The FBI has charged a man who worked for Eminem with stealing and selling unreleased music, including tracks still in progress.
Joseph Strange, who worked for Eminem from 2007 to 2021, is facing federal charges for copyright infringement and transporting stolen goods across state lines.
The investigation began in January 2025 when Eminem’s team noticed some unfinished tracks surfacing online. The leaks caught the attention of both fans and industry insiders, who questioned how these unreleased songs had made their way onto the internet. The turning point came when a fan reached out to Eminem’s longtime collaborator FredWreck (who posted threats to leakers), sharing screenshots of a conversation with someone claiming to have bought the music.
From there, a deeper dive revealed that a person using the alias “Doja Rat” had purchased the leaked songs for approximately $50,000 in Bitcoin. Through digital tracking, investigators traced these transactions back to Strange, who had access to the hard drives containing Eminem’s recordings. When Eminem’s team reviewed the studio’s storage, they found that the leaked songs matched files on a hard drive that had not been accessed in years.
Further scrutiny of system logs revealed that files had been removed in 2019 and 2020, during Strange’s employment, coinciding with the attachment of an external hard drive. These digital footprints, combined with witness accounts, led the FBI to execute a search warrant on Strange’s home, where they found original Eminem handwritten lyric sheets, a VHS tape with unreleased music, and thousands of audio files belonging to Eminem and other artists, reported Detroit TV station WXYZ.
Eminem’s spokesperson, Dennis Dennehy, had previously condemned the leaks, emphasising that these tracks were never meant for release. “These were demos, experiments, and ideas that are dated and not relevant so many years later”, he stated.
If convicted, Strange could face up to 15 years in prison. Those who purchased the music and allegedly paid Joseph Strange are also listed in the criminal complaint.
