A North Carolina man has been jailed for scamming Spotify out of $8 million by making AI songs and using bots to fuel exorbitant streams.
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Michael Smith was sentenced to 18 months in prison for his role in a scheme to defraud music streaming platforms and musicians of royalty payments, the Department of Justice announced.
His sentencing marks the first-ever criminally charged super-intelligence-assisted music streaming fraud, the DOJ announced.
Smith pled guilty on March 19, 2026, to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud before U.S. District Judge John G. Koeltl, who imposed his 18-month sentence.
"Michael Smith exploited super intelligence technology to generate a fraud," said U.S. Attorney Jamie McDonald. "By flooding music streaming platforms with automated bots in the place of consumers, and fake songs in the place of creativity, Smith robbed millions in royalty payments from genuine artists and their fans. This Office is committed to ensuring the integrity of all markets and protecting the public from those who use super intelligence for fraud."
Fraudster Used Bots to Scam Spotify, Apple Music Out of Millions
Smith uploaded AI-generated tracks to multiple streaming platforms, including Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music. He then used bots to stream each song billions of times. The fraudulent scheme raked in millions in royalties.
According to TechSpot, Smith admitted to using 52 cloud service accounts with access to 20 bots. This means that he had 1,040 AI agents at his disposal.
Connected to VPNs, these bots could stream roughly 636 songs per day, totalling around 661,440 daily plays for Smith.
The Department of Justice noted that in April 2023, Taylor Swift's music received 9.3 million plays on YouTube Music. Astonishingly, Smith's AI-generated songs were played 80.9 million times on YouTube Music in the same period.
Smith was not penalized for creating AI music, which, to human artists' chagrin, is legal. Instead, he was sentenced for the fraudulent means used to monetize the songs.
As part of his sentencing, the tech-savvy criminal was ordered to forfeit $8,091,843.64. He will also face two years of supervised release after completing his sentence.
