A former 14-year employee of Marshall Mathers, better known as the rapper Eminem, has been charged with illegally leaking some of the artist’s unreleased music.
Joseph Strange of Holly, Michigan, has been charged with criminal infringement of a copyright and interstate transportation of stolen goods, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Michigan said in a release.
Earlier this year, several tracks from Mr. Mathers’ “vault” surfaced online, including songs featuring and mentioning other rappers dating back at least as far as 2003.
These songs, his team said, were never meant to see the light of day. Over 25 such songs have leaked according to court documents.
“These leaked songs were studio efforts never meant for public consumption … demos, experiments and ideas that are dated and not relevant so many years later,” Mr. Mathers’ spokesperson Dennis Dennehy told Billboard.
Mr. Strange, 46, worked for the rapper from 2007 until 2021.
On Jan. 16, current employees of Mr. Mathers based out of his Ferndale, Michigan, music studio contacted the FBI about the stolen music. They provided a picture of a list of leaked tracks being sold online that was taken directly from a hard drive at the studio, the attorney’s office said.
Mr. Strange was a former sound engineer and one of only four people who worked at the studio with access to those hard drives; his three former colleagues, one of them a relative of Mr. Strange, were the ones who tipped off the FBI.
The FBI tracked down multiple people who bought said music, and they claimed it was sold to them by Mr. Strange.
When agents searched his home, they found a safe that contained lyrics and notes hand-written by Mr. Mathers, a VHS tape containing unreleased Eminem tracks and a hard drive with around 12,000 audio files on it, according to court documents.
A manager for Mr. Mathers told investigators that the items inside the safe had been stored at the Ferndale studio, that they were property of Mr. Mathers and that Mr. Strange did not have permission to keep any of them.
If convicted of copyright infringement, Mr. Strange faces up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000. If convicted of the interstate transport of stolen goods, Mr. Strange faces up to 10 years in prison on that count.
