Dark web hacker who made £42k selling unreleased Coldplay tracks is spared jail
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A dark web hacker who trousered £42,000 selling unreleased music from leading artists like Coldplay, Shawn Mendes and Melanie Martinez has avoided jail. Skylar Dalziel, 22, stole tracks by illegally accessing several cloud storage accounts linked to the popular acts.
A raid of her home in Winchester Gardens, Luton last January, uncovered hard drives containing up to 291,941 songs. Unreleased tracks by Chris Martin’s band Coldplay, Mendes, Melanie Martinez, Taylor Upsahl, and Bebe Rexha were found. At Luton Crown Court, Dalziel was sentenced on Friday to 21 months in prison, suspended for two years, having admitted nine copyright offences and four relating to computer misuse.
Detective Constable Daryl Fryatt, from intellectual property crime unit at City of London Police, said: “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.
“It’s estimated that this type of criminal activity contributes to over 80,000 job losses each year. “Today’s sentencing sends a clear message that we have the ability and tools to locate cyber criminals and hold them to account for their actions.
“We believe Dalziel was working with suspects overseas and are now working to identify them.”. Specialist Prosecutor Richard Partridge, of the Crown Prosecution Service, added: “Dalziel had complete disregard for the musician’s creativity and hard work producing original songs and the subsequent potential loss of earnings.
