A new report has revealed that potential jurors for former pharmaceutical executive Martin Shkreli's trial were dismissed from the courtroom over claims Shkreli made about the Wu-Tang Clan.
According to an article in Elle magazine on (Dec. 20), during the very first day of Shkreli's trial in June of 2017, potential jurors were dismissed for claiming that he was "the face of corporate greed" and that "he disrespected the Wu-Tang Clan."
If you recall, Shkreli, who is currently serving time in prison on federal charges of securities fraud, won Wu-Tang Clan's Once Upon a Time in Shaolin album in an auction and sold it on via Paddle8 on November 24, 2015 for $2 million.
The album was the veteran rap group's seventh effort, but it was also limited to a single copy. The copy was the one sold to Shkreli and is the Wu-Tang Clan's most expensive album sold to date. Within the legal agreement on the sale of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, it was said that the album could not be commercially exploited until 2103, but it could be played casually during parties.
In 2016, Shkreli claimed that he would drop the limited and unreleased Wu-Tang album if Donald Trump won the presidential election. He also said he would break the album if Hillary Clinton won the election. Instead, he released the intro and one track from the LP. Shkreli has also beefed with members of the Staten Island, N.Y. rap crew, threatening to smack Ghostface Killah in the face at one point.
Three years after Shkreli won the auction, in 2018, he was convicted of securities fraud after getting the manufacturing license for the drug Daraprim and hiking the price from $13.50 to $750 per pill. As a result of his conviction, the federal court seized Shkreli's assets, which included the Wu-Tang Clan album and Lil Wayne's Tha Carter V album.
Shkreli was sentenced to seven years in prison and up to $7.4 million in fines.
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