After an almost 3-year long trial, a 23-year-old from the UK has been imprisoned for hacking British pop star Ed Sheeran and American rapper Lil Uzi Vert
Adrian Kwiatkowski has been sentenced to 18 months in prison on 19 counts of copyright infringement.
He illegallly accessed computers, and sold unauthorised music through the dark web.
A search of the hacker’s Apple Mac laptop uncovered 565 audio files, including the music he stole from Sheeran and Lil Uzi Vert after hacking their digital accounts.
He offered to sell two unreleased songs by Sheeran and 12 unreleased songs by Lil Uzi Vert in exchange for bitcoin on illegal websites.
According to the City of London Police, he made more than 148,500 thousand dollars – from selling the music he stole.
After the management of several musicians reported that an individual known as Spirdark had gained access to their accounts and was selling the content saved there online –
The US authorities linked the email address used to set up Spirdark’s cryptocurrency account to Kwiatkowski.
They also identified the IP address of the device used to hack one of the accounts as his home address.
The case was then referred to the City of London Police, which arrested Kwiatkowski in September 2019 after further investigation.
Among seven devices the British police seized during the investigation was a hard drive that contained 1,263 unreleased songs by 89 artists and a document summarising the deployed method for stealing them. The police also seized bitcoin during the search.
Kwiatkowski pleaded guilty to charges against him and also confirmed he acted under the Spirdark alias.