Musician sent to prison for $10 million streaming fraud using AI bots

A 54-year-old North Carolina musician was sentenced to 18 months in prison for collecting more than $10 million in royalties from Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music and YouTube Music in a massive streaming fraud scheme. Michael Smith pleaded guilty after being indicted for fraudulently inflating his songs' listening stats between 2017 and 2024, uploading hundreds of thousands of AI-generated songs.