23-year-old Adrian Kwiatkowski from Ipswich, England, managed to hack the digital accounts of artist Ed Sheeran and steal two of his unreleased songs. He then sold them on the dark web earning £131,000 worth of cryptocurrency before being arrested by police.
Now, a court order sentences him to 18 months in prison after he was charged with 19 counts including copyright infringement and unlawful possession of property.
Kwiatkowski’s MacBook contained 565 audio files, including two songs by Ed Sheeran and 12 unreleased songs by rapper Lil Uzi Vert.
The arrest was made with the help of US authorities, who managed to link the email address Kwiatkowski used to set up the cryptocurrency account under the pseudonym Spirdark, while his residential address in England was linked to the IP address used to hack one of the artists’ devices.
The case was then taken over by the London police who arrested Kwiatkowski in September 2019.
