FBI busts musician’s elaborate AI-powered $10M streaming-royalty heist

RBG@discuss.tchncs.de to Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ@lemmy.dbzer0.com – 61 points – FBI busts musician’s elaborate AI-powered $10M streaming-royalty heist
arstechnica.com

I am just impressed by the idea and execution. Just wow. Too bad he took it too far.

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Definitely an abuse of the system, but I'm struggling to see where criminal law says you can't make a bunch of fake accounts to listen to garbage music.

In agreeing to be paid by music streaming platforms they almost certainly agreed not to do exactly this.

From justice.gov:

SMITH, 52, of Cornelius, North Carolina, is charged with wire fraud conspiracy, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison; wire fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison; and money laundering conspiracy, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

This is a ridiculous law, it might as well be called "money fraud". Justice is a bad joke.

They only take crimes against the rich seriously - what a joke of a country the US is.

In a 2017 email to himself, Smith calculated that he could stream his songs 661,440 times daily, potentially earning $3,307.20 per day and up to $1.2 million annually.

Great idea, but why would you email yourself about it?

I have a friend that I’ve tried to convince using a notes app, but he swears that emailing himself notes and to-do lists is more effective. He’s wrong, but to each their own.

Oh, sure. I get that. Sending yourself reminders is absolutely understandable. Sending yourself documented evidence of your plans to defraud someone is entirely different.

Recently, a bunch of people on tik tok found this "bug" in their banking app where you can write a bad check, then withdraw the funds before it clears... Then started crying about it when their balances updated

Dude definitely thought he discovered a cool new life hack

I mean, if you treat your inbox as a to-do list, that's not that far-fetched

I can definitely follow his logic, but there are better tools available.

Google keep used to (don't use it anymore) store your notes "backed up" by email. You could view all your notes in gmail.

Maybe it was something like that?

I do vaguely remember that. Could be?