A thief pretending to be singer Britney Spears' manager Larry Rudolph persuaded her music label to send him four dozen of her unreleased songs.
A suspect has since been arrested and he is said to be a lawyer studying intellectual property law, reports tmz.com.
According to documents, the crook pretended to be Rudolph in email sent to Spears' label RCA Records.
The thief sent the mail from a specially created fake email address, which was enough to trick workers at the label into sending over the songs.
The impersonator is said to have made off with 49 digital files, which included 12 tunes marked for her "Glory" album, which was released in August 2016.