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

News Companies Events

Statistics About NLC Contact us

News Companies Events

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

Image for the article: Musician admits to $10M streaming royalty fraud using AI bots

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

Fri Mar 20 2026

Cybercrime

Entertainment

Fraud

www.bleepingcomputer.com

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. [...]