Skylar Dalziel, 22, from Luton, England, is said to have made more than €50,000 by stealing and selling unreleased releases from Coldplay and Shawn Mendes.
A 22-year-old woman who pleaded guilty to stealing and selling unreleased music from artists including Coldplay and Shawn Mendes has been sentenced to 21 months in prison, according to the BBC.
Skylar Dalziel was accused of hacking into cloud storage accounts linked to various artists and then selling the stolen tracks on the dark web. According to police, she earned around £42,000 (around €50,000) from this between April 2021 and January 2023. In addition to her prison sentence, she will also have to carry out 180 hours of community service.
When police finally caught up with Dalziel in 2023, his hard drives contained around 290,000 songs. Other artists affected included Melanie Martinez, Upsahl and Bebe Rexha.
Authorities also found a spreadsheet detailing the transactions, as well as PayPal and bank account statements. According to authorities, part of this money was transferred to bank accounts in the United States and the City of London. Authorities are still trying to identify people linked to these accounts.
The thefts were noted and reported to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry in June 2021, after Sony Music Entertainment learned that a cloud account belonging to Upsahl had been compromised. The IFPI, along with the Recording Industry Association of America, were then able to identify an account on an online forum selling unreleased music, and that account was then traced to Dalziel.
A few years ago, another British hacker was sentenced to prison for a similar crime. Adrian Kwiatkowski, a 23-year-old from Ipswich, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for stealing music from Ed Sheeran and Lil Uzi Vert by hacking into their cloud accounts and then selling the tracks on the dark web.
