U.S. man sentenced to 18 months for fraudulently inflating plays with AI-generated songs

1. 08:00
   网页TechRadar· Discussion

   Man jailed for using 1,000 bots to fraudulently make $8m from his AI music(opens the original post in a new tab)

1. 09:06
   网页IT之家· Discussion

   U.S. man sentenced to 18 months in prison and ordered to forfeit $8 million for using AI to defraud music copyright royalties(opens the original post in a new tab)
2. 02:16
   网页The New York Times · Technology· Discussion

   A.I. Music Fraudster Who Drew Millions in Royalties Is Sentenced to 18 Months(opens the original post in a new tab)

1. 13:08
   网页cnBeta· Discussion

   Verdict announced in AI-driven streaming fraud case: American man sentenced to 18 months in prison for music platform fraud.(opens the original post in a new tab)
2. 10:38
   Unite.AI

   Michael Smith sentenced to 18 months in prison for AI music streaming fraud

   The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York announced that Michael Smith, 54, was sentenced on October 6, 2026, to 18 months in prison, two years of supervised release, and was ordered to forfeit $8,091,843.64 for using thousands of bot accounts on Amazon Music, Apple Music, Spotify, and YouTube Music to inflate streams of AI-generated songs he owned, defrauding more than $8 million in royalties. Prosecutors described the case as the first criminal prosecution by the Department of Justice of superintelligence-assisted music streaming fraud. The fraud ran from 2017 to 2024, with Smith registering bot accounts using fake emails and fraudulently obtained debit cards, using as many as 10,000 accounts at a time, and spreading traffic across thousands of songs to evade platform anomaly detection. According to the indictment, beginning in 2018 he worked with the CEO of an AI music company and a music promoter, receiving thousands of AI-generated songs each week totaling hundreds of thousands, and fabricated song titles and artist names for them.

3. 10:20
   网页Techmeme· Discussion

   A US federal court sentences Michael Smith, who pleaded guilty to using bots to stream AI-generated songs, making $8M+ in royalties, to 18 months in prison (Bill Donahue/Billboard)(opens the original post in a new tab)

1. Time not given
   US Attorney’s Office, Southern District of New York

   A man in North Carolina, United States, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for using AI-generated songs to inflate streaming numbers in a fraud scheme.

   The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York announced that Michael Smith, 54, of North Carolina, was sentenced to 18 months in prison, followed by two years of supervised release, and ordered to forfeit $8,091,843.64 for his involvement in music streaming fraud. He pleaded guilty on March 19, 2026, to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Prosecutors said that between 2017 and 2024, Smith first created thousands of fake accounts, then used software to have these bot accounts continuously play songs he owned, and used AI to generate hundreds of thousands of songs to circumvent platform anti-fraud policies, sometimes using up to 10,000 bot accounts simultaneously. These AI-generated songs were streamed billions of times, allowing him to illegally obtain more than $8 million in royalties. Prosecutors cited an example: in April 2023, Taylor Swift's entire catalog was streamed 9.3 million times on YouTube Music family plans, while in the same month, Smith's bot accounts used family plans to stream his AI-generated music 80.9 million times.

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