Source: MediaNews Group/Boston Herald via Getty Images / Getty
A new lawsuit claims that convicted executive Martin Shkreli copied and shared a rare album from the Wu-Tang Clan bought by an art collective, violating their deal.
On Monday (June 10), a lawsuit was filed against former pharmaceutical executive Martin Shkreli aka “Pharma Bro” in a Brooklyn, New York, court by digital art collective PleasrDAO. The group claims that Shkreli has violated the deal where they purchased the rare Wu-Tang Clan album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin from him by retaining copies of the album and sharing it with his followers on social media, alleging that he’s done so since his release from prison in May 2022.
“Any dissemination of the Album’s music to the general public greatly diminishes and/or destroys the Album’s value, and significantly damages PleasrDAO’s reputation and ability to commercially exploit the Album,” the filing reads. PleasrDAO pointed to recent comments made by Shkreli in posts on social media, particularly on X, formerly Twitter. “I was playing it on YouTube the other night even though somebody paid $4m for it,” one post reads.
The collective also claims that he played parts of the album in a “Wu-Tang official listening party,” in another post on Sunday (June 9). PleasrDAO claimed that they completed the purchase of the physical copy and the digital rights of Once Upon a Time In Shaolin in 2021 and 2024 in two separate deals. Shkreli was forced to sell the album, which he acquired in auction in 2015 for $2 million to pay off a $7.4 million order of forfeiture after his conviction in 2017 for scheming to defraud investors as a drug manufacturer and defrauding hedge fund investors. Shkreli became notorious for hiking the price of Daraprim, the drug his Turing Pharmaceuticals manufactured, from $17.50 per tablet to an astronomical $750 per tablet.
U.S. District Court Judge Pamela Chen issued a temporary restraining order against Shkreli on Tuesday (June 11), blocking him from sharing the album and stating the suit “is likely to succeed on the merits” leading to a possible injunction and seizure of Shkreli’s copies. The rare Once Upon a Time In Shaolin album is currently set to be on display at the Museum of Old and New Art in Australia, which is planning to hold private listening sessions featuring songs from the album this week. Shkreli has so far been defiant online, taunting them in a post on X, formerly Twitter, on the same day and retweeting his followers who joined in the derision.
