Martin Shkreli has been ordered to surrender the mythical Wu-Tang Clan album said to be the only copy that exists in the world.
The "Pharma Bro" earned his notoriety for raising the price of the drug Daraprim from $13.50 to $750 a pill, becoming the poster boy of corporate evil. However, it is not the reason why he is going to jail. On March 9, the 34-year-old was sentenced to seven years in prison for securities fraud.
Where Is The Shaolin?
As part of his sentence, Shkreli, who has been reportedly cash broke since last year, had to forfeit more than $7.3 million in brokerage accounts and personal assets. It includes Once Upon A Time in Shaolin, the 31-track album by the Wu-Tang Clan.
Legend has it that the rap group spent over six years developing the record, which was meant to be treated as a piece of contemporary art. Unfortunately, the almost mythical album landed in the hands of Shkreli in 2015. He reportedly paid $2 million for the album.
Along with Once Upon A Time In Shaolin, the disgraced entrepreneur also have to surrender a Picasso painting and a copy of Tha Carter V, the 12th studio album by Lil Wayne. All these will be auctioned, but according to record executive Jeff Gold, reselling the album might prove to be a challenge.
"If there are cars or boats or brokerage accounts, all of that stuff is going to be a lot simpler to quantify," he explained in an interview with The Associated Press. "There are a lot of questions around these albums and what you can and can't do with them."
One of those factors is Shkreli's negative public image. He said that the album, no matter how precious it might look to music fans, will decrease in value because of its association with the entrepreneur.
In addition, Gold warned that the copy of Once Upon A Time In Shaolin seized by the government might not be the only one in existence. Shkreli might have already kept a digital copy of the album before it was sequestered, which further reduces its original value.
These are just some of the issues the government might face in selling the album if it was still in Shkeli's possession at the time of the ruling. Billboard noted that back in September, the convicted fraudster has posted a listing of the mythical album on eBay. As of this writing, no one has claimed that the album is in their possession.
The Wu-Tang album is not the only valuable record in Shkreli's possession. Lil Wayne's Tha Carter V, which the rapper reportedly spent years to record, was never released because of some issues with his record label. No one knows how Shkreli acquired the album.
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