And here we go: Forbes confirms that as predicted, the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York has ordered Martin Shkreli to forfeit Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, the one-of-a-kind Wu-Tang album he bought in 2015 for an alleged $2 million. That’s as well as his copy of Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter V, an original Picasso painting, and a bunch of other stuff, because he owes $7 million following his conviction for fraud. Isn’t that nice?
As we also suspected, however, this means that Once Upon a Time in Shaolin now gets another chapter in its fabled existence: it’ll become the property of the US government, specifically the Department of Justice, which is headed up by, uh, Jeff Sessions. Which means that Jeff Sessions, perhaps the least hip-hop man to ever exist, technically gets the final say in what happens to it next. Usually when assets are surrendered to the government, they’re auctioned off, and Forbes reports that the Department of Justice filing says that “The United States hereby gives notice of its intent to dispose of the forfeited property in such manner as the United States Attorney General may direct.”
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Not much chance of it, but rather than auctioning it to the highest bidder again, maybe Sessions could do the world a solid and compensate the good people of Wu-Tang for their trouble while also releasing the record to the masses somehow. Or do as U-God said and put it in a museum? Probably not? I mean, definitely not, really – but it is kind of fascinating to see how this one will unfold, right?
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