Martin Shkreli is being sued in New York by a digital art collective that claims it paid $4.75 million for a one-of-a-kind album by hip-hop group Wu-Tang Clan, only to find that a convicted pharmaceutical executive made copies and released the music to the public.
Shkreli paid $2 million for Once in Shaolin in 2015 but gave it up in 2017 to partially satisfy a $7.4 million forfeiture order after he was convicted of defrauding hedge fund investors and conspiring to defraud pharmaceutical company investors.
According to plaintiff PleasrDAO, since his release from prison in May 2022, Shkreli has told fans on live streams and on social media platform X that he kept and shared the album, and that “someone bought it for $4 million and was playing it on YouTube the other day.”
PleasrDAO also said that thousands of people tuned in to listen to the album via livestream on Sunday, which Shkreli called the “official Wu-Tang Clan listening party.”
Such actions violate the forfeiture order, amount to a misappropriation of trade secrets and “materially diminish or destroy the value of the albums,” according to the lawsuit, filed Monday night in Brooklyn federal court.
PleasrDAO is seeking to have Shkreli destroy the copies, cede any profits from the distribution of his music, and pay compensatory and punitive damages.
Lawyers representing Shkreli in the criminal and civil cases either declined to comment or did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The plaintiff Showing This month, Shaolin is coming to the Old and New Art Gallery in Hobart, Tasmania.
Shkreli, 41, gained notoriety in 2015 as chief executive officer of Turing Pharmaceuticals when he raised the price of the life-saving anti-parasitic drug Daraprim from $17.50 to $750 a tablet overnight, earning him the nickname “Pharma Bro.”
He was released early from a seven-year sentence but remains on probation.
Shkreli was barred from the pharmaceutical industry in January 2022 and ordered to pay $64.6 million in restitution for antitrust violations related to Daraprim.
A federal appeals court upheld the ban and the payouts in January.
The case is PleasrDAO v. Shkreli, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of New York, Case No. 24-04126.
