{"id":457496,"date":"2026-02-04T09:00:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T09:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/457496\/"},"modified":"2026-02-04T09:00:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T09:00:07","slug":"martin-shkreli-sues-rza-amid-battle-over-wu-tang-clan-album","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/457496\/","title":{"rendered":"Martin Shkreli Sues RZA Amid Battle Over Wu-Tang\u00a0Clan Album"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe wild power struggle<\/a> over the Wu-Tang Clan<\/a>\u2019s secretive, single-copy album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin kicked into high gear again this week, with disgraced pharmaceutical executive Martin Shkreli<\/a> filing a counter lawsuit against RZA<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn his new federal court filing obtained by Rolling Stone, Shkreli claims he remains the rightful owner of half of the album\u2019s current copyrights, with the other half purportedly due to him 88 years after he purchased the LP in 2015. He claims this even though federal officials seized the album and sold it for $4 million to digital art collective PleasrDAO as part of a 2021 auction<\/a> organized to pay victims linked to Shkreli\u2019s 2017 securities fraud conviction<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tWith his new counterclaims, Shkreli is asking the court to issue a declaratory judgment confirming his asserted copyright ownership. He contends that RZA and Wu-Tang Clan producer Cilvaringz wrongly reclaimed and resold the copyrights without his knowledge amid his criminal case woes. He says the alleged double-dipping ended with PleasrDAO acquiring the exclusive rights to exploit the album under a purportedly improper \u201cduplicate sale.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tExplaining his view of the complicated saga across 35 pages, Shkreli says he paid $1.5 million for the only existing hard copy of the highly anticipated album in 2015 through a byzantine deal with RZA, born Robert Diggs; and Cilvaringz, whose legal name is Tarik Azzougarh; that was \u201cbifurcated\u201d into tangible and intangible deliverables. He alleges the tangible portion included the two-disc set tucked into an engraved nickel-silver box, a gold-leafed certificate of authenticity, and a leather-bound manuscript containing information about the musical work. The intangible side, meanwhile, included his purported immediate grant of 50 percent ownership of the album\u2019s copyrights and the promised transfer of the remaining half in 2103, he claims.<\/p>\n

\n\tShkreli invoked the alleged 2015 agreement after PleasrDAO sued him first. In a complaint filed in June 2024, the group accused him of improperly retaining copies<\/a> of the album after the criminal court ordered its full forfeiture. The group said it was concerned he had already released, or intended to release, some or all of the closely guarded music to the public.<\/p>\n

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\n\tLast month, a federal judge allowed PleasrDAO\u2019s civil case to move toward trial, finding that the album could qualify as a trade secret unlawfully retained by Shkreli. In his Monday filing, Shkreli demanded a formal ruling that the album \u201cis not a protected trade secret.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAttempts to reach a lawyer for Diggs and Azzougarh were not immediately successful Tuesday. Steven Cooper, the lead lawyer for PleasrDAO, blasted Shkreli\u2019s counterclaims.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMr. Shkreli\u2019s approach throughout this case has been to distract and delay, with actions that the court has consistently and strongly rejected,\u201d Cooper said in a statement sent to Rolling Stone. \u201cThese counterclaims will meet the same fate. They are untimely, non-cognizable, and oddly, claim that Mr. Shkreli retained rights to the album when he was under a court order to forfeit all of his rights in his criminal prosecution.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAt his criminal trial, Shkreli was convicted of repeatedly lying to investors as he ran a \u201cPonzi-like scheme\u201d linked to his pharmaceutical company, Turing Pharmaceuticals, which notoriously bought the HIV and cancer-fighting drug Daraprim and then jacked its price from $13.50 to $750 per tablet overnight. Derisively dubbed a \u201cpharma bro,\u201d Shkreli was sentenced to seven years in prison.<\/p>\n

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\n\tIn a prior interview with Rolling Stone<\/a>, RZA said he regretted selling the album and fantasized about buying it back for himself. \u201cIt was hard for me to sell that album because I wanted it to be on my living room table,\u201d he said with a laugh. \u201cWhen it was finally completed, and everything was sent out, I was like, \u2018This would be great in the Wu mansion.\u2019 Whoever comes by here can see this piece of art sitting in my living room. I argued with the people that invested money to get the project on its way, but they wanted [their investment] back. So, it would\u2019ve cost me more than the selling price in reality, because of the deficit that was already incurred. Also, everybody is like, \u2018This ain\u2019t for you. That\u2019s even more selfish than selling it.\u2019 They were talking to me to let that thing go.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tMembers of PleasrDAO, meanwhile, have sought to share some of the album with fans through the sale of NFTs. \u201cThis beautiful piece of art, this ultimate protest against middlemen and rent-seekers of musicians and artists, went south by going into the hands of Martin Shkreli, the ultimate internet villain,\u201d Jamis Johnson, PleasrDAO\u2019s so-called Chief Pleasing Officer,\u00a0told\u00a0Rolling Stone<\/a>\u00a0in 2021. \u201cWe want this to be us bringing this back to the people. We want fans to participate in this album at some level.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The wild power struggle over the Wu-Tang Clan\u2019s secretive, single-copy album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin kicked…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":457497,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[64,63,7882,19292,134,235610,136,235611,19569],"class_list":{"0":"post-457496","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-controversy","11":"tag-courts-and-crime","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-martin-shkreli","14":"tag-music","15":"tag-rza","16":"tag-wu-tang-clan"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=457496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457496\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/457497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=457496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=457496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=457496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}