The songs that the AI CEO provided to Smith originally had file names full of randomized numbers and letters such as “n_7a2b2d74-1621-4385-895d-b1e4af78d860.mp3,” the DOJ noted in its detailed press release.
When uploading them to streaming platforms, including Amazon Music, Apple Music, Spotify, and YouTube Music, the man would then change the songs’ names to words like “Zygotes,” “Zygotic,” and “Zyme Bedewing,” whatever that is.
The artist naming convention also followed a somewhat similar pattern, with names ranging from the normal-sounding “Calvin Mann” to head-scratchers like “Calorie Event,” “Calms Scorching,” and “Calypso Xored.”
To manufacture streams for these fake songs, Smith allegedly used bots that stream the songs billions of times without any real person listening. As with similar schemes, the bots’ meaningless streams were ultimately converted to royalty paychecks for the people behind them.
So why arrested? This is what AI is for right? Oh, he screwed over the wrong people didn’t he?
Or screwed everyone over too little; if he had screwed everyone for 10 billion he would be heralded as a genius.
Would been on the cover of Forbes.
Stealing is only wrong if you steal from rich people. It’s perfectly acceptable if the victims are poor. /s
Not /s sadly.
Just look at Bernie Madoff.
Looking at you Thomas Kincade. Investments my ass.
The same Bernie Madoff that died in jail?
Yes. He got locked up for stealing from rich people.
Was anyone really stealing? The ads were served, right? The checks for the ads were paid.
I hate ads but their designed to be shown to people and intentionally using bots to inflate ad views is very clearly fraud. Silicon valley had something similar with bot farms to fake user engagement to take in VC funding. You take money in exchange for some kinda engagement metric which you’re faking.
Yeah. I’m totally cool with ripping off advertising companies.
Fuck them in particular.
Ah shit. You’ve got a legal point.
The ads were served, right?
No, and that’s exactly the point that makes it a fraud (not stealing)
In addition to the others that replied to you:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/16/malta-car-bomb-kills-panama-papers-journalist
The owners made an example of the journalist that broke the Panama Papers story.
wanting to see if the killer was ever caught. Daphne Caruana Galizia Killer Caught After a thorough investigation, several individuals have been implicated and charged in connection with the assassination of Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia on October 16, 2017. Key developments include:
Vincent Muscat’s Confession: In March 2021, Vincent Muscat, one of the three men accused of the murder, confessed to the crime in court. He described how he and two others, brothers George and Alfred Degiorgio, used binoculars and a telescope to follow Caruana Galizia’s movements, eventually planting and triggering the car bomb that killed her. Life Sentence Sought: In August 2021, prosecutors sought a life sentence for Yorgen Fenech, a businessman accused of masterminding the murder. Fenech has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial. Malta State Responsibility: An independent inquiry, concluded in July 2021, found the Maltese state responsible for Caruana Galizia’s murder due to its creation of a “culture of impunity” that allowed her killers to believe they would face minimal consequences. Arrests and Charges: Several individuals have been arrested and charged in connection with the murder, including: Vincent Muscat (pleaded guilty and received a 15-year sentence in February 2021) George Degiorgio (charged and awaiting trial) Alfred Degiorgio (charged and awaiting trial) Yorgen Fenech (charged and awaiting trial) Melvin Theuma (turned state witness and received a pardon in November 2019) Investigation Ongoing: The investigation is ongoing, with authorities continuing to gather evidence and build cases against those implicated in the murder. Timeline of Key Events
October 16, 2017: Daphne Caruana Galizia killed in a car bomb attack December 2017: Arrests of suspects, including Vincent Muscat, George Degiorgio, and Alfred Degiorgio November 2019: Melvin Theuma, a taxi driver and alleged middleman, receives a pardon and becomes a state witness March 2021: Vincent Muscat confesses to the murder in court August 2021: Prosecutors seek a life sentence for Yorgen Fenech July 2021: Independent inquiry finds Malta state responsible for Caruana Galizia’s murder Note: The investigation is ongoing, and new developments may emerge as the case proceeds.
She was a journalist who used the Panama Papers to expose high level corruption in Malta. Galizia did not break the Panama Papers story, she’s impressive enough without people making stuff up about her.
Removed by mod
Or Google/Reddit/Meta.
He was arrested because he faked a ton of information related to his accounts to make it look like many people were doing it. I love that he gamed the system, but also it sounds like he totally committed financial fraud while doing so.
There are other people who have gamed the system without also committing fraud
He didn’t get arrested for AI generated music. He got arrested for faking multiple accounts to upload music and using bots to generate fake listens, thus stealing millions of dollars. If he did the same thing with music he actually wrote and played, he would still be arrested.
Exactly. He “stole” millions from companies stealing billions, and thus was eaten.
I don’t think the illegal part has anything to do with the AI
This is going to be something like fraud, larceny, etc.
Fuck it. This scam was clever enough that I appreciate and sorta admire it.
No.
Music play-farming has been a thing for probably almost a decade by now.
Spotify divides the huge amount of money they get from subscribers each month, evenly among all the plays during that month.
Someone figured out ages ago, that since spotify has a free tier, that means that if you can get some tracks on spotify as an artist, you can then create an army of free-tier bot accounts and massively inflate the share of the money you get paid as an “artist”.
Of course, this comes at the cost of everyone elses legit plays becoming worth less. Its an absolutely disgusting scam and Spotify has been ignoring it happening for years.
Adding AI generation into the mix is barely an innovation.
Edit: And if you’re wondering how it works with services that don’t have a free tier, it is done by hijacking peoples real accounts, then having them stream the relevant tracks over and over. Either by stealing entire accounts, or infecting devices that are already logged in with malware that will open the relevant app/website and play the tracks over and over.
The solution, to me, would seem to be to divide the revenue up on an individual basis instead. Does some sort of licensing issue prevent this? I’d think that the legitimate record labels would want to fix this loophole ASAP so that they can get more money.
AFAIK YT Music does this. The money from your subscription gets divided amongst whatever you listened to.
That still wouldn’t address the stolen account problem, but yes, it’d be a huge improvement.
I have no idea why Spotify still sticks to this massively exploitable model, except for the fact that it MASSIVELY inflates their stats for investors and advertisers.
exceot for the fact that it MASSIVELY inflates their stats for investors and advertisers.
Ah yes, the Reddit strategy.
That’s super cool to know. Seems more fair than the way Spotify does it?
Google has been doing it with YouTube for as long as there has been a paid version of it. If you’re a premium subscriber, the creators you watch get a portion of your subscription based on how much you watch them. It’s why premium subscriber views are worth more than free views.
That’s why IMO YouTube premium is worth it. My subscription supports the creators I watch and I get no ads.
Fuck Spotify, they can eat a bag of dicks after renewing Joe cum-guzzling Rogan for $200million. They deserve to have all of their money stolen.
Spotify is losing nothing. They take their cut either way.
The only people getting their money stolen are real artists. Their share of the income shrinks as these scammers inflate the number of plays that the money is shared between.
I didn’t realize it was a thing. Thanks for taking the time to explain!
It seems like it would be super easy for them to close this loophole. If you use the model that free tier listeners (real ones) will listen to about the same distribution of songs as the paying listeners, then just stop counting all free tier listeners and multiply the amount paid out for the pay-tier listeners by an appropriate factor to make payouts the same as before.
Y’know this guy seems intelligent enough to come up with this scheme, but not intelligent enough to keep a low profile. I honestly don’t understand that.
Personally, I’d do the math to pay myself a living wage with this so that my actual work salary is nothing but a cherry on top; manage it so it seems like hype is ebbing and flowing in a natural way. If you ever figure out a way to break the system like this, you should never act in a way that draws attention to yourself.
I imagine quite a few folks have done this. You don’t hear about everyone that got away with it but you definitely hear about those that get caught.
It’s like the person who figured out the free gas card hack and let her friends use it. If she’d kept it herself, she’d still get free gas.
Just like in this case, it isn’t straight forward. She wasn’t simply “letting her friends use it”, she was selling use of the trick.
If you ever figure out a way to break the system like this, you should never act in a way that draws attention to yourself.
There was a guy who robbed banks and he wasn’t caught for decades because he just lived an ordinary working-class lifestyle. Cheap little apartment, no fancy car etc. etc.
Once you have to put that amount of effort and attention in for a reasonable income… you are just doing a job… a job no-one benefits from. So it won’t be satisfying to do. No longer beating the system, just beating yourself.
I thought the same, but it’s at the cost of real artists who are struggling to survive in a harsh market, so it still hurts. Sadly, this man isn’t unique. There are many Spotify listening farms listening to fake artists with AI generated songs just over 30sec which is the minimal listening requirement to get payed. And Spotify does nothing, as they get more money too.
I can appreciate a well performed scheme or crime, but only if it steals from the rich and big corps. In this case, it steals from honest artists who give us amazing music while mostly being under paid on a regular basis, with the exception here and there.
Stealing from the poor is really low. Only the biggest assholes are capable of doing that. (looks at all the billionaires)
Ah. I thought this was an isolated incident. I understand, and agree with, your point.
You don’t need those commas in that sentence. It makes you sound like Christopher Walken 😅
I’ve got a fever, and the only prescription, is more cowbell.
When I first read your comment about this scheme keeping money from artists I was skeptical. But, yup! It is right there on Spotify’s website:
We distribute the net revenue from Premium subscription fees and ads to rightsholders.
Now, granted a bunch of those “rightsholders” are likely big corporate record labels but your point stands. The little guy is getting screwed, too.
Though, adding to your final thought, I bet if it was only the little guy getting screwed and not the corpos I bet DOJ wouldn’t have cared.
See this video for more info about these scams and how Spotify is enabling them and protects them.
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I think you’re confused about who got hurt by the scheme. Billion dollar streaming platforms fucking over artists don’t need to be defended.
Who’s defending the streaming platforms?
If you read my comment again, you can see I noted that Spotify is in on it. They profit too from these schemes. All those bots listening to 30sec AI songs playlists are running on Spotify premium accounts so Spotify won’t do anything to fight fraud. They take 30%.
I never defended any platform, I only defended the artists. So I guess the confused one is you, my friend.
Not sure how this is a crime… breach of TOS, sure, but a crime?
What law is being broken here?
If his fake bands are being paid for bot clicks, that’s a problem for the platforms to figure out. They need to examine their TOS.
Try to overthrow the US government? You can still be president. Break a companies arbitrary TOS? Police are at your door to take you away for a long time.
That just shows which of these two roles hold a higher regard in US judicial system.
Rent free…
Well, of course. A president attempting to overthrow the government is a huge deal, you fetid fucking moron.
But nuthin hayuh-pinned! It wuz aint teefuh! Reeuhnt freeee…
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Interesting instance.
It might be because I’m drunk, but Trump-posting from “lemmy.packitsolutions.net” is genuinely hilarious. It’s giving Four Seasons Total Landscaping.
What law is being broken here?
He stepped onto the rich people’s turf. We plebs are supposed to stay in our thatch huts beyond their line of sight.
Straight to jail.
I’m not a lawyer but this sounds like a pretty textbook definition of fraudulent business practice to me.
It’s fraud by false representation the U.K. Fraud is basically whenever you misuse a system for undue profit. The terms are very broad. “You know it when you see it” kind of thing.
I would assume it is Fraud
Not sure how this is a crime… breach of TOS, sure, but a crime?
What law is being broken here?
Not curious enough to actually read the article, eh?
Indicted on three counts involving money laundering and wire fraud
One may argue about money laundering but it’s pretty clearly fraud.
That’s just a generic indictment. And it’s allegedly. How do you perform wire fraud if a corporation legally paid you for a service?
Yeah I read another article on this and it’s very unclear what was illegal. If I had to guess they’re getting him on the technicalities of the process rather than on the actual streaming.
Edit: so I looked it up and realized wire fraud is “electronic” fraud, not bank wiring - Online definition
Which given the way the guy did it definitely seems to meet that definition.
Its theft, which is against the law to do against a company or person. Its similar to trading in empty boxes at GameStop or sending back boxes full of rocks to amazon.
Although most people seem to just pick a side based on whether they think that company should exist or not.
What law is being broken here?
The law of “don’t take money from the rich and powerful; only they take
theiryour money”.
This is what Spotify was made for so I dont really see the issue. He made the music and the listeners, just look at that engagement you love so much!
Imagine something like a DDOS attack. But it’s fans throwing AI listeners behind artists they love to boost them.
Imagine if fans shaped the music industry instead of the other way around?
Now you’re playing with power
I firmly believe that VR won’t have fully developed until we have power gloves that work like they did in those commercials.
People would very quickly figure out all the adverts being streamed to those accounts weren’t translating into sales, and they’d know something was amiss.
How do you prove that your ad campaign is working?
That’s the neat part- you don’t!
https://freakonomics.com/podcast/does-advertising-actually-work-part-2-digital-ep-441/
He found a flaw in the system and exploited it. Although he didn’t do anything particularly wrong, the tools he used allowed him to do it. Yet, somehow he has to pay the consequences and the companies that made the tools to exploit the system are not liable. Got it.
America’s darling Jeff Bezos exploited a flaw in his book suppliers policies to gain an unfair edge on competitors in the early days of Amazon. Best business man ever: give him the key to the city and a dick-shaped rocket ship.
He also got rich daddy and rich friend money to get money for his totally original and non-derivative idea of “selling things online”. Maybe that’s where this guy went wrong? No rich daddy?
They wouldn’t be real capitalists (and boomers) if they didn’t pull the ladder up behind them.
This is hard to verify on Google. What did he do?
The “selling things online” idea had been tried repeatedly before Amazon, and always failed. What Bezos did was find a way to actually (eventually) make money at it. That was a business strategy tour de force that was quite impressively executed. That’s not to say that Bezos is a good employer or a nice person. But it’s often the case that it’s not the originality of the idea that matters, as much as how it’s executed.
Umm… eBay was around before amazon and was largely successful. So no, he isn’t a ground-breaker, nor am I suggesting eBay was either. And yeah you can talk about differences between their platforms but my point still stands.
All of these types “stand on the shoulders of giants” as they say. Except the giant is the taxpayer money that created the fertile ground that allowed their wealth in the first place. (E.g. the internet) And when they’re sufficiently successful, they love pulling up that ladder you and I and everyone else paid for.
Private profits, public losses. Same as it ever was.
What.
If he used python for creating the bots, should python creators go to jail?
Nah he is saying the streaming services should fix their flaw / the guy shouldn’t have consequences for what he did, as it was all inputted in a legal way it seems.
Yeah but he is messing with rich people’s money and that is a #1 no no. If he was scamming poor people no one would have cared.
I mean hopefully they’ll drop the case, and fix the underlying issues to ensure the artists get paid, and the scams don’t continue. The world isn’t that nice though is it.
That’s the outcome that seems most logical. I want to see real artists get paid for creating real music. The current system is too prohibitive and unrewarding.
If an artist spends hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars creating their work, only to see a return of maybe a few dollars that’s a big problem.
If someone can use AI to game that same system for millions of dollars by creating loads of fake music in a fraction of the time; that’s a symptom of the big problem.
The current system of streaming just isn’t beneficial to artists. I imagine it’s not great for movies either. Yet, these companies are taking in HUGE profits. It was only a matter of time before someone tried to take advantage of a loophole.
If you think about it, it’s kind of like reverse piracy.
This is what fucked Bernie Madoff.
If this person had gone to VC’s with a pitch for ‘AI listening model’ with the explanation that “Now musicians can up load their songs to streaming services and AI will listen to make sure their pitch and tonality is accurate and that the beat is correct.” or some bullshit like that. Then it would have been ‘legal’
That would be a completely different piece of software. It didn’t check their pitch or their tonality or their beat. It was barely an AI.
All it did was listened to the music.
So yes if he had written a completely different piece of software that did something completely different he could have pitched it completely differently and the outcome could have been completely different.
Exactly. The flaw is in the streaming service. They say “upload your music and make money” while skimming the lions share of the profits. But if they use tools that are openly available to all, i.e. generative AI (which uses copyrighted works for it generational algorithms) AND the Streaming service systems themselves, somehow this user is at fault because they don’t like the way he did it and the amount he uploaded. It seems to me it’s a problem with the system and not the user.
I think you’re missing the key part of the problem. It isn’t the AI that’s the issue.
The problem is that he was being paid for how many listeners his AI songs got. But he used bots to “listen” to the songs. Nobody actually listened to his AI music.
The flaw in the system was that they couldn’t detect his bots. (And the bots are not AI)
If money is people ( citizens united ish ) , Then playing this music 9ver speakers to your dollar bills would legally be a listen?
Wow. I’m a hobbyist musician. I have ~12 million listens across various streaming services and have made a whopping $45 in the two years since I finally released ~25 years worth of material. (Which is a lot of why it’s my hobby and not a living.)
I can’t imagine the numbers this guy had to pull off to make that much.
Send me a link and I can get you to ~12 million and 1 listens.
Searching my username should do it. Not sure what streaming services you’re subscribed to. It’s all on YouTube, too.
How obvious is it that it’s a bot?
Me? Honestly, I think it would be obvious to any discerning listener what music is actually made by a person, and what music is AI generated, but really, there’s so much music out there of wildly varying quality thanks to accessibility of production tools these days, it probably is literally impossible to tell the difference anymore.
I think it would be obvious to any discerning listener what music is actually made by a person
I’m not so sure anymore. Udio’s output is more obvious but Suno has gotten scarily good. I’ll still always crave the human element though and I make my music for myself.
I have ~12 million listens across various streaming services
The great thing about bots is that they can listen to every song on file, 24/7/365, and you can spin up as many of them as you like. 12 million is nothing.
I have to wonder about the logistics. He can’t be running them on his own single Internet connection. Or could VPNs handle it so it would appear his listens are coming from all over the world? $10M is a lot of money. How long did it take to amass that?
Based on your numbers, ~260k plays per dollar. The person in the submission would have to get ~2600 billions plays to get $10 million.
Something does seem right with those numbers.
There are people on forums doing the same thing as the person in the submission. 1 person with ~30 phones can generate about 15-20k streams in a day doing it manually.
Humble brag alert
A little bit, for sure. Tempered harshly by the fact I’ve spent thousands of hours and thousands of units of cash on a hobby that paid me back $45. Good thing I don’t do it for the money!
I was just kidding. I’m very jealous. I’ve spent thousands and have nothing to show for it. Maybe a hundred bucks from live shows 20 years ago.
How is this illegal? Sounds legit to me.
I use AI to answer ai generated emails at work all the time. I also use AI to design buildings that will never house people, but computer systems. It’s all a shell game folks!!!
Probably the bots listening part. The point for the royalties is to get people to use the software and pay for it
Guess they’ll have to shut down reddit since they have their analytics boosted by large amounts of bot activity.
The whole point of advertisers paying reddit for ad space is so people will see the ads.
Reddit explicitly allow bots; Spotify does not - that’s the difference.
Reddit explicitly allow bots; Spotify does not - that’s the difference.
Should just be fraud right?
oh look they care about it now it’s affecting them
i mean this is the system we got set up isnt it?
Maybe a stupid question but… what exactly was illegal about this? I’m sure there were ToS or EULAs violated, but what law is he being charged on?
3rd sentence of the article:
Indicted on three counts involving money laundering and wire fraud, the Charlotte-area man faces a maximum of 20 years per charge.
If you follow the article to the press release:
SMITH, 52, of Cornelius, North Carolina, is charged with wire fraud conspiracy, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison; wire fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison; and money laundering conspiracy, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
Those are the charges yes, but how is this any different than what all sorts of corporations do
The difference is he was a poor trying to pull himself up. Corporations are glorious entities that can do no wrong in American law.
Ah thanks. I didn’t follow to the release page and just skimmed the article, should have read closer.
It’s fraud I’m assuming. They fake “plays” for Spotify to reward by sending payment, but these plays were people that did not exist. Spotify was paying for ghosts to essentially steam music
Facebook and other social media corporations use AI bots to generate “views” to inflate their traffic numbers to entice advertisers. They also use bots to piss people off and drive “engagement.”. Which is also fraud.
Its not wrong when a corporation does it its capitalism. When an individual does it its crime.
Can you imagine how exciting it would be though when this actually started to work? This probably started as a side project, with a dude saying like, nahhh this could never work.
Until suddenly it did
<play rock guitar riff>
The butlerian jihad is missing the point here.
The fraud is using bots (not AI just plain python with selenium or something like that. Sorry) for making fake listeners.
AI here is just some coat to hide the fraud a little better, but nothing more.
^
Futurama had it right, spammers are the ultimate destroyers.
Do they insert advertisements?
If so then the real fraud is false viewings of advertisements.
Which upsets the advertisers of course.
Maybe he broke terms of service with the streaming companies but they should be pursuing him in civil courts. This feels like abuse of the criminal justice system to retrieve money for companies that were negligent in how they were running their streaming businesses.
This guy produced music and he alsp streamed the music even if it was bots at industrial scale. He seemingly met the criteria needed to get money from the streamers. I’m not a lawyer at all but on cursory look at the definition and elements of wire fraud, I guessing this will hinge on whether this was a “material deception” - but he produced actual music and he streamed it, so is it?
Also i wonder whether it can be proven that the intent was to “defraud” rather than take advantage / game a system.
It feels like the tax payer is bearing the cost of prosecuting someone for a dispute between a person and the multi billion dollar music industry.
Also the music industry trying to paint this as theft of money from other artists is a bullshit - the streaming fees are supposedly divided out proportionately from overall streaming. He caused more streaming so the pot was bigger, and he took a proportionate share of that bigger pot. And any disproportionate sharing reflects the shitty practice’s of the streamers and the big music rights holders who are essentially monopolies squeezing out the smaller competitors from the system.
Yes but you see the companies he defrauded are big and he is small.
Dude, the music industry was accusing the US public of theft of music worth hundreds of trillions of $$$ back in the early 2000s. They started mailing random people with $250,000 fine PER SONG PIRATED. I had a friend with like half the Amazon music library on his home computer.
They do not fucking care and yes, have lobbied every politician and AG to be in their pockets.
I don’t buy that. I think it’s fraud. Yeah, the victims of the fraud are not nice people, but the law is supposed to protect all, not just the nice people. This isn’t “gaming the system,” it’s fraud. Uploading the AI-generated songs is fine. The problem was the fake listeners. That’s where the real fraud is.
My city has a modest bus service they contract out to a private company to operate. At the front of the buses, there are scanners that count the number of people that enter the bus. These passenger counts are then baked in to what the company is paid for their services to operate the city’s bus system.
In theory, the contractor company could park a bus somewhere, set up a conga line of people, and just have thousands of phantom passengers board a bus, and then try to bill the city based on these inflated statistics. If they did that, I would absolutely hope they would be charged with fraud.
The law isn’t stupid. There’s a reason laws are enforced by judges, not algorithms. What this person did was little different than hacking a bank account and just stealing money from it. Yes, you could say, “they didn’t do anything wrong, they’re just gaming the system!” You could just as well call guessing someone’s password and stealing their money “gaming the system.” After all, is there anything on the bank’s login page that explicitly tells you not to enter someone else’s account and transfer their money to yours? No judge in a million years would buy that.
This was effectively just a hack. This guy had to create thousands of phantom people to pretend to listen to songs. He was clearly not making any good-faith attempt at making music and was just trying to exploit a weakness in their system design to extract money from them that he didn’t earn. The law thankfully doesn’t work on a standard of “well, they never told me I couldn’t.” Cases like this take into consideration the totality of the circumstances and weigh whether it is fraud or not. And this? This wasn’t some clever technicality a legit artist used to boost their earnings. This was unambiguous fraud.
I really don’t see how this is any different from pretending to be someone else to access their bank info, conning someone out of money by pretending to be a person in need, deep-faking someone’s voice to get their relatives to send money to you, or a hundred other scams involving fake identities. Yes, the victim in this case is a villain themselves, but that doesn’t make it any less a crime.
bro found a glitch in the system
How is it illegal? And how much did it cost him to make it work I wonder.
The headline focuses on the wrong thing. Making a bunch of crappy songs and uploading the to Spotify and other streaming services is perfectly legal, AI or not.
The illegal part is that he created lots and lots of fake accounts that constantly streamed his songs and masked them to look like authentic listens. So much so that he was making $110k per month. That is straight-up fraud, which is what he was arrested for.
It has nothing to do with AI, but that makes more people click on the article.
most lilely money laundering. Not really a new scam just adding AI to an old one
It’s not money laundering, they were creating fake engagement and getting advertising revenue out of it.
Could be if the revenue was paid out to non existing aliasses and then transferred to himself.
But getting paid royalties directly by Spotify would not need to be laundered as it’s legit money for the irs.
Yeah, it’s just a good old fashioned grift by the sound of it.
getting bots to fake engagement for a profit is money laundering, believe it or not. its a pretty vague crime that basically amounts to getting paid in a way thats deceptive.
Hmm. If that’s true, the legal definition and the definition we typically use are very different.
