AI streaming fraud: US man faces five years in prison after confession

In the USA, a man must answer for the accusation of AI-powered streaming fraud. After a confession, he faces several years in prison and a million-dollar fine. He is said to have uploaded hundreds of thousands of AI-generated songs to well-known streaming platforms, only to repeatedly access them himself with an entire bot army. The offenses are said to have been committed between 2017 and 2024. In this way, he collected millions in revenue from the streaming providers.

The prosecution had demanded up to 60 years in prison for the man from the US state of North Carolina. However, due to the man's plea of guilt, the sentence is reduced to a maximum of five years in prison and the confiscation of over eight million US dollars. The verdict is scheduled to be announced on July 29, the responsible judge in New York announced.

Up to 661,440 streams per day faked

The sum of money corresponds to the extrapolated earnings the man is said to have made from royalties for playing his AI-generated songs. The prosecution even speaks of 10 million US dollars in its indictment. At its peak, he is said to have faked 661,440 streams per day with the help of thousands of bot accounts. The platforms affected were Amazon Music, Apple Music, Spotify, and YouTube Music. By distributing the streams across thousands of songs, he circumvented the fraud detection of the platform operators, reports Music Business Worldwide.

The accused initially denied using AI after his arrest in September 2024. He was exposed because the Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC), which distributes streaming royalties in the USA, found the enormous number of his songs suspicious. According to the indictment, there were several moments of suspicion over the years, but the accused rejected them each time.

Massive upfront investment

According to the indictment, the suspect had purchased thousands of fake email accounts to create access to the streaming platforms. For this work, he hired click workers inside and outside the USA. By creating paid family accounts, he was able to further increase the number of plays. As a means of payment, he purchased corporate debit cards from a service provider on a large scale, using false names. He used virtual cloud computers as bots, which repeatedly triggered song plays via macros. Consequently, he had to make massive upfront financial investments to commit the bot fraud.

There is fundamentally nothing against uploading AI-generated songs, although platform operators will make such tracks much more recognizable in the future. However, artificial retrieval is legally considered "conspiracy to commit fraud via network lines." According to the US authority, the man's case is the first such prosecution case in the USA. Internationally, a man from Denmark has already been sentenced to 18 months in prison for similar accusations. An appellate court even increased the prison sentence to two years.

(mki)