DJs Arrested for Buying Own Songs With Phony Credit Cards

Posted on Jun 15th 2009 12:00PM by Steve Baltin
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Remember the good ol' days of simple payola, when labels paid for play on radio stations? Proving that music industry fraud is moving with the times too, nine U.K.-based DJs have been arrested for purchasing their own songs on iTunes with 1,500 U.S. and U.K. cloned credit cards.

According to Metro U.K., the nine very enterprising musicians supplied 19 songs, determined by police to be of "intederminate quality" (wow, everyone really is a critic) to American distributor Tunecore. Once the songs were uploaded on iTunes and Amazon, the group went to work, buying the albums with the stolen credit cards and sending the songs moving up the charts. As a result of their fraudulent sales, the nine made out with about $300,000 in royalties.

It seemed like a pretty ingenious plan until Apple started receiving "stop payment" orders from credit card companies around December. After the company notified New York police, they worked with London law enforcement to apprehend the unnamed criminal masterminds.

Before their arrest, the DJ collective, ages 19 to 41, were apparently picking up steam, allegedly even attracting buzz from noted producers. Now, they'll probably just have to settle for 15 minutes of Internet fame and a possible VH-1 'Behind the Music.'