A 27-year old man named Christian Erazo has been indicted by U.S. authorities on Monday in a Manhattan federal court, under allegations claiming that he stole more than 50 gigabytes of music from industry executives’ computers, after allegedly logging into their online accounts. He currently faces charges of aggravated identity theft, conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, and conspiracy to commit wire fraud, which can carry a maximum sentence of 20 years.
These indictments claim that Erazo and co-conspirators obtained login credentials to the cloud storage account of one of the music management companies and allegedly accessed it at least 2,300 times, according to forensic evidence. Further forensic analysis claims that Erazo stole more than 850 music files from the various parties.
Erazo is also accused of accessing multiple unreleased tracks from 20 recording artists between 2016 and 2017. According to the indictment, he allegedly accessed a Los Angeles music producer’s social networking account and allegedly claimed to be the producer to solicit unreleased music from artists via private messages.
He also allegedly told a co-conspirator via private messages “I cant stop laffin [sic],” stating that his crimes were “the funniest shit I done.” The indictment also claimed that Erazo allegedly pretended to help one of the companies investigate the leaks, and even attempted to blame one of the employees of that company for the leaks.
“Not only did this scheme cause the companies, producers, and artists financial harm, Erazo deprived the artists of the ability to release their own exclusive content at their discretion,” U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman said in a statement.
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