and it’s pretty unclear whether there was a hand-off. The government doesn’t care. It will take either the album or any proceeds.

Don’t expect anyone to be able to get the album through an FOIA or another kind of information request because that’s not how it works. It will likely be auctioned to the highest bidder, right next to all the yachts and Porsches and Rolexes seized from less-hated crime-doers.

There would be a kind of poetic justice for the Wu-Tang album to be set free and made freely available to the American public at large. Given, you know, that it’s being forfeited by a real-life Bret Easton Ellis character who built his fortune on an inhumane system that profits from the demand for life-saving drugs. But maybe the next owner of the album will be more pro-social and just upload the damn thing to the internet already.