Law & Crime
The convicted felon known as “Pharma Bro,” Martin Shkreli, is being sued over claims he allegedly copied and livestreamed a rare Wu-Tang Clan album to his social media followers.
According to a lawsuit filed in federal court on Monday, PleasrDAO is suing Shkreli over the famed hip-hop group’s rare single copy of “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin” that PleasrDAO, a cryptocurrency collective, bought the exclusive rights to from Shkreli for $4.75 million in two transactions in 2021 and 2024. The judge on Tuesday issued a temporary restraining order barring Shkreli from streaming, selling or disseminating the album before the next court hearing set for June 25.
PleasrDAO accuses Shkreli of admitting to playing the album in a livestream for his followers on June 18, 2022, according to the lawsuit that seeks unspecified damages to be determined by a court.
“Yeah, that’s the Wu-Tang album for all you crazy streamer people,” he said during the livestream, court documents said.
In another livestream on YouTube on June 22, 2022, Shkreli was asked if he still had a copy of the album, and he admitted he did, the lawsuit alleges.
“I was playing it on YouTube the other night even though somebody paid $4 million for it,” he said, according to the documents.
On June 30, 2022, during another livestream, Shkreli again played a portion of the album and again allegedly admitted he kept it, saying, “of course I made MP3 copies, they’re like hidden in safes all around the world … I’m not stupid. I don’t buy something for two million dollars just so I can keep one copy.”
This past May, in a YouTube video, Shkreli said he “burned the album and sent it to like, 50 different chicks,” court documents said.
He then asked the interviewer, “Do you know how many b——- that album got me? You think I didn’t make a f—— copy of it? Are you joking?”
He also allegedly said, “thousands of people have listened to it. I sent the mp3s to all these people.”
Shkreli purchased the album in 2015 for $2 million but had sold it off as part of his $7.4 million forfeiture order after his conviction and sentencing to seven years in prison for securities fraud. His former company bought the rights to a lifesaving drug Daraprim — which treats a rare parasitic disease that strikes pregnant women and cancer and AIDS patients — and raised the price of the drug from $13.50 to $750 per pill, a more than 4,000% hike. He was released from prison in May 2022, when he began a three-year term of supervised release.
In court documents, PleasrDAO said the forfeiture order required Shkreli to “take all reasonable steps, and bear all costs necessary, to ensure that all the Substitute Assets are preserved and maintained in good and marketable condition, and are not damaged, diluted or diminished in value as a result of any actions taken or not taken by” Shkreli.
“Shkreli has shown a complete lack of respect for the integrity of the Album and the conditions in place to ensure its secrecy,” court documents said.
Wu-Tang recorded the secret 31-track, 128-minute double album from 2007 to 2013 in protest over the devaluation of music in the digital era. It features guest appearances from notable musicians, celebrity actors, and professional athletes. The album came in a hand-carved, nickel- and silver-cased box bound in leather. It is listed in the Guinness World Records as the single most valuable album.
The Associated Press said Shkreli did not respond to a request for comment.
Law&Crime has written extensively about Shkreli. In January, he went expressed his displeasure with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which handed down a unanimous ruling that upheld the district court’s decision that he must keep out of the pharmaceutical business because of his anti-competitive behavior in distributing a potentially lifesaving drug.
New York State Attorney General Letitia James, the Federal Trade Commission, and seven individual states sued Shkreli and his companies in 2020 for antitrust violations.
Shkreli responded to the ruling at the time online. He posted on X, formerly Twitter, specifically calling out the Second Circuit for its decision:
