There is only one copy of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, the newest Wu-Tang album, and it’s owned by Martin Shkreli, the “pharma-bro” best known for hiking up the price of a HIV drug by 5000 percent who was arrested on Thursday for securities fraud. 
 
 The idea behind Once Upon a Time in Shaolin is a callback to the “Renaissance age,” treating music as “a commissioned commodity” similar to a painting or a sculpture being sold to a private collector. 
 
 Shkreli owns the only copy, which he purchased for “a record figure ‘in the millions,’” and for the next 88 years, the album will not be distributed “commercially.” 
 
 So what happens to Once Upon a Time in Shaolin now that Shkreli’s in cuffs? Motherboard reporter Kaleigh Rogers asked US Attorney Robert Capers in a press conference whether the FBI had seized the Wu-Tang album. “I wondered how long it was going to take to get to that,” Capers laughed. “I can’t comment on that. As I said, this investigation centers on his conduct as manager of these funds. We’re not aware of where he got the funds that he raised for the Wu-Tang album.” 
 
 OK, so the FBI haven’t seized the album. Yet. 
 
 But Shkreli owns the album, and the FBI now has Shkreli. Take it back one more layer, and the American taxpayer owns the FBI. So can the American public somehow get its hands on that album? 
 
 Speculation is already running rampant as to how the Wu-Tang album will be freed. At least one Freedom of Information Act request for the entirety of the album (on compact disc, vinyl, mp3, or AAC) has been made: 
 
 Just FOIA'd the FBI to try to get the Wu-Tang Clan album from Martin #Shkreli - Let's party! pic.twitter.com/Dd0nxU1DwH 
 
 — Andrew Wiseman (@wisemana) December 17, 2015 
 
 So what’s actually possible? Let’s run through the wildest possibilities, together. 
 
 1) FOIA the Wu-Tang Clan Album 
 
 In the court of public opinion, the hoarding of the Wu-Tang Clan album is at least Exhibit C regarding Shkreli’s crimes against humanity. But in the real actual case against him, the album isn’t implicated at all. So it’s likely not part of the public record at all, and not subject to the Freedom of Information Act. 
 
 But let’s get crazy for a little bit, and dream up a world in which the FBI decides that Once Upon a Time in Shaolin is key evidence, and ends up seizing the album. 
 
 However, just because they have the album, it doesn’t mean it can be FOIA'ed. In this hypothetical, the album is evidence in an ongoing case. The FBI will almost certainly cite exemption b(7) and refuse to release it, because you cannot really FOIA the FBI for anything anyways. 
 
 If it gets presented at trial, it might become part of the public record (kind of????), but everyone will have to wait until then. 
 
 2) Your Honor, Government Exhibit 36: the New Wu-Tang Clan Album 
 
 So let’s pretend that federal prosecutors get to brandish the new Wu-Tang album around in court, in its one-of-a-kind silver-and-nickel-plated box, alongside the handmade 174-page leather-bound liner notes. But it’s not like the actual contents of the box are going to be a matter of public record—they won’t be playing the album in court, unless Once Upon a Time in Shaolin contains secret messages about securities law and financial mismanagement. 
 
 …You know, since we’ve already gotten this far in our hypothetical, we don’t have to rule it out. So, okay, let’s pretend the entirety of the album is now a matter of public record. 
 
 But just because something is a matter of public record doesn’t mean that it’s part of the public domain. (Think, why would anyone ever bring a copyright lawsuit if your song would end up in the public domain because you played it in court?) Some people might be able to request copies of the album through the court, but they wouldn’t be able to publish them. See, for example, the time that MuckRock FOIA'ed the backing tracks to Beyonce’s Inauguration performance, and then couldn’t publish the answer to their request because the tracks it received were all still under copyright. 
 
 3) Whose Copyright Anyways? 
 
 The album’s copyright still belongs to its creators (presumably, the Wu-Tang Clan), although it will transfer to the owner of the physical album (Martin Shkreli) in 88 years. Shkreli owns the only copy in the world, and under the terms of the sale, could release the music for free if he wanted. The only restriction is that he can’t make the music “commercially” available. 
 
 I haven’t seen the contract (the real contract, not the joke contract floating around on Twitter), but it seems likely that if someone else put the new Wu-Tang album online, that would be illegal, and the Wu-Tang Clan could still sue over it. But come on, surely this outcome would be the best of all possible worlds? The Wu-Tang gets paid, Shkreli is in jail, and the world gets free music? 
 
 4) Asset Forfeiture 
 
 If Shkreli is convicted, the direct proceeds of his crimes will now belong to the government. This is what is known as criminal asset forfeiture. (The government has not sought civil asset forfeiture here, which is a slightly different form of seizure that does not require convicting a person of a crime.) 
 
 The United States has requested the forfeiture of “any property, real or personal, which constitutes or is derived from proceeds traceable” to the crimes in the indictment against Martin Shkreli. But when the US attorney said he did not know where the funds for the purchase of the Wu-Tang album came from, he was implying that the album would not be the subject of criminal asset forfeiture. 
 
 However, in our wild and improbable hypothetical, the album is implicated in the case and ends up being seized. If Shkreli is convicted, then the album might then become the subject of criminal forfeiture. The multi-million-dollar work of art would then end up on GSA Auctions, alongside dilapidated drug-running Chevrolets and extremely questionable lab equipment. 
 
 "I don’t think the FBI will start a Wu-Tang imprint." 
 
 
 
 The weird thing is that it’s not clear what happens to the contract that Shkreli signed when he bought the album. Presumably, the contract allowed him to transfer his limited distribution rights if he ever sold the physical record to another person. But what happens if the record gets seized by the federal government as part of a criminal forfeiture? 
 
 Let’s say the government seizes the record, sells it on GSA Auctions, and then I buy it and upload the whole thing onto the internet. If Shkreli had uploaded the whole album for free, Wu-Tang couldn’t sue him—as per the terms of the contract. But if I do it, there’s no contract preventing Wu-Tang from suing me, even though I’m now the rightful owner of the One True New Wu-Tang Album. 
 
 That is, unless the government manages to successfully seize Shkreli’s intellectual property rights in the Wu-Tang album. 
 
 Seizing the actual rights to the album would certainly be an odd move, but not unprecedented. In May, the federal government tried to seize the trademarks of the Mongol Nations motorcycle club after securing criminal convictions against many of its members, and then bringing a RICO indictment against the club itself. They ultimately failed—but not because trademark seizure isn’t possible. 
 
 Still, the Mongol Nations forfeiture was likely targeted at suppressing future use of the trademark, rather than setting up a government-owned Mongol Nations swag shop. “I don’t think the FBI will start a Wu-Tang imprint,” said Parker Higgins, copyright activist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. 
 
 5) Forced Sale After Conviction 
 
 Even if the album never becomes part of the case, as David Graham points out at the Atlantic, if the government convicts Shkreli and gets a money judgment against him, he might be cash-strapped enough to need to sell the album. So it would go up for auction anyways—just at a slightly classier joint than the auction service that the government uses. 
 
 Let’s be honest, if the album ever ends up on sale again—whether at Sotheby’s or on GSA Auctions—it won’t get bought by the likes of you or me. It’ll get snapped up by the next pharma-bro of the week, and again, we wouldn’t get to hear any of it for 88 years. ||||| There is a fairly standard trajectory for a lot of securities frauds. A brash youngster comes along and thinks he will be good at trading. He raises money from people who also think he will be good at trading. Maybe he lies to them a bit -- about how good he already is at trading, or about how much money he's already raised -- or maybe, at this stage, everything is completely on the up and up. In any case, he gets the money and starts trading. Then he starts losing. This is bad. It's bad for his bottom line, of course -- he's getting paid to invest his investors' money well, not badly -- but more importantly, it is bad for his self-conception. In his own mind, he is a winner; he is supposed to be good at trading. It is unbearable to him that he isn't. 
 
 So he starts lying, telling investors that everything is great and he's making money for them hand over fist. This is a hard lie to sustain, since eventually the investors will want their money back, and he's promising them more and more of it. There are only two real ways to sustain the lie. One is to Ponzi it up, and keep raising new money from investors to pay out the old ones. In the right environment, and with the right sales pitch, this can work really well for a really long time, but since the supply of suckers is finite, it can only ever end in prison or the grave. 
 
 The other way to sustain the lie -- and the only possible permanent solution -- is to gamble on redemption. If you've lost half of your investors' money, but you've told them that you've doubled it, then you need to quadruple the money you have left. So you take riskier and riskier bets, hoping that one will eventually pay off and make up for all of the earlier losses. This basically never works! But it could work. And if it does, your investors will be happy, you will be rich, and no one will ever be the wiser. 
 
 Of course, these methods aren't mutually exclusive, and you can Ponzi along for a bit while looking for the big score that will return you to legitimacy. 
 
 Here are the criminal indictment and Securities and Exchange Commission complaint against Martin Shkreli, who was arrested today not for jacking up prices for lifesaving drugs, not for buying the only copy of a Wu-Tang Clan album and not listening to it, not for being generally vile on Twitter and in interviews, but just for garden-variety securities fraud. Here's how the indictment describes the early going at Shkreli's second hedge fund, MSMB Capital : 
 
 SHKRELI told Investor 1 that MSMB Capital had $35 million in assets under management and that the fund's independent auditor and administrator were Rothstein, Kass & Company, P.C. ("Rothstein Kass") and NAV Consulting Inc. ("NAV Consulting"), respectively. At the time of this representation, MSMB Capital did not have an independent auditor or administrator, and SHKRELI had lost through trading the approximately $700,000 that had been invested by the four Capital Limited Partners. In fact, as of November 30, 2010, the value of assets in MSMB Capital's bank and brokerage accounts totaled approximately $700. 
 
 So he was down 99.9 percent. Here I will humbly offer you a very small bit of investing advice: It is hard to come back from being down 99.9 percent. Just making a 99.9 percent return won't do it; if you lose 99.9 percent, you have to make returns of 99,900 percent on the money you've got left just to get back to breaking even. Shkreli didn't want to get back to breaking even. Here's how he allegedly wound up MSMB Capital in September 2012: 
 
 SHKRELI sent an email (the "Liquidation Email") to the Capital Limited Partners, including Investor 2, and stated, in part: "I have decided to wind down our hedge fund partnerships with a goal of completing the liquidation of the funds by November or December 1st, 2012.... Original MSMB investors (2009) have just about doubled their money net of fees....investors will have their limited partnership interests redeemed by the fund for cash. Alternatively, investors may ask for a redemption of Retrophin shares, or a combination of Retrophin shares and cash." 
 
 That is, investors were up 100 percent from their original investments, or I guess up almost 200,000 percent from the November 2010 trough. That is a mind-bogglingly good performance! It was also, allegedly, completely fake. Of course it was. If you're down 99.9 percent, it's hard to come back, but it's reeeeeeally easy to lose that last 0.1 percent. Shkreli, says the indictment, did : 
 
 On or about September 5, 2012, the defendant MARTIN SHKRELI, Co-Conspirator 1 and MSMB Capital entered into a settlement agreement with Merrill Lynch to resolve a Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Inc. ("FINRA") arbitration proceeding in connection with the OREX trading losses of approximately $7 million. Pursuant to the settlement with Merrill Lynch, SHKRELI, Co-Conspirator 1 and MSMB Capital agreed to pay Merrill Lynch a total of $1,350,000 on or before December 15, 2012. Notably, in the settlement agreement, SHKRELI and Co-Conspirator 1 admitted that MSMB Capital had $0 in assets. 
 
 The OREX losses had to do with a naked short sale that MSMB Capital allegedly did with respect to Orexigen Therapeutics. Anyway the indictment dryly notes that the liquidation e-mail, telling investors that they'd doubled their money, came "a mere five days after the defendant MARTIN SHKRELI and Co-Conspirator 1 admitted that MSMB Capital had no assets." In total, eight investors put a total of about $3 million into MSMB Capital, and it ended up worthless. 
 
 Or did it? In 2011, even before shutting MSMB Capital, Shkreli started a third hedge fund, this one called MSMB Healthcare, and allegedly raised $5 million through a series of lies to 13 investors. He also started a new drug company called Retrophin, which he controlled; MSMB Healthcare invested in Retrophin. He took Retrophin public (with Nasdaq ticker symbol RTRX) through a reverse merger with a shell company in late 2012. Then, the allegations go, he looted Retrophin to pay off his disgruntled MSMB Capital and MSMB Healthcare investors. So for instance Shkreli allegedly "engaged in a scheme to fabricate an investment by MSMB Capital in Retrophin LLC and engineered a series of fraudulent transactions that were backdated to the summer of 2012 to create the appearance of an investment by MSMB Capital"; in fact, MSMB Capital had (allegedly) lost all its money before Retrophin was even started. He "improperly reclassified a $900,000 equity investment by MSMB Healthcare in Retrophin LLC as an interest-bearing loan through the use of a backdated promissory note," had Retrophin pay off the "loan" to MSMB Healthcare, and then used that money to pay back Merrill Lynch for the MSMB Capital OREX losses. 
 
 Most notably, though, he just had Retrophin write checks to MSMB Capital and MSMB Healthcare investors to settle their claims against MSMB/Shkreli, even though Retrophin was at that point a public company with outside shareholders, and it is generally frowned upon for public company executives to have their companies pay off their personal debts. These checks came in two forms, each of which had the absolute minimum of superficial legal plausibility. First, Shkreli allegedly "caused Retrophin to pay more than $3.4 million in cash and RTRX stock to settle claims with the seven Capital Limited Partners and Healthcare Limited Partners even though Retrophin was not responsible for those claims." When Retrophin's auditor noticed, Shkreli and Retrophin's outside lawyer, Evan Greebel (who was also indicted today ), allegedly came up with this idea: 
 
 When SHKRELI then admitted that "there were serious faults with the [settlement] agreements including lack of board approval" and that redoing the settlement agreements may be a good idea, GREEBEL responded: "That will open up some very big issues. The current thinking is let rtrx pay, get a note from the fund[,] and if the fund cant [sic] fulfill the note[,] rtrx will write it off as a bad debt. It would be easier than the road you are referring to. Also, [the auditor] would get very spooked with what you are talking about (which could also spook your investors and counter parties)." In response, SHKRELI stated, "[o]n current thinking: that works for me." 
 
 That is: Retrophin paid the MSMB funds' investors on behalf of the funds, and in exchange took promissory notes from the funds for the amount that Retrophin paid. This might have been a fair exchange, except that the funds had no money, so the notes were worthless. 
 
 Next, Shkreli "caused Retrophin to pay more than $7.6 million in cash and RTRX stock through sham consulting agreements to settle claims with Capital Limited Partners and Healthcare Limited Partners even though Retrophin was not responsible for those claims." Again, there are awkward e-mails, but the investors allegedly entered into agreements to consult on things like "strategic and corporate governance matters" or "cluster headache drug development," got paid in cash or stock, and -- the government implies -- never did any actual consulting. You are not supposed to do this. Shkreli was named "Worst Biotech CEO of 2014" by TheStreet, and Retrophin fired and sued him over the sham consulting stuff. 
 
 But never mind that. Just do the math. Shkreli raised $3 million for MSMB Capital and $5 million for MSMB Healthcare. He allegedly returned $3.4 million to investors from the settlement agreements, and $7.6 million from the consulting agreements. So his MSMB investors, in aggregate, put in $8 million and got back $11 million. That isn't exactly doubling their money, but it is a profit, which is pretty amazing when you remember that at least some of them were down 99.9 percent at one point. Obviously, prosecutors and the SEC and Retrophin all allege that Shkreli stole that $11 million from Retrophin, which is not at all a nice thing to do. But Retrophin shareholders, over all, are up too. Shkreli started it from scratch; it now has a market capitalization of over $750 million. Here's its stock price since going public: 
 
 It's had its ups and downs, of course, and a lot of its gains have come since Shkreli left in September 2014. But it was then, and is now, well up from where it started, and it seems to be a real company with actual revenue, totally independent of whatever original sin occurred at its founding. 
 
 Shkreli's other business accomplishments are a mixed bag, but all in all pretty impressive for a guy who started off by losing all of his investors' money at least twice. He has a real talent for short selling : "One ranking, by short selling data firm Activist Shorts, puts the performance of his published bearish calls above those of Citron Research, Kase Capital Management’s Whitney Tilson, Greenlight Capital and Jim Chanos’s Kynikos Associates LP," Bloomberg reported yesterday. Turing Pharmaceuticals, his private drug company that has been in the news so much recently, at least ... seems to throw expensive parties? His more recent investment, KaloBios, isn't going that great: It closed yesterday well above where it was when Shkreli announced his position, but was halted today and is looking perilous. 
 
 Still, I can't shake my sense of amazement that Shkreli seems to have gambled on redemption and won. If you believe the allegations in today's indictment, he lost (or stole) all of his investors' money, then lied to them to string them along, Ponzied it up by raising new money to keep them happy, and then finally found an investment that allowed him to pay off his earlier investors, with profits all around. He wasn't caught because his scheme, like most such schemes, eventually crashed under its own weight. His scheme worked! He was caught, as far as I can tell, for being so abrasive about everything. How could shareholders not complain; how could prosecutors not go after him? Still, it is quite an accomplishment. If he is a securities fraudster, he should be an inspiration to securities fraudsters everywhere. 
 
 An Appendix About That Wu-Tang Album 
 
 Martin Shkreli owns the only copy of the Wu-Tang Clan's latest album, "Once Upon a Time in Shaolin." He apparently paid $2 million for it. He has not listened to it. His plan for it is unspeakable, or rather it is speakable -- he has spoken it -- but it is not quotable here. Shkreli and the Wu-Tang Clan "spent months finalizing contracts and devising new legal protections for a distinctive work whose value depends on its singularity." One provision that was not included in those contracts, but that came into existence spontaneously through its own perfection, like God in the ontological proof, was this clause: 
 
 The buying party also agrees that, at any time during the stipulated 88 year period, the seller may legally plan and attempt to execute one (1) heist or caper to steal back Once Upon A Time In Shaolin, which, if successful, would return all ownership rights to the seller. Said heist or caper can only be undertaken by currently active members of the Wu-Tang Clan and/or actor Bill Murray, with no legal repercussions. 
 
 Again, this is fake, but so utterly lovely that it became real in the hearts and minds of people around the world, including both RZA and Shkreli himself. And now Shkreli has been indicted by the intriguingly named (and only recently confirmed) U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, Robert L. Capers. Do you see where I am going with this? 
 
 Assuming that the whole indictment is not part of a Wes Anderson movie from a screenplay by Pynchon, what will happen to the album? The indictment seeks criminal forfeiture "of any property, real or personal, which constitutes or is derived from proceeds traceable to any such offenses," so perhaps it will end up forfeited to the government. (Don't count on it, say experts, but we have sailed way past the outer limits of expertise here.) If it does ... then what? The government regularly auctions seized property to raise cash, so perhaps some other rich private buyer will end up owning the album. Perhaps it is cursed and brings an indictment for securities fraud to whoever possesses it. But nothing requires the government to auction it; the Justice Department could release the album for free so that we can all enjoy this part of our cultural patrimony. Or for all I know it could just hand it over to Joe Biden. 
 
 Also someone has FOIAed the album, which won't work -- it hasn't been forfeited yet, for one thing -- but is still pretty funny. 
 
 This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners. 
 
 To contact the author of this story: 
 
 Matt Levine at mlevine51@bloomberg.net 
 
 To contact the editor responsible for this story: 
 
 Zara Kessler at zkessler@bloomberg.net ||||| Turing Pharmaceutical CEO and Most Hated Man on the Internet Martin Shkreli was arrested for securities fraud Thursday morning and Twitter couldn't be happier: 
 
 On the fourth day of Christmas my true love gave to me a warrant for Martin Shkreli. 
 
 Responding to the rumor that the contract for the album includes that allows the Wu-Tang Clan to steal the album back, but only if they do so heist-movie style, and with Bill Murray, some implored the Clan to jump into action: ||||| Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images 
 
 Martin Shkreli, the most famous price gouger in the world of pharmaceuticals, was arrested Thursday on charges of securities fraud. While delightful to Shkreli’s many, many critics, the indictment had nothing to do with his widely despised business model of buying up old, essential drugs and hiking their prices (nor did it have anything to do with his purchase of a certain Wu-Tang Clan album). Instead, as federal prosecutors explained Thursday, Shkreli stands accused of having more or less run a Ponzi scheme during his early adventures in the worlds of hedge funds and, eventually, pharma. 
 
 Jordan Weissmann Jordan Weissmann is Slate’s senior business and economics correspondent. 
 
 And the details, as alleged by the feds, make for a pretty darkly hilarious tale. Despite his early reputation as a “boy genius,” Shkreli seems to have started off as little more than an adept liar and inept money manager who haphazardly tried to cover his tracks after losing his investors’ cash in some disastrous trades. He may have won the title of most despised man on the Internet in 2015. But before that, he was allegedly just a small-time crook. By Wall Street standards, anyway. 
 
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 Prelude 
 
 After getting his start on Wall Street as a teenage intern at CNBC host Jim Cramer’s old hedge fund, Cramer, Berkowitz & Co., Shkreli eventually went on to start his own shop, Elea Capital Management, in 2006.* Unfortunately, things soured quickly. The next year, Lehman Brothers (remember them?) sued Shkreli and his fund for failing to cover a failed bet that the stock market would drop. A court eventually hit Shkreli with a $2.3 million judgment. 
 
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 Chapter 1: Shkreli Lies His Way Into Starting a Second Hedge Fund 
 
 That brings us to the time period covered by the indictment. In 2009, Shkreli founded another hedge fund, MSMB Capital Management. According to the Justice Department, he started courting potential investors by, well, lying to them. 
 
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 Some of the lies were boring, but important. Shkreli told would-be investors that the fund had enough liquid assets—cash, basically, and things that could be quickly turned into cash—that they’d be able to withdraw their money whenever necessary (it did not). Shkreli also said the fund had an independent auditor making sure everything was on the up and up (it did not). Some of the lies were through omission. For instance, Shkreli neglected to mention “that he had lost all the money he managed in Elea Capital” (oops). And some of the lies, according to the feds, were extravagant fabrications. In December 2010, he told one potential investor that MSMB had $35 million under management. In fact, the Justice Department says the fund only had $700 to its name. No, that figure is not missing zeros. Shkreli had already lost almost all of the initial $700,000 he raised. 
 
 No matter. A week later, the investor wired over $1 million. (Then soon topped it off with another $250,000.) All told, about eight investors handed $3 million to Shkreli for care. 
 
 By February 2011, events had turned dire for Shkreli and MSMB Capital. That month, the fund shorted millions of shares of a biotechnology stock—wagering that its price would drop. It didn’t, and Shkreli was ultimately left owing his bankers at Merrill Lynch $7 million. (Seemingly just like in the Lehman case, he’d failed to cover his trade.) Not even counting that disaster, other trading losses had knocked the fund’s assets from $1.12 million down to $58,000. That month, the Justice Department says, MSMB Capital stopped trading. For all intents and purposes, it was defunct. 
 
 Not that Shkreli was going to tell his investors. For months, he continued sending out fake performance updates assuring clients he was making them money, the indictment alleges. (Unmentioned in those letters: According to the Justice Department, Shkreli had withdrawn and spent $200,000 he wasn’t entitled to, treating the fund like a personal piggy bank.) 
 
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 Chapter 2: Shkreli Doubles Down 
 
 To keep himself in business, Shkreli doubled down on the fake-it-till-you-make-it approach. The same February as the ill-fated short-trade imploded, he opened a second hedge fund, MSMB Healthcare, and once again proceeded to court investors by (allegedly) lying through his teeth about how much money he had under management while omitting any word about his miserable track record. Eventually, he raised $5 million from 13 marks. 
 
 Shkreli quickly took some of those millions and plowed them into a new project, Retrophin. The company would eventually become successful, if somewhat notorious. Today, it’s known as the firm where Shkreli first started buying up old drugs—namely, a kidney medication called Thiola—and hiking the price. But it also played a starring role in Shkreli’s fly-by-the-seat-of-the-pants Ponzi-scheming. 
 
 Chapter 3: Shkreli Gets Caught 
 
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 First, there was the Merrill Lynch issue to take care of. 
 
 In 2012, the company took Shkreli to arbitration over his trade-gone-wrong and eventually won a $1.3 million settlement. At the time, MSMB Capital, which owed the debt, had nothing. Essentially, he took money his second hedge fund had invested in Retrophin and channeled it back using some fake, backdated paperwork so he could pay off Merrill, the indictment says. 
 
 Later, there was a little matter with the federal government to to deal with. 
 
 In November 2012, Shkreli had decided to officially put his hedge funds to rest, and sent a letter to investors claiming, among other things, that his original investors “have just about doubled their money net of fees.” Around the same time, Shkreli told the Securities and Exchange Commission, which had been looking into his dealings, that MSMB Capital, his first hedge fund, was being liquidated with $2.6 million under management (in fact, it had nothing). How could he cover his tracks? With the help of his lawyer, Evan Greebel (also indicted Thursday), he allegedly created paperwork showing the fund had a stake in Retrophin, which it had in fact never invested in. Problem solved. 
 
 Finally, there were Shkreli’s old hedge-fund investors, who having (allegedly) been lied to for years wanted their money. At first, Shkreli tried to take a straightforward approach, paying them off through a series of “settlements” with Retrophin. The problem was that, by this point, Shkreli had managed to take his company public. When its external auditor noticed the settlements, he began asking questions. So then, partly on Greebel’s suggestion, the Justice Department says Shkreli took a different track and began paying his former investors off through a series of sham “consulting” contracts, totaling more than $7 million. 
 
 Eventually, Retrophin’s board wised up. It booted Shkreli as CEO and filed a $65 million lawsuit against him over the settlements and contracts. Shkreli, for his part, called the accusations “preposterous.” But apparently the Department of Justice thought otherwise. ||||| Best FOIA ever: Asking FBI to get that coveted Wu-Tang Clan LP from Martin Shkreli 
 
 Andrew Wiseman wins the day with this hilarious Freedom of Information Act Request. 
 
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 It'd be amazing if this crazy thing ended up online, in torrentable form: the Wu-Tang Clan’s double-album “The Wu – Once Upon A Time In Shaolin,” recorded in secret over the past few years and recently purchased by the recently arrested pharma douchebag Martin Shkreli. 
 
 UPDATE: Alas, it wasn't meant to be. FBI tweets “no seizure warrant” for arrest. 
 
 #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 
 
 Just FOIA'd the FBI to try to get the Wu-Tang Clan album from Martin #Shkreli - Let's party! pic.twitter.com/Dd0nxU1DwH — Andrew Wiseman (@wisemana) December 17, 2015 
 
 If I do get the album, I'll have a big party at my house, release it for free and ask people to donate to charities like @TheMissingMaps — Andrew Wiseman (@wisemana) December 17, 2015 
 
 report this ad ||||| A well-pedigreed corporate lawyer with extensive experience in high-stakes mergers and acquisitions played a critical role in helping pharmaceutical executive Martin Shkreli orchestrate a series of allegedly fraudulent transactions, according to a federal indictment unsealed on Thursday. 
 
 Evan L. Greebel, most recently a New York partner at the white-shoe law firm Kaye Scholer LLP, was charged with one count of wire fraud, a crime that carries a maximum 20-year prison sentence. Mr. Shkreli has been arrested on securities and... ||||| These crawls are part of an effort to archive pages as they are created and archive the pages that they refer to. That way, as the pages that are referenced are changed or taken from the web, a link to the version that was live when the page was written will be preserved.Then the Internet Archive hopes that references to these archived pages will be put in place of a link that would be otherwise be broken, or a companion link to allow people to see what was originally intended by a page's authors.The goal is to fix all broken links on the web . Crawls of supported "No More 404" sites. ||||| NEW YORK (AP) — A boyish-looking entrepreneur who became the new face of corporate greed when he jacked up the price of a lifesaving drug fiftyfold was led away in handcuffs by the FBI on unrelated fraud charges Thursday in a scene that left more than a few Americans positively gleeful. 
 
 Martin Shkreli, the former hedge fund manager under fire for buying a pharmaceutical company and ratcheting up the price of a life-saving drug, sits in an awaiting car after being taken into custody following... (Associated Press) 
 
 Officials stand next to a poster board detailing Martin Shkreli's scheme during a news conference in New York, Thursday, Dec. 17, 2015. Shkreli, the former hedge fund manager vilified in nearly every... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this Oct. 1, 2015 file photo, AIDS activists pour cat litter on an image of Turing Pharmaceuticals CEO Martin Shkreli in a makeshift cat litter pan during a protest highlighting pharmaceutical drug... (Associated Press) 
 
 Martin Shkreli leaves the courthouse after his arraignment in New York, Thursday, Dec. 17, 2015. Shkreli, the former hedge fund manager vilified in nearly every corner of America for buying a pharmaceutical... (Associated Press) 
 
 Martin Shkreli, the former hedge fund manager under fire for buying a pharmaceutical company and ratcheting up the price of a life-saving drug, is belted into an awaiting car after being taken into custody... (Associated Press) 
 
 Martin Shkreli, center, leaves the courthouse after his arraignment in New York, Thursday, Dec. 17, 2015. Shkreli, the former hedge fund manager vilified in nearly every corner of America for buying a... (Associated Press) 
 
 Martin Shkreli, the former hedge fund manager under fire for buying a pharmaceutical company and ratcheting up the price of a life-saving drug, is escorted by law enforcement agents in New York Thursday,... (Associated Press) 
 
 In this courtroom sketch, entrepreneur and former hedge fund manager Martin Shkreli, second from left, appears in court for his arraignment on fraud charges, Thursday, Dec. 17, 2015, in New York. Prosecutors... (Associated Press) 
 
 U.S. Attorney Robert Capers walks past a poster detailing Martin Shkreli's scheme before speaking to reporters during a news conference in New York, Thursday, Dec. 17, 2015. Shkreli, the former hedge... (Associated Press) 
 
 Martin Shkreli, a 32-year-old former hedge fund manager and relentless self-promoter who has called himself "the world's most eligible bachelor" on Twitter, was arrested in a gray hoodie and taken into federal court in Brooklyn, where he pleaded not guilty. He was released on $5 million bail. 
 
 If convicted, he could get up to 20 years in prison. He left court without speaking to reporters. His attorneys had no immediate comment. 
 
 Hours later, Shkreli tweeted: "Glad to be home. Thanks for the support." 
 
 Online, many people took delight in his arrest, calling him a greedy, arrogant "punk" who gave capitalism a bad name and got what was coming to him. Some cracked jokes about lawyers jacking up their hourly fees 5,000 percent to defend him in his hour of need. 
 
 Prosecutors said that between 2009 and 2014, Shkreli lost some of his hedge fund investors' money through bad trades, then looted Retrophin, a pharmaceutical company where he was CEO, for $11 million to pay back his disgruntled clients. 
 
 Shkreli "engaged in multiple schemes to ensnare investors through a web of lies and deceit," U.S. Attorney Robert Capers said in a statement. 
 
 Shkreli was charged with securities fraud and conspiracy. A second defendant, lawyer Evan Greebel, of Scarsdale, New York, was charged with conspiracy and also pleaded not guilty. 
 
 A spokesman for Shkreli released a statement saying he denies the charges and "expects to be fully vindicated." 
 
 "It is no coincidence that these charges, the result of investigations which have been languishing for considerable time, have been filed at the same time of Shkreli's high-profile, controversial and yet unrelated activities," said spokesman Craig Stevens. 
 
 In September, Shkreli was widely vilified after a drug company he founded, Turing Pharmaceuticals, spent $55 million for the U.S. rights to sell a medicine called Daraprim and promptly raised the price from $13.50 to $750 per pill. 
 
 The 62-year-old drug is the only approved treatment for toxoplasmosis, a rare parasitic disease that mainly strikes pregnant women, cancer patients and AIDS patients. 
 
 The move sparked outrage on the presidential campaign trail and helped prompt a Capitol Hill hearing on drug prices. Headlines called the Brooklyn-born Shkreli such thing as "America's most hated man," the "drug industry's villain" and "biotech's bad boy" — and those were just some of the more printable names. 
 
 Hillary Clinton called it price-gouging and said the company's behavior was "outrageous." Donald Trump called Shkreli "a spoiled brat." Bernie Sanders returned a donation from Shkreli. 
 
 Prosecutors said the investigation that led to Shkreli's arrest dated back to last year, before the furor over the drug-price increase. 
 
 Shkreli defended the increase by saying that insurance and other programs would enable patients to get the drug and that the profits would help fund research into new treatments. 
 
 But he also made an unapologetic business-is-business argument for the price jump. In fact, he recently said he probably should have raised it more. 
 
 "No one wants to say it, no one's proud of it, but this is a capitalist society, a capitalist system and capitalist rules," he said in an interview at the Forbes Healthcare Summit this month. "And my investors expect me to maximize profits, not to minimize them or go half or go 70 percent but to go to 100 percent of the profit curve." 
 
 Amid the uproar, Shkreli said Turing would cut the price of Daraprim. Last month, however, Turing reneged. Instead, the company is reducing what it charges hospitals for Daraprim by as much as 50 percent. 
 
 While most patients' copayments will be $10 or less a month, insurance companies will be stuck with the bulk of the tab, potentially driving up future treatment and insurance costs. 
 
 On Thursday, Robert Weissman, president of the watchdog group Public Citizen, said Shkreli got "a deserved comeuppance." 
 
 "Al Capone was brought down for tax evasion, but he committed many worse crimes," Weissman said. "So if Shkreli's arrested for securities violations, it's a comparable justice." 
 
 Shkreli is known as a prolific user of Twitter and often livestreams his work day over the Internet, inviting people to chat with him at his desk. He refers to those who follow him online as his "fans." 
 
 Recently it emerged that he bought the only copy of a Wu-Tang Clan album titled "Once Upon a Time in Shaolin," which the hip-hop group sold on the condition that it not be released publicly. He said he paid $2 million. 
 
 The FBI's New York office said on Twitter that agents did not seize Shkreli's album. Said Capers, the chief federal prosecutor: "We're not aware of how he raised the funds to buy the Wu-Tang album." 
 
 Last month, Shkreli was named chairman and CEO of KaloBios Pharmaceuticals after buying a majority stake in the struggling cancer drug developer. After his arrest, its stock fell by more than half Thursday before trading in the company was suspended. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Associated Press writers Larry Neumeister and Jennifer Peltz in New York and Linda A. Johnson in Trenton, New Jersey, contributed to this report.
– Infamous pharma CEO Martin Shkreli is out on $5 million bail after being arrested Thursday on charges of securities fraud, reports the AP, but the 32-year-old is looking at 20 years if he's convicted. (Still, he's "glad to be home.") Some related reading: An innovative music fan filed what Boing Boing calls "the best FOIA ever" over the $2 million Wu-Tang Clan album that Shkreli famously bought. The fan was hoping that the FBI had seized the never-heard album during the arrest, and that he could then make it public through his freedom-of-information request. Sadly, it turns out the FBI didn't seize it. But maybe there's still hope for the album? Vice floats some possibilities. As for the charges Shkreli faces, they don't involve his price-hiking strategies; he's essentially accused of running a "[Ponzi] scheme during his early adventures in the worlds of hedge funds and, eventually, pharma," according to this Slate explainer. His alleged partner in crime, lawyer Evan Greebel, helped the Winklevoss twins start an exchange fund for Bitcoin, notes the Wall Street Journal. Shkreli seems to have been "surprisingly good at fraud," observes this analysis of the SEC case at Bloomberg. But another analysis at the Los Angeles Times thinks the case shows that Shkreli was "an investment hotshot who couldn't get anything right." Thursday's big theme on Twitter after the arrest was "schadenfreude," says this Salon roundup. Catch up with Shkreli's odd interview with high school students before his arrest.