October 12, 2026, 9:36 am | Read time: 2 minutes
A U.S. musician has been sentenced to 18 months in prison for a large-scale streaming fraud. According to the prosecutor’s office, 54-year-old Michael Smith collected more than $12 million in royalties over several years. He used thousands of bots to play his music millions of times on streaming services such as Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, and YouTube Music.
How the System Worked
To artificially boost the number of plays, Smith used up to 10,000 automated accounts, according to investigators. Additionally, he reportedly created numerous paid subscriptions under fictitious names. He paid the fees with debit cards that were also registered to fake individuals. In total, he invested more than $1.3 million for this scheme.
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Thousands of AI Songs per Month
Another issue was providing enough music for the bot army. Initially, Smith licensed tracks from other artists. Later, he had up to 10,000 AI-generated songs created each month. He invented artist names and song titles for the releases to make the large volume of music appear credible.
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Millions of Streams from AI Music
According to the prosecutor’s office, the bots generated around 80.9 million streams of these AI tracks in April 2023 alone. The investigation eventually led to charges of fraud and money laundering. Following a plea agreement, Smith has now been convicted of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. In addition to the prison sentence, he must repay approximately $8.1 million.