A former Eminem employee has been charged in the leak of a batch of unreleased material from the rapper.

Joseph Strange, 46, was charged Wednesday with criminal copyright infringement and interstate transportation of stolen goods. The FBI said that several Eminem fans paid Strange $50,000 in Bitcoin for 25 unreleased Eminem songs in January, all recorded by the rapper (real name Marshall Mathers) between 1999 and 2018.

The FBI discovered thousands of tracks stored on hard drives in Strange's Detroit-area home, along with handwritten lyrics and an unreleased music video. Strange, an audio engineer at Eminem's Effigy recording studio, worked there from 2007 to 2021.

"Protecting intellectual property from thieves is critical in safeguarding the exclusive rights of creators and protecting their original work from reproduction and distribution by individuals who seek to profit from the creative output of others," acting U.S. Attorney Julie Beck said in a statement to media Wednesday.

Strange was one of only four employees with password-protected access to the material, according to the criminal complaint. "Joseph Strange helped set up and operate the computer/hard drive system that contains the music created by Mathers," it read. "This system is not connected to the internet and only a few people have access to the system."

The FBI said in the criminal complaint that it discovered the source of the leak when Fred Nasser, a longtime producer for Eminem and Dr. Dre, posted on social media that his team was actively searching for the leakers. A fan contacted Nasser with records of chats between him and an Eminem fan (going by "Doja Rat") who claimed to have purchased the tracks from Strange.

In a statement to the Detroit Free Press, the rapper's spokesman said, "Eminem and his team are very appreciative of the efforts by the FBI Detroit bureau for its thorough 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," the statement continued. "We will continue to take any and all steps necessary to protect Eminem's art and will stop at nothing to do so."

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