A man in the United States used AI to create songs, scamming over 8 million dollars in royalties

Today, March 20, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York announced that Michael Smith—a Cornelius, North Carolina resident—has pleaded guilty to his role in a streaming royalty fraud scheme. According to the indictment and court filings, Smith leveraged AI to mass-produce hundreds of thousands of songs. He then operated automated bot accounts to artificially stream these tracks billions of times, mimicking real user listening behavior. Affected platforms include Amazon Music, Apple Music, Spotify, and YouTube Music. Streaming platforms distribute royalties from a shared pool to rights holders based on play counts; large-scale fraudulent traffic siphons legitimate creators’ rightful earnings to fraudsters. To avoid triggering platforms’ abnormal traffic detection, Smith spread bot streams across thousands of tracks, intentionally keeping individual play counts below suspicious peaks. These tactics netted him over $8.09 million in fraudulent royalties. Smith pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and agreed to forfeit $8,091,843.64. The charge carries a maximum five-year prison term; formal sentencing is scheduled for July 29, 2026.