By Cedric 'Big Ced' Thornton
July 24, 2025
The album was sold to WTC EndAvs Limited, a company based in Hong Kong, for $ 2.23 million
The Staten Island Collective Wu-Tang Clan took up an album that produced a copy “It was once in Shaolin”, and quickly became a collector's item, and the Ministry of Justice has just announced that the album was sold to WTC Bregens Limited, a company based in Hong Kong, for a reported $ 23 million.
According to Bloomberg, the DOJ unveiled the price for which the WU-Tang clan album was sold and for whom. The purchase of the album was done after the government arrested Martin Shkreli Martin Shkreli and confiscated his assets, which contained “once in Shaolin”. Shkreli bought the 2015 album at an auction for around 2 million dollars.
When the government accused and convicted of him for securities fraud, he was sentenced to seven years in prison and sentenced to pay a fine of 75,000 US dollars, and also had to extend assets of $ 7.4 million. The Feds confiscated the album in 2018 to satisfy the money that SHKRELI was due. The Ministry of Justice sold the album, but never published the price that was previously paid.
After several years of attempt to receive the documents, the US marshal service finally gave a copy of the sales bus and the purchase contract. The document showed that WTC Limited efforts “Once in Shaolin” for $ 2,238,482.30, which went to the US government.
The album is now owned by Pleasrdao, which the 2021 project bought from the government for 4 million US dollars.
In June 2024, the Shkreli company sued and claimed that he streamed the music during a “Wu-Tang-Official hearing party” after his release from prison in May 2022. He informed his followers that he had made copies of the album that “were hidden in safe all over the world”. Artnet reported that Judge Pamela Chen decided before the US district court for the eastern district of New York that Shkreli had to turn all the copies of the rare album in his possession, and he was also forbidden to stream or spread copies of “once in Shaolin”.
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