Man Charged With Music Streaming Fraud in 2024 Pleads Guilty, Awaits Prison
- Martina
- 31 March 2026, Tuesday
An AI-assisted streaming fraud case from 2024 may be nearing its conclusion, as the defendant has pleaded guilty to flooding streaming platforms with hundreds of thousands of AI-generated songs and using software to inflate streams. Let’s explore what is now being called the first-ever criminal prosecution for AI-assisted streaming fraud in the United States.
Streaming Wire Fraud Expected to Result in Up to 5 Years in Prison
Over the past few years, streaming fraud has become a widely discussed topic in the music industry. We’ve heard stories about fake artists and Spotify’s presumed “elaborate internal program” to create them, and read plenty about the dangers and implications of artificial streaming for artists. With advances in AI, the range of what can be done with technology is expanding, and that raises concerns about streaming fraud as well.
We first reported on Michael Smith’s case in September 2024, when he was charged with fraudulently earning over $10 million in royalty payments by generating up to 661,440 fake streams per day from 2017 to 2024 using AI-generated songs he created. Overall, he faced three felony counts: wire fraud, wire conspiracy fraud, and money laundering conspiracy.
According to the charging documents, Smith created thousands of bot accounts on streaming platforms such as Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Music, and YouTube Music, and used software to continuously generate streams of songs he owned. Later, he turned to AI to boost the volume of songs to make the scheme work. In the end, he was distributing artificial streams across hundreds of thousands of songs on all platforms, likely to avoid triggering the platforms’ anti-fraud detection systems.
Now, a year and a half later, Smith has pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud before the U.S. District Court, making him one of the first to be successfully prosecuted for AI-related fraud in the music business. The charge carries a maximum sentence of 5 years in prison. It’s important to note that the punishment is significantly lower than the combined 60 years he previously faced for all three felony counts (each with a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison). Smith also agreed to pay over $8 million in forfeiture. He is scheduled to be sentenced on July 29, 2026.
“Michael Smith generated thousands of fake songs using artificial intelligence and then streamed those fake songs billions of times,” US attorney Jay Clayton said in a statement. “Although the songs and listeners were fake, the millions of dollars Smith stole was real. Millions of dollars in royalties that Smith diverted from real, deserving artists and rights holders.”
An important entity in identifying and uncovering the fraud scheme was the Mechanical Licensing Collective (The MLC), which distributes mechanical royalties from streaming in the U.S.
“Today’s news highlights the serious threat that streaming fraud poses to the music industry and the important role The MLC plays in confronting it. The MLC will continue to invest in anomaly detection and fraud prevention to protect our Members, and we will continue to collaborate with other industry organizations and law enforcement to protect all songwriter royalties,” said the MLC in a statement.
In our previous articles, we discussed various cases related to streaming fraud, including a 2024 incident where a man in Denmark was sentenced to 18 months in prison for using bots to inflate stream counts on songs across platforms like Apple Music, Spotify, and YouSee Musik.
Smith’s case is likely the most high-profile criminal prosecution for streaming fraud worldwide so far, and serves as a warning that streaming fraud should not be taken lightly – and it’s definitely not something you should consider if you’re an artist producing your music. While prison time might be the strictest form of punishment, other consequences – such as paying fines, having your earnings frozen, having your music removed from a platform, or being banned from the platform entirely – can also be incredibly damaging both personally and professionally.
At the same time, this case demonstrates that streaming platforms and industry professionals are actively working to reduce and prevent artificial streaming in all its forms. These efforts aim to protect authentic artists’ music and help them earn the income they deserve.
These efforts are becoming increasingly critical as AI lowers the barrier to producing large volumes of content, making detection and enforcement a central challenge for the industry moving forward.
Martina is a Berlin-based music writer and digital content specialist. She started playing the violin at age six and spent ten years immersed in classical music. Today, she writes about all things music, with a particular interest in the complexities of the music business, streaming, and artist fairness.
