Cyber hacker Skylar Dalziel has been sentenced to 21 months imprisonment, suspended for two years, for stealing unreleased songs by acts including Shawn Mendes and Bebe Rexha to sell on the dark web.
Dalziel, aged 22 from Bedfordshire, admitted to 11 copyright offences at Luton Magistrates Court. According to the City of London Police, she made around £42,000 by selling the songs online. Prosecutor Richard Partridge said that she “selfishly used their music to make money for herself by selling it on the dark web”.
Meanwhile, Detective Constable Daryl Fryatt, from the force’s Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit, said of Dalziel’s illegal actions: “Stealing copyrighted material for your own financial gain is illegal. It jeopardises the work of artists and the livelihoods of the people who work with them to create and release their music.”
Fryatt also believes the sentence “sends a clear message that we have the ability and tools to locate cyber criminals and hold them to account for their actions”.
According to the BBC, Dalziel accessed the unreleased songs by illegally gaining access to cloud storage accounts linked to the artists involved.
Suspicions were first raised in 2021 when Sony music companzy discovered a cloud account belonging to American singer Upsahl had been compromised. The record label reported this incident to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry who subsequently carried out an investigation.
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry discovered an account online selling unreleased music from prominent musicians, which was later found to be linked to Dalziel. Upon his arrest in January 2023, police seized three hard drives which contained 291,941 songs on them. They also found a spreadsheet containing information about the tracks which had been sold online, as well as learning she earned £42,049 from April 2021 to January 2023 through these illegal methods.
Dalziel pleaded guilty to 11 counts of making for sale an article without the licence of the copyright’s owner, one count of transferring criminal property and three counts of acquiring/using/possessing criminal property. In addition to the suspended sentence, she is required to serve 180 hours of unpaid work.
