Ed Sheeran: Ipswich hacker who stole songs told to pay £100k

A hacker who stole two unreleased songs from Ed Sheeran and sold them on the dark web has to pay more than £100,000.

Adrian Kwiatkowski, 23, from Ipswich, traded the music by Sheeran and 12 songs by rapper Lil Uzi Vert in exchange for cryptocurrency.

Last year, he admitted 19 charges, including copyright infringement and possessing criminal property, and was jailed for 18 months.

About half of the money he has to pay is currently held in Bitcoin.

Kwiatkowski managed to get hold of them after hacking the performers' digital accounts, the Crown Prosecution Service said.

He had made £131,000 from the music, City of London Police said.

In his police interview, Kwiatkowski admitted he had hacked the musicians' cloud-based accounts and sold the songs online.

During his trial, Ipswich Crown Court heard that when the defendant's Apple Mac laptop was searched, 565 audio files, including the songs by Sheeran and Vert, were uncovered.

The same court has now granted a confiscation order against the hacker, giving him three months to pay £101,053, after proceedings brought by the Police Intellectual Crime Unit (PIPCU) at City of London Police.

The amount is made up of £51,975 held in a bank account owned by Kwiatkowski and 2.64 BTC (Bitcoin), worth £49,528, which makes it the first confiscation order of cryptocurrency secured by PIPCU.

If the payment is failed to be made within three months, he will face a further 18 months imprisonment.

Det Con Daryl Fryatt from PIPCU said: "Kwiatkowski executed a complex scheme to sell creative content that he did not own.

"Our work doesn't just stop at conviction, and this result means that Kwiatkowski will not be able to benefit any further from the money he earned through criminal activity."

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