A former employee of Eminem has pleaded guilty to a criminal copyright charge over the sale of the rapper’s unreleased music.
Joseph Strange, 48, of Holly, Michigan, sold 10 or more audio files of the music to buyers online for approximately USD $50,000, according to court documents cited by the US Department of Justice.
The Justice Department announced the plea on Thursday (October 22), in a statement that can be read in full here.
The tracks later ended up on public streaming platforms, without Eminem’s permission or prior knowledge.
Prosecutors say the infringing files they identified had been accessed more than 8 million times as of November 2025, citing data from several streaming services.
The Justice Department estimates the infringement amount at USD $750,000 or more.
That is at least 15 times the approximately USD $50,000 Strange received from the sales.
Strange entered his plea on Thursday in federal court in Detroit, in the Eastern District of Michigan.
“Joseph Strange abused a position of trust to unlawfully copy and sell unreleased music belonging to Eminem, profiting from works that were not yet authorized for public distribution.”
A. Tysen Duva, Assistant Attorney General
“Joseph Strange abused a position of trust to unlawfully copy and sell unreleased music belonging to Eminem, profiting from works that were not yet authorized for public distribution,” said A. Tysen Duva, Assistant Attorney General of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. “His conduct undermined both legal and artistic rights.
“The Criminal Division remains committed to protecting intellectual property, holding accountable those who seek to profit from theft of creative content, and working with our law enforcement partners to deter and disrupt these crimes.”
Strange worked for Eminem, whose legal name is Marshall Mathers, from approximately 2007 until 2021, according to the court documents.
He was based at the studio Eminem used in Ferndale, Michigan.
There, Strange helped set up and run the computer system that held the rapper’s recordings.
He also had access to password-protected hard drives containing Eminem’s works in progress, which were not yet meant for release to the public.
At some point, Strange copied 10 or more audio files from those drives without authority.
Between July and August 2024, he sold and sent the files to buyers over the internet, without Eminem’s knowledge or authorization.
The Justice Department says that “while no commercial release of the music or material within these files was imminent or even certain, professional efforts had been made to prepare some of the music for possible commercial release, in some cases including studio mastering.”
Strange faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison and is scheduled to be sentenced on January 27, 2027.
A federal judge will set the sentence after considering the US Sentencing Guidelines and other factors set out in law.
According to the US Sentencing Commission, the recommended penalty in criminal copyright cases depends heavily on the estimated value of the infringement. The guidelines also raise the offense level when an infringed work was being prepared for commercial distribution.
“Today’s guilty plea reinforces a simple principle: accountability follows those who compromise the integrity of another person’s creative labor.”
Jennifer Runyan, FBI
“Detroit has always been a city where creativity thrives, and no one has the right to steal or profit from another artist’s work without their permission,” said Jennifer Runyan, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Detroit Field Office. “Today’s guilty plea reinforces a simple principle: accountability follows those who compromise the integrity of another person’s creative labor.
“… We also appreciate the cooperation of Mathers Music Studio throughout the investigation. Protecting intellectual property means protecting the time, talent, and livelihoods behind it, and we will continue to treat these violations with the seriousness they deserve.”
Strange was first charged in March 2025 in a criminal complaint that also accused him of transporting stolen goods across state lines.
At the time, prosecutors said the copyright charge carried a fine of up to USD $250,000, while the stolen-goods charge carried a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.
In exchange for Strange’s plea, prosecutors agreed to drop the stolen-goods charge, The Detroit News reported.
According to the complaint, staff at Eminem’s Ferndale studio contacted the FBI on or about January 16, 2025, after discovering his unreleased music online.
The studio employees recognized an image of a list of the unreleased tracks being offered for sale online as one taken directly from a hard drive at the Ferndale studio.
The FBI then located several people who had bought the music, and they identified Strange as the seller.
The complaint stated that more than 25 songs, created by Eminem between 1999 and 2018, had been played or distributed online without his or his label’s consent, NBC News reported at the time.
Eminem’s spokesperson, Dennis Dennehy, said in March 2025 that the rapper’s team was “very appreciative” of the FBI’s investigation.
“The significant damage caused by a trusted employee to Eminem’s artistic legacy and creative integrity cannot be overstated, let alone the enormous financial losses incurred by the many creators and collaborators that deserve protection for their decades of work,” Dennehy added. “We will continue to take any and all steps necessary to protect Eminem’s art and will stop at nothing to do so.”
When the plea deal was reported in September, Dennehy said it was satisfying to see Strange held accountable, adding that “we hope he will be punished to the fullest extent of the law.”
Strange’s attorney, Wade Fink, described the charges as “untested allegations” in comments to the Associated Press when they were filed.
After the plea, Fink said in a statement that his client had taken accountability for his actions and was remorseful over what had happened to his family, but that the case was a “far more complicated and nuanced matter than a man just unabashedly stealing.” He also argued that commentary on the case from the Justice Department and others did not reflect the facts.
Dennehy told MBW that Eminem’s team had no comment beyond the statements it had already made. MBW has contacted Strange’s attorney for further comment.
The Strange case is one of several recent legal actions over leaks of unreleased music.
In July, Ariana Grande sued unnamed hackers who she alleges stole unreleased songs, footage, and photographs from people in her professional circle and sold the material online.
Grande’s complaint claims that in 2023 alone, 45 unreleased songs were “hacked, stolen, and leaked by Defendants.”
In August, a Los Angeles judge cleared Grande to subpoena platforms and payment services including Instagram, TikTok, and PayPal to identify those responsible.
In 2022, UK hacker Adrian Kwiatkowski was jailed for 18 months for hacking artists’ cloud accounts and selling unreleased music by acts including Ed Sheeran and Lil Uzi Vert for cryptocurrency. Police found 1,263 unreleased songs by 89 artists on a hard drive seized from him.
Unlike those cases, the music in this case was taken by a former member of Eminem’s own studio staff, rather than by outside hackers.
In a separate federal case, Michael Smith was sentenced to 18 months in prison on October 6 over a streaming fraud scheme that prosecutors say brought him more than USD $8 million in royalties.Music Business Worldwide
