| Welcome back to FOIA Files! This week, I’m feeling sparks of energy. The government finally disclosed to me the auction price for Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, the seventh studio album by renowned hip-hop group, Wu-Tang Clan. The Justice Department seized the album in 2018 from Martin Shkreli, the notorious pharmaceutical executive and hedge fund manager who was convicted of securities fraud. The government later sold the album but kept the sale price secret. After spending more than four years trying to pry loose that detail, I just got it! Take a trip with me down the Wu-Tang rabbit hole for the whole backstory. If you’re not already getting FOIA Files in your inbox, sign up here. I assume most people know the story by now. Wu-Tang Clan sold the only copy of their 31-track album, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, at auction in 2015 to Shkreli for about $2 million. The album, conceived as a work of art, was pressed onto two compact discs and stored in a vault in Casablanca before it was sold. The buyer had to agree that they would not duplicate it or play it commercially for 88 years—until 2103. Later in 2015, Shkreli, who earned the nickname “Pharma Bro” in response to his controversial decision to jack up the price of a lifesaving drug by 5,000%, was charged with securities fraud. In 2017, he was convicted and later sentenced to seven years in prison. He was also ordered to pay a $75,000 fine and forfeit $7.4 million in assets. The following year, the government seized the album. Fast forward to July 2021. The US Attorney’s office in New York that oversaw Shkreli’s prosecution announced that the federal government sold the album to “satisfy the outstanding balance” on his forfeiture judgment. There was one caveat: “The contract of sale contains a confidentiality provision that protects information relating to the buyer and price.” I couldn’t resist. A week after Once Upon a Time in Shaolin was sold I filed a FOIA request for a copy of the bill of sale and terms of the sale, photographs of the album, as well as any emails referencing Wu-Tang Clan and the sale of the album. In October 2021, The New York Times revealed that the new owners of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, a digital art and crypto collective known as PleasrDAO, had paid “the equivalent of $4 million in a cryptocurrency tied to the dollar” for the album. The collective obtained it through an intermediary. That same month I sued the Department of Justice to compel the agency to release the records. In January 2022, the US Marshals Service, which handled the sale of the album, sent me 67 pages of documents that included dozens of stunning photographs of the album that had never seen the light of day. The photos showed that Once Upon a Time in Shaolin was kept in a nickel-silver box that was stored in a cedarwood box and covered in black cow leather with light beige velvet lining. It also showed the album was accompanied by a 175-page leather-bound lyric book and a gold-leafed certificate of authenticity.  The cedarwood box. Source: United States Marshals Service/FOIA I also got a copy of the bill of sale and purchase agreement. Imagine how outraged I was when I saw that the government redacted the name of the corporate entity that bought the album under a privacy exemption and redacted the sale price citing “trade secrets” and “commercial or financial information obtained from a person that is privileged or confidential.” That’s crazy! How could that be when PleasrDAO had already stepped forward to reveal it purchased the album? Also, what’s the trade secret I wondered? It would take more than three years to find out. The reason it took so long is that the DOJ still had to hand over other documents I requested, and I couldn’t challenge the trade secrets and privacy exemptions until the agency finished its production. In 2023, as my FOIA attorneys were preparing that challenge, the DOJ said the agency had conducted another search and found thousands of pages of emails it somehow missed the first time around! The DOJ spent the next year handing over emails about what took place behind the scenes as it worked on the sale. Some of the communications were pretty revealing, but many of the pages I have since obtained are heavily redacted. Still, it’s pretty remarkable to read emails from DOJ attorneys discussing Wu-Tang Clan.  A November 2019 email from the head of the asset recovery unit at the US Attorney’s office in New York notes that Shkreli also owned a Picasso, which the US later seized as well. The DOJ explained that processing the rest of the records would take a very long time. So I did something I don’t believe I’ve ever done before. I told my attorneys that I was willing to give up the rest of the emails so they could challenge what we believed was the agency’s improper use of the trade secrets and privacy exemptions. The DOJ attorney assigned to my FOIA case indicated the government would fight my efforts. Instead, my attorney ended up in settlement discussions with the government earlier this year. In the end, I agreed not to pursue the name of the individual buyer of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin if the DOJ disclosed the name of the corporate buyer of the album and the purchase price. Finally, just last week, the Wu-Tang drama came to an end. The US Marshals Service turned over another copy of the bill of sale and the purchase agreement last Friday, unredacting the details I had been pursuing since late 2021. It shows that the government sold Once Upon a Time in Shaolin for $2,238,482.30, which is the amount Shkreli owed the government. One noteworthy addendum: The DOJ made it clear to my FOIA attorney that PleasrDAO wasn’t connected in any way to the corporate entity or the individual who purchased the album.  Left: a redacted copy of the purchase agreement. Right: an unredacted copy of the purchase agreement the US Marshals just turned over to FOIA Files that reveals the name of the corporate entity, WTC Endeavours Limited. The name of the company that was set up for the sole purpose of purchasing the album is WTC Endeavours Limited, incorporated in Hong Kong in May 2020 and dissolved in March 2023. We obtained the entity’s official incorporation records from the government of Hong Kong. It identifies officers affiliated with WTC Endeavors, but the names don’t appear to be well known. (If any FOIA Files readers have details they’d like to share about WTC Endeavours, please send me an email or shoot me a message on Signal).  Left: A redacted copy of the bill of sale that concealed the purchase price for Once Upon a Time in Shaolin. Right: An unredacted copy of the bill of sale that reveals the sale price for the album. Last year, PleasrDAO sued Shkreli, alleging he retained copies of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin and planned to release it publicly after he streamed portions of it. A federal judge later ordered Shkreli to turn over to the collective’s lawyers all of his copies of the album and the names of anyone he gifted or sold it to. PleasrDAO is bound by the same restrictions as Shkreli was when he purchased the album. They can’t stream it or duplicate it until 2103. Last year, however, they found a workaround following discussions with members of Wu-Tang Clan. The album was turned into a non-fungible token, or NFT. For the equivalent of $1, fans can listen to a five-minute sampler of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin. Each sale will speed up the release of the album by 88 seconds. Got a tip for a document you think I should request via FOIA? Do you have details to share about the state of FOIA under the Trump administration? Send me an email: jleopold15@bloomberg.net or jasonleopold@protonmail.com. Or send me a secure message on Signal: @JasonLeopold.666. | 
