Martin Shkreli has been conned out of millions while trying to buy the Kanye album
That's a real shame
We'll be honest: so much of this story makes very little sense, but the world would probably be a slightly better place if it turns out to be true.
World's Most Hated Man Martin Shkreli has seemingly been conned out of $15m by a stranger known only as 'Daquan'.
Shkreli made headlines last week by putting in an audacious offer to buy Kanye West's new album, The Life Of Pablo, for an initial amount of $10m. Below was his offer, which he claimed Kanye was legally obliged to put to his record label:
Despite the fact that the album had already leaked, and Kanye had played it at his Yeezy Season 3 fashion show at Madison Square Garden in New York, he was keen on buying it from Kanye, in a similar manner to the one-off Wu-Tang Clan album, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, which he bought for $2m.
On Saturday night, he seemed confident that he had done the deal:
Shkreli was so sure he had the goods that he was tweeting the major music streamers - presumably to sell the album on to them for an increased price. Hmmm, now where have we heard about him jacking up prices overnight before?
Yep, Martin and Yeezy, best buds.
Then: disaster.
Poor Martin. Duped out of $15m and, meanwhile, Kanye was releasing the album via the runaway, much-loved streaming success site Tidal.
But he was not going to go down without a fight (a skill he might need to utilise again when his fraud charges come to trial).
As ever, more questions than answers remain after this outburst.
- Why would you just transfer over $15m without a bit more documentation?
- Why would you use bitcoin?
- Is Kanye really $35m in debt and if so, how did Shkreli know in order to attempt to make the offer in the first place?
- If this actually happened, why go on Twitter to tell everyone how stupid you've been?
Perhaps Shkreli and West should work together - after all, in the quest for self-promotion and publicity, they've surely got to be the current market leaders?
