Michael Smith’s case began in 2017, when prosecutors say the 54-year-old North Carolina man started creating fake accounts across Amazon Music, Apple Music, Spotify and YouTube Music. Using fraudulent email accounts and debit cards, he built a network of listeners that were not listeners at all: bots programmed to repeatedly play music he claimed to own.¹

Over the next seven years, Smith allegedly paired that machinery with artificial intelligence, generating hundreds of thousands of tracks and spreading automated plays across them to avoid concentrating suspicious activity on any one song. The scale was startling. In April 2023 alone, prosecutors said Smith’s catalogue drew 80.9 million fraudulent streams, compared with 9.3 million streams for Taylor Swift’s entire catalogue in the same period.¹

The scheme ran until Smith was charged in 2024. After pleading guilty, he was sentenced to 18 months in prison and ordered to forfeit $8,091,843.64—the royalties authorities say the operation extracted from streaming platforms between 2017 and 2024.²

For the Justice Department, the sentence was about more than repayment. It said Smith had used increasingly deceptive tactics, lied when confronted by law enforcement, and siphoned money from royalty pools shared by legitimate artists. “For years, Smith orchestrated a sophisticated fraudulent scheme that stole millions of dollars in musical royalties from rights holders,” prosecutors said, urging a punishment that would signal that streaming fraud carries “significant punishment.”¹

Smith’s lawyers saw a different danger: a first-of-its-kind prosecution turning one man into a symbol. They argued that he did not personally pocket the full $8 million, called for probation, and said prison would delay his ability to repay the forfeiture. Smith, they said, was “profoundly sorry” and had been offered music-production work. Their central complaint was that the government was punishing him for the “ills of an industry.”¹