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Swedish criminal gangs using fake Spotify streams to launder money

theguardian.com

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Re: Swedish criminal gangs using fake Spotify streams to launder money

#41

Post by matteason »

mrtksn wrote: post #34
matteason wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I also contacted Spotify and they are absolutely sure that it's not possible to create accounts without confirming e-mails and can't do anything about it. Yeah that's not true. We discovered someone was using my son's email address for their Spotify when he tried to register for an account. There are plenty of other accounts of this happening: https://community.spotify.com/t5/Accounts/Why-Does-Spotify-N... It might…

Notice How I keep receiving Spotify promotions for the fake accounts created on my domain. Does this look like Spotify did something about it? Whatever, I'm not going through all this BS again. Spotify has it's own "Spam box" because it is possible or was possible to create Spotify accounts without verification and a subset of it is created on my domain and I'm not going through the process of fixing up the Spotify's…

Yeah, ours was to an email account I'd registered for my son but wasn't checking regularly. Once we found out someone else had used it for Spotify I found loads of marketing spam from them in the inbox. I think it is fixed for new accounts but they obviously haven't bothered to go back and verify everyone who registered before that change.

Re: Swedish criminal gangs using fake Spotify streams to launder money

#43

Post by pjc50 »

mjr00 wrote: post #39

Given my experience and knowledge of how Spotify deals with much-less nefarious uses of fake streams, I'm very skeptical of these claims. There's a significant (several month) delay between a Spotify stream and the artist getting a payout. (This is probably shorter if you're Taylor Swift, but the artist profiles involved here aren't.) During this time Spotify will indeed do some checks for stream legitimacy. It's not…

See also: https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/spotify-could-ban-whi...

Re: Swedish criminal gangs using fake Spotify streams to launder money

#45

Post by kostja493 »

This is interesting, since a german rapper and music label owner was accused of doing this to push his signed artists and launder his money from his former criminal activities. A "hacker" was whistleblowing this in a documentary on YouTube[1] a while ago.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiqYuSQwkHo

Re: Swedish criminal gangs using fake Spotify streams to launder money

#46

Post by hedora »

People are skeptical, but pretty much any online service that generates cash for end users will eventually be used for money laundering.

I agree Spotify is a particularly poor choice, but the expected payoff for many criminal activities are also extremely low.

I’m guessing some people tried, and either gave up, or are loosing an absurd fraction of the laundered cash.

Re: Swedish criminal gangs using fake Spotify streams to launder money

#47

Post by zpeti »

rockbruno wrote: post #42

Seriously? According to the article, their only "proof" is that four criminals said "oh yeah I do this trust me bro". This qualifies as "investigative journalism" today?

Judging by the quality of journalism these days, yes this qualifies as investigative journalism.

Re: Swedish criminal gangs using fake Spotify streams to launder money

#48

Post by netsharc »

JumpinJack_Cash wrote: post #30
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sweden's gangs are a product of the failures of the Swedish state to heal socieconomic disparities and integrate all members of society. They are Swedish through and through.

Yeah you know the word "gang" has been diluted and watered down quite a bit. It used to be groups of armed men who'd rob banks and open fire on anyone who'd be selling drugs who was not their affiliate, oh and also open fire on any small business who'd refuse to pay them for protection. This Spotify thing seems regular crime, I'd say bordering white collar crime given the non-violent nature of the procedure.

Didn't RTFA? The money being laundered come from burglaries, drug deals, etc.. so still the violent-ish crimes..

Re: Swedish criminal gangs using fake Spotify streams to launder money

#50

Post by netsharc »

piva00 wrote: post #35
laserdancepony wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Diversity is our advantage!" I was told. Didn't know it predominantly included gang violence, as mentioned in the article. You don't fool me into submission with either downvotes or accusations.

I hope you are very aware you don't help to solve the issue in any possible way by being in this hysterical state of fear. I don't agree with the naïve approach the Swedish government took on immigration, not much was done to actually bridge cultural and economical gaps, Swedish society has become very individualistic and losing its collectivist sense for a while, from what I gather from older generations since at le…

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