A computer hacker has confessed to stealing unreleased songs by Coldplay, Shawn Mendes, and Bebe Rexha.
Skylar Dalziel earned around £42,000 by selling the recordings online, according to the City of London Police.
According to prosecutor Richard Partridge, she “selfishly used their music to make money for herself by selling it on the dark web.”
The 22-year-old, of Winchester Gardens in Luton, acknowledged 11 copyright violations at Luton Crown Court and was sentenced to 21 months in jail, suspended for 24 months.
Det Con Daryl Fryatt of the force’s Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit stated, “Stealing copyrighted content for personal financial benefit is prohibited.
“It jeopardises the work of artists and the livelihoods of the people who work with them to create and release their music.”
Dalziel obtained the songs through unauthorized access to the musicians’ cloud storage accounts.
Sony Music Entertainment found a hacked cloud account controlled by Upsahl and reported it to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) in June 2021, revealing the crimes.
Police said that forty unpublished recordings had been removed and were being sold online.
The IFPI and the Recording Industry Association of America discovered an account on an internet forum selling unreleased music from various artists, which was linked to Dalziel.
Officers stated they apprehended Dalziel on January 9, 2023, and seized three drives containing 291,941 music recordings.
They also discovered a spreadsheet indicating that she had sold music to consumers, as well as PayPal and bank accounts showing that she had collected £42,049 between April 2021 and January 2023.
Some of this money was moved to bank accounts in the United States, and the City of London Police stated they were collaborating with Homeland Security Investigations to locate the individuals associated with the accounts.
Dalziel pled guilty to 11 charges of manufacturing an article for sale without the copyright owner’s permission, one count of transferring criminal property, and three counts of obtaining, using, or possessing criminal property.
She was also sentenced to 180 unpaid hours of work.
Det Con Fryatt stated imprisonment “sends a clear message that we have the ability and tools to locate cybercriminals and hold them accountable for their actions.”
