Joseph Strange, a former sound engineer who worked for Eminem at his Ferndale, Michigan studio for more than a decade, pleaded guilty Wednesday to criminal copyright infringement after admitting he copied and sold the rapper’s unreleased recordings.
Strange, 48, of Holly, Michigan, entered the plea in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan. He faces up to five years in prison at sentencing scheduled for Jan. 27, 2027. Prosecutors said he sold at least 10 audio files online for approximately $50,000 between July and August 2024. Those tracks later reached public streaming platforms and were accessed more than 8 million times by November 2025, according to the Justice Department. Officials estimated the infringement amount at $750,000 or more.
Strange worked for Marshall Mathers from roughly 2007 until 2021 at Effigy Studios. His responsibilities included setting up and operating the computer systems that stored Mathers’ recordings. He was one of a small group of people with access to password-protected hard drives kept in a safe. Those drives held material in various stages of development that had not been authorized for release. Court records indicate his severance agreement prohibited him from circulating the music after he left the studio.
Investigators said Strange copied the files without permission and sold them years after his employment ended. One buyer, a Canadian fan identified in filings as Doja Rat, told the FBI he paid roughly $50,000 in Bitcoin for tracks and that Strange claimed to have more than 300 songs plus handwritten lyric sheets. Studio employees later confirmed the song lists and file structures matched a hard drive that had remained secured at the Ferndale facility. Drive logs showed external-drive activity in late 2019 and early 2020, while Strange was still employed there.
Current studio staff contacted the FBI in January 2025 after discovering unreleased Mathers material online. Agents identified multiple buyers who named Strange. A search of his Holly home on Jan. 28, 2025, turned up hard drives containing thousands of audio files, original handwritten lyric sheets and notes by Mathers stored in a safe, and a VHS tape of an unreleased music video.
Strange was initially charged in March 2025 with both criminal copyright infringement and interstate transportation of stolen goods. Under the plea agreement, prosecutors dropped the transportation charge, which carried a potential 10-year sentence. He pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Brandy McMillion to the copyright count alone.
“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 Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. FBI Detroit Special Agent in Charge Jennifer Runyan said the plea “reinforces a simple principle: accountability follows those who compromise the integrity of another person’s creative labor.” An Eminem representative previously described the damage to the artist’s artistic legacy and creative integrity as significant. Strange’s attorney has said his client is a good man whose children have suffered.
The case marks one of the more detailed federal prosecutions involving the unauthorized commercial sale of unreleased material from a major artist. Authorities have not released a full public list of the specific tracks involved. A federal judge will determine the final sentence after weighing the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.
