UK Gang Caught After $750K Online Music Fraud Scam

LSDelirious writes "10 individuals in the UK have been arrested in connection with an online fraud gang, whereby the group created several songs, had the songs uploaded to iTunes and Amazon, then used thousands of stolen credit cards to repeatedly purchase the songs from these services. It is estimated that they charged approximately $750,000 worth of fraudulent purchases, netting the group over $300,000 in royalties payments."

Nothing new...

[Manip]

Just traditional money laundering via a slightly new route. They used to do similar things with Auction Houses, they'd list an item of no real value and then buy it. Dirty money into clean money!

Re:Way to think small

[adavies42]

they should have developed a thousand-dollar iphone app instead [wikipedia.org]

Re:Follow the money

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it? A good drop house is a useful thing, and if you fence the goods properly, you're not easily traceable. It requires feet on the ground to catch you.

This, on the other hand, is retarded. There's a simple digital "paper trail" right to your bank.

Copy(right)cat

[nausea_malvarma]

A criminal gang that scams people out of their money with recorded music? Looks like the RIAA is inspiring copycat crimes.

Re:Way to think small

[EdIII]

$30k each just doesn't seem worth it. What a waste of criminal talent.

Talent? These guys are morons. You make it sound like they were Lex Luthor or something. Truthfully, I think Pinky and the Brain would of come up with a better plan.

They created an artificial product. Maybe that is too harsh, I dunno. Their music could be decent for all we know. Putting this product up for sale on iTunes and then generating what was probably 99.99% fraudulent sales was a huge tip off. The fraud investigators would certainly label the musicians as prime suspects with such a percentage.

Follow the money. Good judges do that, and so do good detectives.

The person committing the fraud as the customer was receiving no money, just product. Is it a coincidence that nearly all of the customers were using fraud to obtain the product? Highly unlikely.

The musicians selling their product to these customers, were receiving the money, laundered even.

With so many damaged parties involved, I find it laughable that these criminals thought that nobody would even suspect the "musicians" of fraud and start to investigate them.

So...

[Anonymous Coward]

Do Apple/Amazon keep their cut?

Re:Follow the money

[QuantumG]

If you're a moron, yes.

Money laundering is all about getting suckers to do your banking.

Re:Way to think small

[Antidamage]

You sound like you read way too much into an offhand comment.

Re:Follow the money

[julesh]

But if it is at all possible to shuffle money between bank accounts in an anonymous way (I have no idea whether it really is?)

Yes it is. You use an advanced mechanism that isn't very popular these days, called "cash".

Re:And this is differnt how?

[Anonymous Coward]

Regardless of how you feel about the RIAA and big music, trying to equate their business activities with stealing credits cards and using them to purchase tracks as part of a fraud operation is moronic.

Re:And this is differnt how?

[stewbacca]

Credit card fraud is a crime, regardless of your socioeconomic status, and regardless if you try to dismiss is as "trying to make a living". You don't have a right to etch out "some sort of living" by purchasing stuff with stolen credit cards.

Re:And this is differnt how?

[hmar]

This is NOT copyright infringement. This is fraudulently using someon else's credit card to purchase products. Night and day difference, and the riaa is not involved, as far as I can tell (how can they be? these people put their own music up, and purchased it). The $750,000 is not damages, it is fraudulent charges. By taking this incredibly thin excuse to push your agenda, you discredit it.