Hacker steals unreleased Coldplay and Rexha tracks
pa mediaA cyber hacker has pleaded guilty to stealing unreleased music from artists including Coldplay, Canadian singer Shawn Mendes and American singer Bebe Rexha.
According to the City of London Police, Skylar Dalziel made almost £42,000 from selling the track online.
Prosecutor Richard Partridge said he “selfishly used his music to make money for himself by selling it on the dark web”.
The 22-year-old, of Winchester Gardens in Luton, admitted 11 copyright offenses at Luton Crown Court and was sentenced to 21 months’ imprisonment, suspended for 24 months.
Det Con Daryl Fryatt, of the force’s police intellectual property crime unit, said: “Stealing copyrighted material for your own financial gain is illegal.
“This jeopardizes the work of artists and the livelihoods of those who work with them to create and release their music.”
pa mediaDalziel took possession of the music by illegally accessing cloud storage accounts belonging to the artists.
The theft was revealed when Sony Music Entertainment discovered that a cloud account owned by Upsahl had been compromised and reported it to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) in June 2021.
Police said that forty unreleased tracks had been taken out and were being sold online.
IFPI and the Recording Industry Association of America identified an account selling unreleased music from various artists on an online forum and that account was linked to Dalziel.
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getty imagesAuthorities said they arrested Dalziel on January 9, 2023, and seized three drives containing 291,941 music tracks.
They also found a spreadsheet which showed he had sold tracks to customers and his PayPal and bank accounts showed he had received £42,049 from April 2021 to January 2023.
Some of these funds were transferred to bank accounts in the US and the City of London Police said it was working with Homeland Security Investigations to identify people linked to these accounts.
getty imagesDalziel pleaded guilty to 11 counts of making an article for sale without the license of the copyright owner, one count of transferring criminal property and three counts of receiving/using/possessing criminal property.
He was also sentenced to 180 hours of unpaid work.
Det Con Fryatt said the sentence “sends a clear message that we have the capabilities and tools to detect cyber criminals and hold them to account for their actions”.
