London, UK – British police have foiled a rather creative scam whereby a group of DJs conned iTunes and Amazon out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The gang made 19 albums, which they placed on iTunes and Amazon via music distribution service Tunecore. They then used thousands of stolen credit card details to open iTunes accounts and buy the music at $10 per time, generating about $750,000 in download sales. The icing on the cake was the royalty payments, paid by the unsuspecting sites.
Ten people aged between 19 and 41 were arrested across the UK by detectives working in Scotland Yard’s new e-Crime unit, working in conjunction with the FBI. They’re being questioned on suspicion of conspiracy to commit fraud and money laundering.
The investigation began last December, when various credit card companies warned Apple that music was being bought from iTunes on bogus accounts.
DCI Terry Wilson, from the e-Crime Unit, said: “This has been a complex investigation to establish what we believe to be an international conspiracy to defraud Apple and Amazon.”
