BROOKLYN (CN) — The one-of-a-kind Wu-Tang Clan album forfeited by “Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli in his fraud conviction officially changed hands on Tuesday, after the United States government sold the record to an undisclosed buyer.
“Cash rules everything around me,” the iconic Staten Island hip hop group rapped in one of its biggest hits, C.R.E.A.M., released in 1994.
It may be fitting, then, that the group’s most secretive creation — meant to be a commentary on fans’ reluctance to spend their cash on new music — ended up in the hands of a man who gained notoriety as a villain of capitalism.
Shkreli, 38, entered the public eye in 2015 when it became public that the pharmaceutical executive had jacked the price of life-saving AIDS drug Daraprim by 5,000%.
He was convicted of securities fraud in 2017 following his 6-week trial in the Eastern District of New York.
At his March 2018 sentencing, Shkreli was ordered to pay a $7.4 million forfeiture judgment, in addition to his 7-year prison sentence.
That debt was settled by the sale of “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin,” which Shkreli bought at a 2015 auction.
“Through the diligent and persistent efforts of this Office and its law enforcement partners, Shkreli has been held accountable and paid the price for lying and stealing from investors to enrich himself,” Jacquelyn M. Kasulis, acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement.
Shkreli was the founder and managing member of hedge funds MSMB Capital Management and MSMB Healthcare Management, and the CEO of biopharmaceutical company Retrophin Inc.
A jury found Shkreli guilty of two counts of federal securities fraud, and one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud, for orchestrating a series of schemes to defraud investors in the funds and manipulating the price and trading volume of Retrophin’s stock. He was acquitted on five other counts, including wire fraud.
The former executive’s conviction and sentence were affirmed by the Second Circuit in July 2019.
Shkreli is scheduled to be released from prison next year, followed by a three-year period of supervised release.
An attorney for Shkreli declined to comment on the album’s sale.
Shkreli said he paid $2 million for the 31-track record, which came in a hand-carved nickel-silver box, along with a leather-bound, parchment paper manuscript containing song lyrics, background information on the music, and a certificate of authenticity.
The album also comes with rules, including that its owner may not commercially release its contents for 88 years. Its producers, Wu-Tang’s RZA and Dutch rapper Cilvaringz, also held onto half of its recording copyrights, The New York Times reported.
RZA, whose full name is Robert Diggs, said in 2015 that the sale of “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin” took place before Shkreli’s AIDS drug price hike went public. After the group learned it was Shkreli who bought the album, it decided to donate much of the money to charity.
Five years and a government forfeiture later, the album had “taken on a life of its own,” RZA said in an August 2020 interview with Yahoo Entertainment.
“The whole idea, what it was meant to be — what it was meant to do — it did it,” he said. “It started a conversation for us to look at what we value and don’t value.”
RZA explained that making a single copy of an album that reportedly took six years to create was meant to underscore the group’s thoughts about listeners being unwilling to pay for new music, while paradoxically being willing to shell out hundreds on headphones.
Then, Shkreli bought the album.
“It ended up in the hands of the evil villain,” RZA said. “You can’t write this. Life is unique, and that was definitely a unique moment for me in life.”
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