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.”

Distributed by Tribune News Service.