A hacker who stole unreleased songs from famous singers, including Ed Sheeran, Frank Ocean and Post Malone, has been sentenced to jail for 18 months. The hacker was arrested from a location in Ipswich, Suffolk, by the City of London Police. The police also seized seven devices from the place, including a storage drive with over 1,200 songs by 89 artists. Another laptop found at the location contained 595 illegal files, per a Metro report.
As per a BBC report, Ed Sheeran's digital accounts were hacked by 23-year-old Adrian Kwiatkowski. And it was from these accounts that the hacker managed to get a hold of the singer's two unreleased songs, which were traded in exchange for cryptocurrency on the dark web. The report also mentions that the hacker extracted 12 songs by Lil Uzi Vert. The Crown Prosecution Service has caught and jailed Kwiatkowski for 18 months.
The investigation has been going on since 2019 when several musicians reported to the New York District Attorney that their accounts had been hacked by someone named Spirdark. The hacker had been charged with 19 acts, including the possession of criminal property and copyright infringement. As per the City of London Police, he made EUR 131,000 from the stolen music. In addition, when the defendant's laptop, an Apple MacBook, was searched, 565 audio files were found, including songs from the popular singer and rapper.
The disguised hacker was stealing exclusive content from the singer's accounts and selling the content to make loads of money. However, as the investigation progressed, the email address used to set up Spirdark's crypto account was associated with Kwiatkowski. Further, the criminal's home address was linked to an IP address that was used to hack one of the devices from which data was stolen, and that is how the authorities reached him.