Douchebag Pharma CEO Martin Shkreli Won't Let You Have No Wu-Tang Either
Punch me.
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Martin Shkreli, the douchebaggiest douchebag in America, who possesses the punchiest face in America (that doesn't belong to Ben Shapiro), has made another douche in his pants. He's not content to buy a drug called Daraprim that helps AIDS and cancer patients and jack up the price by 5000%, just so his company, Turing Pharmaceuticals, can have all kinds of moneys. Now he has to deny the entire world a secret, exclusive Wu-Tang Clan album, presumably because he needs something to masturbate to when he's by himself, since no self-respecting human being would be intimate with him.
Bloomberg has the backstory on what Shkreli just bought for 2 million Amero bucks:
In March 2014, Robert Diggs, better known as RZA, the producer and de facto leader of the Wu-Tang Clan, the iconic rap group, announced that the Clan would create only one copy of its next album, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin , and sell it to the highest bidder. “We’re about to put out a piece of art like nobody else has done in the history of music,” RZA told Forbes . “We’re making a single-sale collector’s item. This is like someone having the scepter of an Egyptian king.”
And Martin Shkreli winned the bidding! Now far be it from us to deny a rich man his sacred right to buy really cool shit the rest of us peons don't get to have. But you'll excuse us if we suggest he's doing this more for "I am a giant dicksnot dildobreath virgin" reasons, than for his love of music.
Granted, Shkreli has had his grubby hand in the music business before, as Stereogum 'splains:
Shkreli was the main investor behind Collect Records, the label run by former Thursday frontman Geoff Rickly, and Rickly had to make the difficult decision to sever all ties with Shkreli, once he learned that Shkreli was a greed-driven sociopath, even though the decision put Rickly’s label in peril.
Bloomberg reports that during negotiations for the record (which was stored in freaking Marrakech while it awaited its new owner, and "comes in a hand-carved box, with a leather-bound book of parchment paper, and a pair of custom speakers worth $55,000"), The Asshole was all worried Wu-Tang Clan wouldn't like him, because that's when the world was finding out he was a price-gouging shitcanoe who would throw fucking AIDS patients in front of a moving train if it made him a dollar:
“I was a little worried that they were going to walk out of the deal,” he says. “But by then we’d closed. The whole kind of thing since then has been just kind of ‘Well, do we want to announce it’s him? Do we not want to announce it’s him?’ I think they were trying to cover their butts a little bit.”
Breaking news, dude: Everybody in the world hates you, because you are the human equivalent of a radioactive smegma waterfall, and you just keep making it worse. For instance, earlier this week, Shkreli made headlines again when he said the only reason he would call backsies on the last few months of his life is to "have raised the price higher" on the AIDS drug.
So pharma douchebro has his special secret Wu-Tang record, which he's free to share with the public if he wants (but probably won't because obvious), or maybe he can charge AIDS patients $750 to listen to it. Originally, the contract stated it couldn't be released to the public for 88 years, but according to Bloomberg, that wasn't part of the final deal. But there is a tiny piece of good news:
In a statement, RZA says that after he learned about Shkreli’s business practices, the group “decided to give a significant portion of the proceeds to charity.”
RZA doesn't say where he sticked the money (an AIDS charity maybe?), but we're sure glad to hear that jizzwhistle's money might do some good for somebody out there.
He does shit like this: shortly after acquiring Daraprim via Turing Pharma, Marty engineered a buyout of moribund Kalobio Pharmaceuticals (it's most recent clinical trials failed, and was in the process of 'winding down' operations) with a group of 'investors' in tranches ranging from 40 to 70 cents a share. Heavily shorted, when Marty announced this deal, the belief that he was setting up KBIO as a publicly-traded shell to absorb privately-held Turing, set off the mother of all short-squeezes, rocketing KBIO to $12 a share--leaving those who couldn't close their short positions on the hook for 20 times their original position (if you shorted at .70, you're now obligated to buy those shares at $12 to close your position--so, if you were sitting on a $7000 short, you're now on the hook for $120,000.). And Marty's long stake--roughly $700,000--rocketed to 12 million. Not content ruining the thousands trapped at 12, Marty's 'group' then announced that its shares were no longer available to short, set off the second squeeze, rocketing the price to $50 a share (this is a company with no pipeline and no assets, mind you) leaving those trapped at 12 on the hook all the way up to 50--so now, if you were trapped from .70, you're now $ 500,000 in the hole, and Marty just pocketed 49 million +. In short, Marty ran the most vicious 'engineered short-squeeze' in biotech history, ruining thousands of small investors, while pocketing 50 million from a stake of less than 1 m.
Where's the bunny?