A computer hacker who stole unreleased songs by British pop star Ed Sheeran and US rap artist Lil Uzi Vert has been sentenced to 18 months in prison, British prosecutors said Friday.
Adrian Kwiatkowski, 23, of Ipswich in the south of England, hacked the artist’s cloud-based account and sold his songs on the dark web in exchange for cryptocurrency. , said Kwiatkowski made $147,000 in the deal.
“Kwiatkowski completely ignored the musician’s creativity and efforts to produce original songs, and the subsequent loss of income,” prosecutor’s office Joan Jaquimek said. I arbitrarily stole their music to make money.”
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In August, Kwiatkowski pleaded guilty to various counts, including 14 counts of copyright infringement and three counts of computer misuse. He was sentenced at the Ipswich Criminal Court on Friday.
The City of London Police are working with US authorities to investigate the case. Several musicians’ management firms reported that an individual known online as Spirdark accessed their customers’ cloud-based accounts and sold their content.
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The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office launched an investigation in 2019, linking Kwiatkowski to the email address used for Spirdark’s cryptocurrency account. We then identified his IP address of the device used to hack one of his accounts as his home address.
After further investigation, Kwiatkowski was arrested by the City of London Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit in September 2019.
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“Cybercrime knows no borders. This individual has enacted a complex scheme to steal unreleased music to fill his pockets.