A hacker who succeeded to make nearly $50,000 in Bitcoin by stealing Ed Sheeran’s unpublished music must return his loot. It concerns Adrian Kwiatkowski from Ipswich, England, who ended up in prison for 18 months after selling new music from 89 artists for Bitcoin on the dark web.
How did he manage this?
Kwiatkowski, who operates online under the pseudonym “Spirdark,” managed to gain access to the accounts of some management companies. With those accounts, the hacker manages to steal the unreleased music of Ed Sheeran and American rapper Lil Uze Vert, among others.
After the police confiscated his hard drive, they found about 1,200 unreleased records on it. In the end, the authorities managed to find his home address with his email address linked to Spirdark.
Subsequently, the hacker pleaded guilty to 14 different copyright infringements and several other violations. All in all, this resulted in a prison sentence and he must return the amounts earned on the dark web. In that respect, the hacker could have spent his time and energy differently.
Even longer in the bin?
If Kwiatkowski is unable to pay the amount of more than $100,000 that he has to pay back from the judge, they will extend his prison sentence for another 18 months. As part of the judge’s ruling, he must also return 2.64 Bitcoin and more than $50,000 from his bank account.
Kwiatkowski’s capture marks the first confiscation of Bitcoin for the Police Intellectual Property Crime United (PIPCU), an organization with a focus on intellectual property law, which includes music.
“Our work does not stop with the conviction and this result means that Kwiatkowski can no longer benefit from the money he earned from his criminal activities,” thus the response of the PIPCU itself.
With 2.64 Bitcoin, it is not a huge amount, but it is newsworthy because it concerns the music of artists such as Ed Sheeran. Somehow it remains special that it turns out to be so easy to steal unpublished music from these kinds of greats.