While the price of the sale was kept confidential, The United States has sold the only copy of the Wu-Tang Clan album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin to an anonymous buyer. .
The full length was previously owned by Martin Shkreli, the infamous “Pharma Bro” who raised the price of a life-saving drug by 5,000 percent and was later convicted of securities fraud and sentenced to seven years in prison. As part of a $7.4 million forfeiture judgement the criminal was forced to hand over the LP to the United States in 2018.
Jacquelyn M. Kasulis, the Acting United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, confirmed that “Shkreli has been held accountable and paid the price for lying and stealing from investors to enrich himself. With today’s sale of this one-of-a-kind album, his payment of the forfeiture is now complete.”
Promoted as a “unique work of art” with no physical or digital duplicate in existence, and included appearances from the wider Wu-Tang family from Redman to Killarmy, Martin Shkreli purchased the original 31-track album at auction in 2015 for a reported $2 million. Upon learning that it was Shkreli who bought the album, Wu-Tang member RZA told Bloomberg that the group decided to give “a significant portion of the proceeds to charity.”
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Author: Brad LeBeau
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