Turns Out Martin Shkreli Copied His $2M Wu-Tang Album—and Sent It to “50 Different Chicks”
Freeman writes:
The members of PleasrDAO are, well, pretty displeased with Martin Shkreli.
The "digital autonomous organization" spent $4.75 million to buy the fabled Wu-Tang Clan album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, which had only been produced as a single copy. The album had once belonged to Shkreli, who purchased it directly from Wu-Tang Clan for $2 million in 2015. But after Shkreli became the "pharma bro" poster boy for price gouging in the drug sector, he ended up in severe legal trouble and served a seven-year prison sentence for securities fraud.
He also had to pay a $7.4 million penalty in that case, and the government seized and then sold Once Upon a Time in Shaolin to help pay the bill.
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In a complicated transaction, PleasrDAO purchased the album from an unnamed intermediary, who had first purchased it from the government. As part of that deal, PleasrDAO created a non-fungible token (NFT-remember those?) to show ownership of the album. The New York Times has a good description
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But after purchasing the album and sharing the collective ownership of its NFT, PleasrDAO discovered that its "one of a kind" object wasn't quite as exclusive as it had thought.Shkreli had, in fact, made copies of the music. Lots of copies. On June 30, 2022, PleasrDAO said that Shkreli played music from the album on his YouTube channel and stated, "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."
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Shkreli claimed on a 2024 podcast that he had "burned the album and sent it to like, 50 different chicks"-and that this had been extremely good for his sex life.Shkreli even offered to send copies of the album to random Internet commenters if they would just send him their "email addy." He also told people to "look out for a torrent" and hosted listening parties for the album on his X account, which reached "potentially over 4,900 listeners."
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Shkreli's response to all this is, in essence, "so what's the problem?"
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