Perhaps drawing inspiration from the name of Ed Sheeran’s latest tour, U.K. prosecutors have done the math and calculated a sentence for a hacker who stole unreleased music from both Sheeran and Lil Uzi Vert. The Associated Press reports that 23-year-old Adrian Kwiatkowski will serve 18 months in prison for stealing songs from the artists’s cloud-based accounts and selling them for cryptocurrency. Reportedly, he made $147,000 from these illegal transactions. “Kwiatkowski had complete disregard for the musicians’ creativity and hard work producing original songs and the subsequent loss of earnings,†prosecutor Joanne Jakymec said. “He selfishly stole their music to make money for himself.â€
According to a press release, Kwiatkowski was imprisoned on Friday at England’s Ipswich Crown Court. He had been operating under the name Spirdark, and was reported by multiple music companies. A 2019 investigation by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office identified Spirdark as Kwiatkowski via email address and IP address, and Kwiatkowski was arrested by London police later that year. He ultimately pleaded guilty to three charges of unauthorized access to computer material, 14 charges of making for sale an article infringing copyright, one charge of converting criminal property, and two charges of possession of criminal property. A search of his laptop also uncovered 565 audio files, including two unreleased Sheeran songs and 12 unreleased Uzi songs that he had put up for sale.