Once Upon A Time In Shaolin

[GeneChing]

Congrats RZA. Mission accomplished. OUATIS may not have got the art gallery exhibit you dreamed of, but it surely became art.

U.S. prosecutors could seize Shkreli's $2 million Wu-Tang album, Picasso


Convicted former pharma exec Martin Shkreli may have to part with a one-of-a-kind album by the Wu-Tang Clan, which he bought for $2 million. (Timothy A. Clary / AFP/Getty Images)
Renae Merle
Washington Post

Martin Shkreli may have spun his last track on a one-of-a-kind album by the Wu-Tang Clan.

Prosecutors said Friday that the former biotech CEO, who was convicted this year on securities fraud charges, should be forced to forfeit $7.4 million. That amount could include $5 million in bail money and the celebrated New York hip-hop group's album "Once Upon a Time in Shaolin," which he bought two years ago for $2 million.

Prosecutors said they may also seek Shkreli's interest in Turing Pharmaceuticals, his Enigma code-breaking machine from World War II and his Picasso painting. Shkreli became a focal point of national controversy when he raised the sticker price of a potentially life-saving drug by 5,000 percent in 2015.

[GeneChing]

March 1, 2018, 8:23 AM
"Pharma Bro" Martin Shkreli's plea for leniency: "I was a fool"

NEW YORK - "Pharma Bro" Martin Shkreli admitted that he was "very far from blameless" in a letter to a judge asking for leniency, according to court filings.

"I was wrong, I was a fool. I should have known better," Shkreli wrote in his letter to Brooklyn federal court Judge Kiyo Matsumoto.

"I accept the fact that I made serious mistakes, but I still believe that I am a good person with much potential," Shkreli said.

The brash former pharmaceuticals company CEO was convicted in August of cheating investors in two failed hedge funds. He remains in jail and faces up to 20 years in prison when he is sentenced March 9.

Shkreli, 34, is perhaps best known for boosting the price of a lifesaving drug.

He was out on bail during his trial but was jailed when the judge decided he had made veiled online threats against Democrat Hillary Clinton.

"I have learned a harsh lesson," he said. "The trial and six months in a maximum security prison has been a frightening wake-up call. I now understand how I need to change."

Earlier this week, the judge ruled that Shkreli was responsible for nearly $10.5 million in losses in the securities fraud scheme, a decision that could result in a harsher punishment.

".... if you find it appropriate to impose a sentence that does not include an extended period of incarceration," Shkreli wrote, "I will do my absolute best to use my skills and whatever talents I have been blessed with for the betterment of humanity."

He deserves the full 20.

[GeneChing]

We'll meet back here later this week for the sentencing, and then again for the auction, I imagine.

The feds have Martin Shkreli’s Wu-Tang album
Enter the Feds
By Sarah Jeong@sarahjeong Mar 5, 2018, 2:50pm EST


Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images

A federal court is forcing Martin Shkreli to hand over the Wu-Tang album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin to the government. Shkreli, a pharmaceuticals CEO who earned the nickname “Pharma Bro” for cavalierly hiking the price of an HIV treatment, was convicted of securities fraud in August 2017.

Though he has yet to be sentenced, a judge ruled today that Shkreli must forfeit $7.36 million, part of which will come from boring assets that no one cares about, like an E-trade brokerage account, a Picasso painting, and an unreleased Lil Wayne album. More importantly, he will be giving up the Wu-Tang album, which he bought at auction in 2014 for $2 million, which was, according to a 2015 statement by Wu-Tang’s RZA, “well before Martin Shrkeli’s [sic] business practices came to light.”

Once Upon a Time in Shaolin is a unique record: only one copy exists, in a silver-and-nickel-plated box with 174-page liner notes bound by hand in leather. By the terms of the sale, whoever owns the sole copy can legally do whatever they want with it, aside from releasing it commercially; there’s an 88-year ban on that. So the owner could hold exclusive listening parties or even release the album for free. It’s not clear whether the terms of the original purchase agreement can bind the government or any future buyer. Shkreli claimed to have already sold the album in September, but the buyer hasn’t stepped forward and it’s pretty unclear whether there was a hand-off. The government doesn’t care. It will take either the album or any proceeds.

Don’t expect anyone to be able to get the album through an FOIA or another kind of information request because that’s not how it works. It will likely be auctioned to the highest bidder, right next to all the yachts and Porsches and Rolexes seized from less-hated crime-doers.

There would be a kind of poetic justice for the Wu-Tang album to be set free and made freely available to the American public at large. Given, you know, that it’s being forfeited by a real-life Bret Easton Ellis character who built his fortune on an inhumane system that profits from the demand for life-saving drugs. But maybe the next owner of the album will be more pro-social and just upload the **** thing to the internet already.