Legal Issues

by Mike Masnick

Tue, Mar 6th 2018 9:33am

The DOJ Now Has The One Of A Kind Wu Tang Album; But Don't Expect Jeff Sessions To Release The Album

from the not-how-it-works dept

Well, well, well. At the end of last year we wrote about the weird series of events that could possibly lead to the DOJ getting possession of a one-of-a-kind Wu Tang Clan album called Once Upon a Time in Shaolin. The short version: in 2014 Wu Tang decided to experiment with a different kind of business model: selling a single copy of an album to the highest bidder. Nearly two years later, just as the entire world was learning to absolutely loathe a pharma man-child named Martin Shkreli, it came out that Shkreli was the guy who forked over $2 million or so for the album.

Since then Shkreli has been arrested, and things haven't gone well for him. As you may have heard, a week or so ago, the court ruled that Shkreli caused a loss of $10.4 million for investors. And, yesterday, Judge Kiyo Matsumoto further ruled on the DOJ's asset forfeiture request, granting the request to seize a bunch of Shkreli assets... including Once Upon a Time in Shaolin. The order of forfeiture specifically lays out the following assets:

(a) $5 million in cash that is currently held in an E*Trade brokerage account ending in the digits “0258” as security for the defendant’s bond, pursuant to orders of the Court dated January 7, 2016, August 24, 2016 and October 19, 2017;
(b) Vyera Pharmaceuticals (formerly known as Turing Pharmaceuticals);
(c) the album “Once Upon A Time in Shaolin” by the Wu Tang Clan;
(d) the album “Tha Carter V” by Lil Wayne; and
(e) a Picasso painting.

Of course, don't think that this means that Jeff Sessions will now be releasing the album. I'm guessing he's not a huge fan of Wu Tang Clan, first of all. But, more importantly, it's likely that the DOJ will simply try to sell the album to get the cash value -- which will make for one hell of an interesting asset auction. But... it also means that some other rich dude might buy the album and keep it all to himself as well. Or, alternatively, someone else might try to buy it and release it. As Sarah Jeong wrote years ago (predicting all of this), it's still not clear what contractual obligations there are or if Wu Tang Clan retains the copyright:

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