Hacker Who Stole Unreleased Coldplay, Shawn Mendes Songs Sentenced

A 22-year-old who pleaded to blame to stealing and promoting unreleased tune by way of artists like Coldplay and Shawn Mendes was once sentenced to 21 months in jail, the BBC stories.

Skylar Dalziel was once accused of hacking cloud garage accounts connected to more than a few artists after which promoting the stolen tracks at the darkish internet. Dalziel allegedly made an estimated £42,000 (about $52,000) from the scheme between April 2021 and Jan. 2023, in step with police.

Dalziel was once charged with, and later pleaded to blame to, 11 copyright offenses for promoting pieces with out a license from the landlord, one rely of shifting felony assets, and 3 counts of obtaining, the use of, or possessing felony assets. On best of the jail sentence, shel’ll even have to finish 180 hours of unpaid paintings.  

When police after all stuck up with Dalziel in 2023, they stated her arduous drives contained about 290,000 tracks. Different artists affected integrated Melanie Martinez, Upsahl, and Bebe Rexha.

Government additionally discovered a spreadsheet detailing the monitor transactions, in addition to PayPal and checking account statements appearing how a lot Dalziel had made. In keeping with government, a few of this cash was once transferred to financial institution accounts in the USA and the Town of London. (Government are reportedly nonetheless looking to determine the folk connected to these accounts, with the Division of Place of birth Safety helping the quest within the U.S.)

The thefts have been first spotted and reported to the Global Federation of the Phonographic Trade in June 2021 after Sony Tune Leisure realized {that a} cloud account belonging to Upsahl were compromised. The IFPI, at the side of the Recording Trade Affiliation of The united states, was once then reportedly in a position to spot an account on a web based discussion board promoting the unreleased tune, and that account was once later connected to Dalziel. 

The IFPI and the RIAA didn’t in an instant go back Rolling Stone’s requests for remark.

Only a few years in the past, some other hacker within the U.Ok. was once despatched to jail for the same crime. In 2022, Adrian Kwiatkowski, a 23-year-old from Ipswich, was once sentenced to 18 months in jail for stealing tune by way of Ed Sheeran and Lil Uzi Vert by way of hacking into their cloud-based accounts after which promoting the tunes at the darkish internet.