Hacker who stole unreleased music from Coldplay, Shawn Mendes sentenced to prison
A hacker who stole unreleased songs from Coldplay, Shawn Mendes, and Bebe Rexha, has been sentenced to 21 months imprisonment and 24 months suspension.
Skylar Dalziel, 22, made about £42,000 (P3 million) from selling the music, which she illegally accessed through cloud storage accounts for the artists.
On Jan. 3, she plead guilty to 11 copyright offenses before the Luton Crown Court, according to the BBC.
"Stealing copyright material for your own financial gain is illegal. It jeopardizes the work of artists and the livelihoods of the people who work with them to create and release their music," Detective Constable Daryl Fryatt of the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit said.
He added that this type of criminal activity contributes to over 80,000 jobs lost each year.
"Today's sentencing sends a clear message that we have the ability and tools to locate cybercriminals and hold them to account for their actions. We believe Dalziel was working with suspects overseas and are now working to identify them."
Dalziel was caught when Sony Music Entertainment discovered that a cloud account owned by American singer Upsahl had been compromised. The company reported the incident to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) in June 2021.
Her home in Luton was raided and police found about 290,000 tracks from Coldplay, Shawn Mendes, Melanie Martinez, Upsahl, and Bebe Rexha in her computer hard drives, according to police. They also found spreadsheets of songs she sold to numerous customers.
The IFPI and the Recording Industry Association of America identified an account linked to Dalziel on an online forum selling the unreleased tracks.
In addition to her sentence and suspension, the 22-year-old will also do 180 hours of unpaid work.
