Martin Shkreli Sued for Allegedly Copying One-of-a-Kind Wu-Tang Clan Album
The lawsuit alleges Shkreli played the music on social media and bragged about it.
The media-dubbed “pharma bro” Martin Shkreli, who served four years of a seven-year sentence in prison for securities fraud, is now facing a lawsuit alleging he copied the secret Wu-Tang Clan album he was forced to sell after his conviction.
Wu-Tang Clan, the pioneering hip-hop group formed on Staten Island in 1992, sold its album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin (2015) to Shkreli for $2 million in a 2015 auction by Paddle8. It was seized by the U.S. government, which sold it to PleasrDAO, a collective of digital art enthusiasts and cryptocurrency investors, for $4.75 million in 2021.
The album, released as a single physical copy enclosed in a handcrafted silver and nickel case, stands as a unique artistic statement that challenges the commodification and mass production of music in the digital age and draws parallels to fine art, a field where scarcity enhances value and significance. When the album was sold to PleasrDAO, the ownership deed came in the form of an NFT.