On the estate in Luton where Skylar Dalziel grew up, neighbours assumed the 22-year-old had shut herself away to look after her disabled father.
But in reality, the reclusive carer was busy building her own music industry by stealing online from the world’s biggest stars and selling on their unreleased tracks.
Pictured for the first time, Dalziel targeted more than 100 artists, from Taylor Swift to Adele and Coldplay. For more than two years she hacked into online cloud storage accounts linked to the artists to steal more than 290,000 tracks before they had been released.
The jobless benefits claimant sold new Adele tracks for £1,650 a time, songs by Canadian rapper Drake for £2,000, and Coldplay hits for £400. Astonishingly, she had managed to hack into cloud accounts at top record labels, including Universal Music Group, Atlantic, Sony Music Group and Warner Records.
Police traced profits of at least £42,000 made between April 2021 and January 2023, but they believe this is just a fraction of the money taken by a global hacking group who taught her the tricks.
When officers swooped on Dalziel’s £220,000 terraced home they found a spreadsheet in her bedroom listing sales on the dark web that suggested she was only keeping a third of the money, with the remainder going to associates taking Bitcoin payments from fans.
They used a cryptocurrency tumbler – an online money laundering service that obscures the trail by mixing potentially identifiable or ‘tainted’ crypto with others.
Dalziel was only found out after she contacted her music idol Taylor Upsahl on Instagram.
Skylar Dalziel, 22, targeted more than 100 artists, from Taylor Swift to Adele and Coldplay
The jobless benefits claimant sold new Adele tracks for £1,650 a time, songs by Canadian rapper Drake for £2,000, and Coldplay hits for £400
Taylor Swift performs onstage during her tour in Vancouver on December 4
She told the US indie pop star she had ‘discovered’ 40 of her tracks for sale online in an attempt to befriend her. Dalziel was issued a cease-and-desist notice from Sony Music before the international music industry body started a probe.
The case was eventually referred to the City of London’s Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit, which identified the hacker as Dalziel – a registered carer with ADHD who left school with no qualifications.
Yesterday Detective Constable Daryl Fryatt, who led the case, said Dalziel’s ‘creepy’ superfan message to Ms Upsahl was her downfall as it enabled officers to trace her through social media accounts in which she posted pictures of her tattoo, which said: ‘Thriving.’
He said: ‘She has looked at these artists, who their family are and where they live, associates, open-source research working out who is best to hack, targeting files on sound engineers for email logins, some of it was guess work.
Chris Martin performs as the Coldplay headline the Pyramid stage during day four of Glastonbury Festival 2024
Dalziel was spared jail by a judge at Luton Crown Court (pictured) who handed her a 21-month sentence suspended for 24 months
‘This organised crime group taught her to do it, groomed her, giving her the skills to be useful to them. She had a very turbulent upbringing, did not go to university, she has taught herself her own IT skills. She was a recluse staying at home as a carer for her dad.’
Dalziel pleaded guilty to nine copyright offences and four computer misuse offences in October.
Last week she was spared jail by a judge at Luton Crown Court who handed her a 21-month sentence suspended for 24 months and ordered her to complete 180 hours of unpaid work.
Investigators in the US are now hoping the prosecution will lead them to the global hacking group who successfully targeted the world’s best-known musicians.
