GoKawiilNorth Carolina man sentenced to 18 months for $8M AI music streaming fraud
Michael Smith of Cornelius, North Carolina, was sentenced to 18 months in prison and ordered to forfeit over $8 million after pleading guilty to wire fraud conspiracy. Between 2017 and 2024 he used 1,040 bot accounts to generate hundreds of millions of fake streams of AI-generated songs uploaded under fictitious artist names on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music and YouTube.