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First-Ever US AI Music Streaming Fraud Case Ends in Guilty Plea — Michael Smith, $8M, Billions of Fake Streams
Michael Smith, 54, pleaded guilty March 19 in New York federal court to wire fraud conspiracy in the first US criminal prosecution for AI-assisted streaming fraud — generating hundreds of thousands of AI songs and using bots to stream them billions of times on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, and YouTube Music between 2017 and 2024. Smith agreed to forfeit $8 million in proceeds and faces up to five years in prison; sentencing is scheduled for July 29, 2026. Federal prosecutors called it a landmark case establishing criminal liability for AI-generated content used to defraud royalty systems at scale.
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