The bands were fake and so were the fans. But the scammer was real: Michael Smith was arrested on Wednesday, September 4, the US federal court announced the same day. as told by New York TimesThis American citizen is accused of having uploaded hundreds of thousands of titles created by Artificial Intelligence (AI) to Spotify, Apple Music and other music platforms, and then having created an army of fake accounts in charge of publishing and listening to them repeatedly. This scam would have allowed him to collect at least 10 million dollars (9 million euros) in royalties. A sum that should have benefited “musicians, composers or legitimate song rights holders”outraged federal prosecutor Damian Williams in a press release.
According to the court’s findings, Michael Smith outsourced most of the tasks needed to build the complex fraud scheme, as can be read in the indictment. His partners, a music promoter and head of an artificial intelligence music creation service, whose names are not cited by the courts, helped him produce thousands of songs per week. The fraudster then used software to create fake track names before posting them online.
The other side of the scam remained to be built: the network of fake accounts. According to the indictment, Michael Smith bought thousands of email addresses and then entrusted them to small companies based partly abroad. Their function: to create thousands of listener accounts on various music platforms. These were then used to automatically play the tracks posted online by Michael Smith. Coupled with the use of VPNs (Virtual Private Networks), which gave the impression that users were connecting from different countries, these machines made it possible to generate a large number of taps.
Up to twenty years in prison
The investment paid off. In 2017, Michael Smith emailed himself an estimate of his expected earnings: with 52 hosts, each with 20 machines playing 636 songs a day, he expected to earn more than $1.2 million a year in royalties, or just under €1.1 million. A pessimistic estimate, since in 2024 the man estimated his earnings at $12 million (almost €11 million) in five years.
According to the courts, the fraudster lied several times to music platforms and music distributors. In 2018, one of these actors warned him that after multiple complaints of abuse, his songs would be removed from all platforms. Accusations that he vigorously defended: “This is absolutely false and crazy! …There is absolutely no fraud of any kind! How can I appeal?”
A musician, the man had a credible enough profile to refute the accusations for many years. But not forever. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, the charges against him carry a sentence of up to 20 years in prison.
