Streaming fraudster Michael Smith could get 46 months of prison time plus the $8 million in restitution he owes for his AI-driven streaming fraud.
Michael Smith, whose AI-driven music scams stole over $8 million in royalties, argued last week that his crimes were victimless and took such a small slice of the pie that he should not receive prison time. However, the U.S. Attorney General’s Office strongly disagrees with that sentiment, arguing in their latest filing that Smith should be given no less than 46 months of prison time—in addition to the $8 million in restitution he already owes.
As the first U.S. criminal prosecution for AI-driven streaming fraud, the Attorney General warned that a lenient sentence would send the dangerous message that streaming fraud carries no real punishment.
“Smith was the architect of, and led, a sophisticated and multi-faceted fraud scheme over the course of many years to divert musical royalties from legitimate and hard-working songwriters and other rightsholders to himself,” the filing states.
In March, the 54-year-old Smith admitted to having used AI to generate thousands of songs and using bots to stream them billions of times. He was arrested in 2024 and charged with multiple counts over using bots to continuously stream his songs on major streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music as early as 2017. Smith entered a guilty plea on a single count of wire fraud and agreed to pay back over $8 million in royalties.
Wire fraud carries a maximum prison sentence of five years, with federal guidelines recommending between 46 and 57 months, while probation officials recommend a lighter sentence of around 24 months.
Prosecutors have urged the court to impose a harsh sentence for committing AI-assisted fraud to rip off “hard-working and often underpaid” musicians and songwriters. But last week, Smith and his legal team downplayed the severity of his crimes and insisted that he deserved no prison time, as the harm to any single artist was “insignificant.”
It’s a landmark case in the U.S. as the first criminal enforcement over streaming fraud, an issue that has been amplified by the prevalence of AI tools.
