Michael Smith was sentenced on October 6, 2026, after pleading guilty to a scheme that used bot accounts and AI-generated music to collect streaming royalties. The U.S. Department of Justice’s sentencing release calls the technology “super intelligence,” while its 2024 indictment announcement and March 2026 plea announcement called it “artificial intelligence” or “AI.” The releases establish a change in wording, not why it happened or whether it was connected to a Trump administration policy.
What was the first music-streaming fraud case?
On September 4, 2024, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York announced what it called the “First Criminal Case Involving Artificially Inflated Music Streaming.” Its three-count indictment accused Michael Smith of creating AI-generated songs, using bots to stream them billions of times, and fraudulently obtaining more than $10 million in royalties. Those were allegations at the time, not a conviction. Read the 2024 DOJ announcement.
The indictment alleged that the operation began in 2017. Smith allegedly created thousands of accounts and used software to stream songs he owned, spreading plays across many tracks to avoid concentrating suspicious activity on any one song. It further alleged that he later worked with an AI music company CEO and a music promoter to obtain hundreds of thousands of songs. These details describe the government’s charging claims; Smith’s later guilty plea and sentence are the established procedural outcomes.
How did the alleged streaming scheme work?
According to the DOJ’s October 2026 sentencing announcement, Smith used as many as 10,000 bot accounts at once and thousands of AI-generated songs. The alleged scale helped make the streams appear across a broad catalogue rather than as an obvious spike on one track. The indictment announcement reported that Smith allegedly estimated 661,440 streams per day would produce $1,207,128 in annual royalties at one point during the charged period. Those figures were estimates attributed to the alleged scheme, not a general streaming payout rate. Read the sentencing announcement.
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Streaming services distribute royalties proportionately from a pool, according to DOJ. Fraudulent plays can therefore divert money from royalties associated with songs that real listeners streamed. The case was not simply about making fake tracks popular: the alleged bot activity was used to turn artificial plays into real royalty payments.
The sentencing release offered one illustration of the scale: Smith’s AI music received 80.9 million streams from family plans in April 2023, compared with 9.3 million streams for Taylor Swift’s entire YouTube Music catalogue from family-plan streams in that month, according to the DOJ. The comparison is limited to those reported streams and that month; it is not a comparison of total listening across services or formats.
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What happened after the 2024 indictment?
| Date and stage | What DOJ said | Legal status |
|---|---|---|
| September 4, 2024: indictment announcement | More than $10 million in royalties allegedly obtained through artificially inflated streams. | Allegations in a three-count indictment; not a conviction. |
| March 19, 2026: guilty plea | Smith pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. DOJ described more than $8 million in royalties and an agreed forfeiture of $8,091,843.64. | Guilty plea to one conspiracy count. |
| October 6, 2026: sentence | DOJ announced 18 months in prison, two years of supervised release, and forfeiture of $8,091,843.64. | Sentence announced after the guilty plea. |
The amounts differ because they come from different procedural stages and descriptions: the 2024 release reported the indictment’s allegation of more than $10 million, while the 2026 plea and sentencing releases described more than $8 million and the forfeiture amount. They should not be treated as interchangeable measures. The plea announcement is available from the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Why does the sentencing release say “super intelligence”?
The wording changed across the three DOJ announcements. The 2024 charging release referred to “artificial intelligence”; the March 2026 plea release used “artificial intelligence” and “AI-generated”; and the October 2026 sentencing headline and text used “super intelligence.” U.S. Attorney Jamie McDonald said, “Michael Smith exploited super intelligence technology to generate a fraud.”
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That establishes that the October release used the phrase. The releases do not explain its meaning as a technical category, why DOJ adopted it in that announcement, or whether a Trump administration directive or formal rebrand prompted the change. Calling this a Trump-driven AI rebrand goes beyond what these case documents establish.
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What the case establishes—and what it does not
- DOJ described the September 2024 indictment as its first criminal case involving artificially inflated music streaming.
- Smith later pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud; the initial indictment’s allegations should be distinguished from the subsequent plea and sentence.
- DOJ says the scheme used bot accounts and large volumes of songs to generate fraudulent streams and royalty payments.
- The sentencing release announced 18 months in prison, two years of supervised release, and forfeiture of $8,091,843.64.
- DOJ’s phrase “super intelligence” appears in the October 2026 release, but the available case announcements do not establish that it reflects a broader policy or administration rebrand.
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