The legal drama surrounding Wu-Tang Clan’s rare album, Once Upon A Time in Shaolin, continues Martin Shkreli, the infamous owner of it, was ordered to surrender all copies in his possession over the weekend by a federal judge.
According to court documents, the 41-year-old pharmaceutical executive known as “Pharma Bro” was ordered by Judge Chen in Brooklyn courts to turn over any copies of the one-of-a-kind album over and forbidden from streaming or disseminating copies of the record. The judge ordered Shkreli to submit an inventory within 30 days, listing all copies he had, who he distributed them to, and how much money he made from the distribution.
The ruling comes from a lawsuit filed by PleasrDAO, the digital collective that now owns the album. An attorney for PleasrDAO considered Friday’s ruling a big win for their client against Shkreli. “Today’s ruling is a big win for our client PleasrDAO, who holds exclusive rights to this one-of-a-kind Wu-Tang Clan album,” Steven Cooper said in a statement.
In May, the album went on display at a private listening event. Back in 2015, the Wu-Tang Clan sold the unique album through the auction site Paddle8. The idea was to treat the album like a piece of art, inspired by the art world’s model.
Album producer Tarik “Cilvaringz” Azzougarh explained, “We wanted to take it back 400 years to the Renaissance, treating music as a commissioned commodity, from creation to exhibition to sale.”
Martin Shkreli brought Once Upon A Time in Shaolin for $2 million after a bid in 2015. In 2017, he forfeited the album as part of his fraud conviction, and it was seized by the U.S. government. In 2021, PleasrDAO bought it for $4.75 million.
In June, PleasrDAO sued Shkreli, claiming he streamed a copy of the album during a “Wu-Tang Official Listening Party” on social media shortly after his release from prison in May 2022. Shkreli reportedly bragged about making copies hidden “in safes all around the world.”