Ever since pharmaceutical executive Martin Shkreli was arrested by the FBI for securities fraud Thursday morning, a big question has been whether the feds seized the secret Wu-Tang Clan album he bought earlier this month.
The chorus of questions swelled so high that the FBI’s New York office felt it needed to say something. The agency tweeted that it did not get a seizure warrant as part of the arrest of the 32-year-old, “which means we didn’t seize the Wu-Tang Clan album.”
#Breaking no seizure warrant at the arrest of Martin Shkreli today, which means we didn’t seize the Wu-Tang Clan album.
— FBI New York (@NewYorkFBI) December 17, 2015
That doesn’t mean it can’t be seized later along with other assets, so the saga could continue.
The Wu-Tang Clan, a famed hip hop group that has been around for two decades, decided to release a single copy of its latest album called “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin.” The copy would be auctioned off and the owner could decide to do whatever he or she wanted with it.
Shkreli reportedly paid $2 million for the album last week, an action that infuriated members of Congress who were already upset with Shkreli’s 5,000 percent price hike of a decades-old generic drug.
The executive hasn’t said specifically what he plans to do with the album, but has said on one of his several Twitter screeds that “within 10 years, more than half of all rap/hip-hop music will be made exclusively for me.”
Shkreli became a controversial figure after his company Turing Pharmaceuticals raised the price of anti-parasite drug Daraprim from $13.50 a pill to $750 in September. Shkreli has been adamant that he didn’t do anything wrong, saying that patients still have access to the drug and that if he could go back he would have raised the price higher.
The move angered members of Congress who have been arguing for stricter controls on drug prices.
During a Senate hearing last week on high prices, Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., called Shkreli “Mr Wu-Tang,” blasting the CEO for the extravagant purchase.
