A dark web dealer received a suspended sentence for stealing unreleased music from Coldplay and other artists, making significant profits.
Luton: A 22-year-old named Skylar Dalziel got a suspended 21-month sentence for stealing unreleased tracks from big names like Coldplay and Shawn Mendes. She made a pretty penny, raking in tens of thousands of pounds by hacking into cloud storage accounts.
Dalziel pleaded guilty to several copyright and computer misuse offenses. Besides the suspended sentence, she’s also got to do 180 hours of unpaid work. Not too shabby, right?
Between April 2021 and January 2023, she reportedly made around £42,000. She was caught after police raided her home in Luton, thanks to a tip-off from the recording industry.
When they checked her computer, they found she had access to about 290,000 tracks from various artists. Talk about a treasure trove! She even funneled her earnings to bank accounts in the US, and now British officers are teaming up with US authorities to track down those involved.
Richard Partridge from the Crown Prosecution Service said Dalziel showed no respect for the artists’ hard work. He pointed out that her actions hurt not just the musicians but also the people working behind the scenes in the music industry.
The whole mess came to light when Sony Music found out that Upsahl’s cloud account had been hacked and reported it. The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry got involved, and they eventually linked the online forum selling the stolen music back to Dalziel.
DC Daryl Fryatt from the City of London police made it clear that stealing music for profit is illegal and harms the entire music community. He mentioned that this kind of crime leads to
