A pc hacker who stole unreleased songs from British pop star Ed Sheeran and American rap artist Lil Uzi Vert has been sentenced to 18 months in jail, U.Ok. prosecutors mentioned Friday.
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Adrian Kwiatkowski, 23, of Ipswich in southern England, hacked the artists’ cloud-based accounts and offered their songs on the darkish net in alternate for cryptocurrency. Metropolis of London Police, which investigated the case, mentioned Kwiatkowski made 131,000 kilos ($147,000) on the transactions.
“Kwiatkowski had full disregard for the musicians’ creativity and onerous work producing unique songs and the next lack of earnings,” mentioned Joanne Jakymec of the Crown Prosecution Service. “He selfishly stole their music to generate income for himself.”
In August, Kwiatkowski pleaded responsible to quite a lot of prices, together with 14 copyright offenses and three counts of pc misuse. He was sentenced Friday (Oct. 21) in Ipswich Crown Courtroom.
Metropolis of London Police labored with authorities in america to research the case after the administration firms of a number of musicians reported that a person, recognized on-line as Spirdark, had gained entry to their purchasers’ cloud-based accounts and was promoting their content material.
The Manhattan District Lawyer’s Workplace launched an investigation in 2019, and linked the e-mail tackle used for Spirdark’s cryptocurrency account to Kwiatkowski. It then recognized the IP tackle of the system used to hack one of many accounts as his dwelling tackle.
After additional investigation, Kwiatkowski was arrested by the Metropolis of London Police’s Mental Property Crime Unit in September 2019.
“Cybercrime is aware of no borders, and this particular person executed a posh scheme to steal unreleased music with a view to line his personal pockets,” Manhattan District Lawyer Alvin L Bragg Jr. mentioned.
