“The 12 have been charged with various offences after an investigation carried out with help from the FBI,” Oates reports. “The alleged fraud involved the use of a US firm to upload tracks to iTunes and Amazon, and the use of stolen credit cards to buy the tracks.”
Oates reports, “Amazon and Apple unwittingly paid out royalties to the gang totalling $300,000. The offences are believed to have happened between September 2008 and January 2009.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Lava_Head_UK” for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Take: Gee, how’d they every track down that band of geniuses?
The scheme is as stupid as it was ingenious. If I understood the article correctly, the geniuses did the following:
1. Recorded and produced songs or whatever;
2. Uploaded it to iTunes/Amazon (probably using something like CD-Baby or similar service);
3. Created some iTunes account(s) using stolen credit cards;
4. Bought the above-mentioned tracks in heavy volume using those iTUnes accounts with stolen credit cards;
5. Received payment from CD-Baby on the sales of those tracks
Notice how everything is neatly documented leaving a perfectly clear digital paper trail. What geniouses!
(that was for those who hadn’t had their morning coffee yet and didn’t get the MDN take right away)…
This is pretty funny.
It’s right up there with the guy who held up a liquor store, and showed his ID to the clerk to verify his age when he demanded a bottle along with the loot!
If ya can’t do the time don’t do the crime.