18 Apr, 2026

Musician admits to $10M streaming royalty fraud using AI bots

North Carolina musician Michael Smith has pleaded guilty to collecting over $10 million in royalty payments through a massive streaming royalty fraud scheme on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, and YouTube Music. 54-year-old Smith bought hundreds of thousands of songs generated using artificial intelligence (AI) from an accomplice, uploaded them to these streaming platforms, and […]

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