UK Hacker Who Sold Unreleased Music Worth £42,000 Receives Suspended Sentence

Skylar Dalziel, 22, admitted to hacking cloud accounts of artists like Coldplay and Shawn Mendes, selling tracks on the dark web, and avoiding jail with a suspended sentence and community service.

Skylar Dalziel, a 22-year-old from Luton, illegally accessed cloud storage accounts of artists including Coldplay, Shawn Mendes, and Bebe Rexha to steal unreleased music.
She sold the stolen tracks on the dark web between April 2021 and January 2023, earning approximately £42,000 through PayPal and bank transfers, some linked to US accounts.
Police seized hard drives containing nearly 300,000 music tracks during a raid in January 2023, along with a spreadsheet detailing her transactions.
Dalziel pleaded guilty to multiple copyright and computer misuse offenses and was sentenced to 21 months in prison, suspended for two years, along with 180 hours of unpaid work and 10 rehabilitative activity days.
Authorities, including Homeland Security, are investigating possible accomplices in the US as part of the ongoing case linked to Dalziel's operation.