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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."
I say we go back to the outdated model of printing CDs and using stolen credit cards to buy boxes of them. So much easier, and they would never have been caught. No really.
A new creative way to get cash off credit cards. Woop. At least it's better than getting goods delivered to a drop house and selling them at a pawn shop.
How we know is more important than what we know.
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!
When compared to the 'guys who stick up for artists (and take 95+ % of the earnings' these guys are saints. Give them a medal! At least they made their own music!
The Spice Girls remain at large.
...or stolen credit card *numbers*? TFA and TFS claim "cards". How exactly to you steal thousands of cards?
...and where can I get a torrent of them?
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
they should have developed a thousand-dollar iphone app instead
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg
Yeah, they should have just put the song on a Russian MP3 site and sued them for $1.65 trillion
Remember when they first came in in the UK?
The premium rate phone number renter was paid their cut monthly by BT.
But ordinary subscribers are billed quarterly.
So here's how some people made a lot of money.....
Start two companies. One of them rents a load of premium rate numbers and phone lines. The other rents a load of ordinary phone lines.
Company 2 then calls Company 1's premium rate lines incessently.
For three months in a row, Co1 gets cheques from BT.
At the start of Month 4 both companies get phone bills.
At around the start of Month 6 Co 2 gets final reminders, and is possibily cut off from service and threatened with all sorts of legal actions.
But, no matter, both Companies have vanished with around 6 hefty BT cheques.
Profit!
A criminal gang that scams people out of their money with recorded music? Looks like the RIAA is inspiring copycat crimes.
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.
You sound like you read way too much into an offhand comment.
The BBC is reporting that nine people were arrested. Six men and three women. And not ten like many other articles are reporting.
That's because Keyser Soze got away.
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.
I think "from the felonious-monk dept." has a better ring to it.
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Hmm, I'd have thought quite the reverse. iTunes and Amazon are the merchants here as I understand it; they've charged the cards and hold the funds. Presumably they have then paid out commission to these crooks for the "sales".
So now that the fraud has been spotted, the card holders will obviously do chargebacks, and since they obviously had no part in these transactions their card issuers will refund them, same as for any other fraudulent use of a card.
And as for any other chargeback, the banks will simply recover the money from the merchant, who as always bears 100% of the losses (plus transaction fees probably).
So as I see it: Apple and Amazon lose the money, and are out not only their profit, but the commissions paid to the crooks, and any other costs they have incurred as a part of these transactions. They will presumably attempt to recover what they can during these thieves prosecution.
The victims of card fraud are not the card holders (as long as they spot the fraudulent transaction), but whatever poor sod charged the cards and is now out the goods/services they provided.
This sig all sigs devours
that's nothing, in the process of pulling off this scam, they lost $2 billion to piracy! nobody's safe!
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Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
Let's see, at $150K per song, that comes out to 5 songs.
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.
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.