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Crime

Swedish Criminal Gangs Using Fake Spotify Streams To Launder Money (theguardian.com) 67

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
Criminal gangs behind a rise in bombings and shootings in Sweden in recent years are using fake Spotify streams to launder money, a Swedish newspaper reported earlier this month. From a report: Criminal networks have for several years been using money from drug deals, robberies, fraud and contract killings to pay for false Spotify streams of songs published by artists with ties to the gangs, an investigative report in Svenska Dagbladet claimed. They then get paid by the platform for the high number of streams, thereby laundering the money. The newspaper said its information had been confirmed by four gang members from separate criminal networks in Stockholm, as well as an anonymous police investigator.
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Swedish Criminal Gangs Using Fake Spotify Streams To Launder Money More

Swedish Criminal Gangs Using Fake Spotify Streams To Launder Money

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  • Three easy fixes: (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 13, 2023 @11:12AM (#63845150)

    Just make crime illegal.
    Or decriminalize crime to remove the black market so that only above-board regulated companies deal drugs and commit robberies instead of petty street thugs.
    Or tax crime. Governments know fully well the more you tax a vice, the less it happens, so why aren't governments taxing crime?

    • The recent wave of legalizing cannabis doesn't seem to have halted the black market on weed.

      Hell, there is a black market for Tide laundry detergent and other perfectly legal items.

      • Hell, there is a black market for Tide laundry detergent and other perfectly legal items.

        If they're perfectly legal, how can the market be "black"?

        Are people just avoiding VAT?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by GlennC ( 96879 )

          If they're perfectly legal, how can the market be "black"?

          It's when the items put up for sale are stolen and/or counterfeit.

          Are people just avoiding VAT?

          We don't have VAT in the USA, but I'm reasonably sure that sales taxes are not being collected or paid out.

        • Hell, there is a black market for Tide laundry detergent and other perfectly legal items.

          If they're perfectly legal, how can the market be "black"?

          Are people just avoiding VAT?

          There's a subtle distinction to be had here. Tide, the laundry detergent made by Proctor and Gamble for the purpose of washing clothes, is perfectly legal, and sold at stores, no problem.

          Tide, however, is a currency in an underground economy, because it has most of the useful properties of cash. It's fairly difficult to counterfeit, it's a store of value, that value is stable, it can be exchanged freely, and its movement is fairly difficult to track. Even more importantly, it can be purchased with WIC/EBT/F

          • Re:Three easy fixes: (Score:5, Informative)

            by chill ( 34294 ) on Wednesday September 13, 2023 @01:32PM (#63845738) Journal

            Uh, no. Specifically, it CANNOT be purchased with WIC/EBT/SNAP/Food Stamps. You're just making that part up. It isn't in the article you linked and the official gov't page on SNAP [usda.gov] says "Households CANNOT use SNAP benefits to buy: Cleaning supplies, paper products, and other household supplies."

            The article is good, and it points out that Tide is one of the most brand-loyal products in the country, regardless of income level, which is why the scheme works. But, all of it was obtained by theft -- shoplifting.

            Tide ranked in the top three brand names that consumers at all income levels were least likely to give up regardless of the recession, alongside Kraft and Coca-Cola.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

              Which Tide are we talking about specifically? Those laundry pods that people were eating?

              Are they really that much better than other brands? I'm not sure they even sell them in Europe.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by chill ( 34294 )

                Yes, the pods. But also the liquid detergent.

                Are they better? I dunno, but people think they are and that's what matters here. Tide has some of the best brand loyalty in the world, right up there with Coca-Cola and Kraft.

                Yes, I think this is insane, but...

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Pascoea ( 968200 )

          If they're perfectly legal, how can the market be "black"?

          Depends on the locale, obviously. Here in the great state of MN, it is now perfectly legal to grow, possess, smoke, and gift marijuana. The limits are around how many plants I'm allowed to have, how much dried plant I can have in my house, and how much I can have out in public, blah blah. Something I'm specifically NOT allowed to do is sell it (without a permit) which is where the "black market" part comes into play.

      • "there is a black market for Tide laundry detergent and other perfectly legal items."

        That's called a grey market...

      • In Sweden?

    • An even easier fix. Get rid of the criminals. If you do that it is a guarantee they will never criminal again.

      Sure, someone else might come along, but get rid of them as well. Eventually the criminals will realize it's not worth the effort.

      • We could put them all on an island somewhere....

      • The main problem with that approach is that you create a society and government apparatus that's all too ready and happy to rid themselves of criminals. It's all well and good until you find yourself branded a criminal and in the process of being rid of. I'd prefer other approaches be tried and used first before turning to more extreme measures.
      • It will always be worth the effort so that policy doesn't work. The only way to make it no longer worth the effort is to decrease the amount of buyers of those products or to make the selling of those products legal.
    • Al Capone says: Crime is already taxable. It's just that most criminals don't pay their taxes.

  • Swedish criminals (Score:3)

    by Ecuador ( 740021 ) on Wednesday September 13, 2023 @11:13AM (#63845156) Homepage

    Is it me or it sounds very fitting that "Swedish criminal gangs" use something like spotify to launder money? The Swedes are always so progressive!

    • Is it me or it sounds very fitting that "Swedish criminal gangs" use something like spotify to launder money?

      Spotify's commission is eating up 30% of their profit.

      NFTs work better, but NFTs are well known for laundering and attract too much attention.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Sique ( 173459 )
        To me, 70 legitimate credit units instead of 100 tainted ones sounds like a good plan.

        Imagine the money you gained from a kidnapping, where you have to suspect every bill's number to be noted, or forged money you want to bring into circulation. Compared to them, 70/100 is a magnificent deal!

        I don't know what the return is on other money laundering avenues like operating a restaurant and fudging the number of meals sold, or [Saul Goodman's voice] Laser Tag.

      • I'd argue that if "NFTs are well known for laundering and attract too much attention", that they don't actually "work better". They might have a lower commission rate, but if they don't remove the suspicion of laundering, then they're basically useless for purpose.

        It's generally known, at least with those familiar with it, that laundering money comes with expenses. By that standard, 30% isn't actually that bad.

        In addition, while music isn't a traditional form of it, art is very much a traditional form for

      • Spotify's commission is eating up 30% of their profit.

        NFTs work better, but NFTs are well known for laundering and attract too much attention.

        It doesn't cost $1 to generate $0.70 if that's what you're trying to say. You don't pay spotify per stream and there's no cap on the revenue a single account can bring artists. On the low end you can use free accounts but it pays very little, on the other end you get family subscriptions in a low cost country and travel by vpn to south korea to get the highest pay/stream.

        Want to know which artists do this, just ask the booking agencies and venues who'd sign on artists that mysteriously don't sell any ticket

      • Money laundering always has some losses. 20-30% would be considered a good deal. It's the cost of doing illegal business.
      • Besides Spotify's commission there is the click farms that the criminals have to pay with Bitcoin to fake listening to specific music performers, often specific gangsta rappers associated to the criminals. And then there are taxes that have to be paid.

        But click farms also generates many recommendations for the rappers, causing a larger valid listening audience. And after about a year the performer can collect taxed and cleaned money from Spotify.
    • Old news, the "Swedish House Mafia" has been doing it for years...
      • Sweden must have a different definition of "house music" than other parts of the world. Swedish House Mafia is definitely firmly in the "progressive trance" genre.
        • they are now yes, but they where House back when they started and ofc once you have a brand you cannot really change your band name even if you no longer play in the same genre.

  • What? Is this a joke article? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by haggie ( 957598 ) on Wednesday September 13, 2023 @11:13AM (#63845158)

    That is a horribly inefficient way to launder money. Streaming payments are a fraction of a cent.

    • I was just thinking the same exact thing. Heck it would be cheaper for someone to have a twitch channel or youtube stream that accepts "donations"....
    • Office space the musical

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by HBI ( 10338492 )

      You're forgetting the story of the guy who wrote software to put all the fractional cents into an account and made quite a bit of money until they caught him.

      Tiny amounts? All you need is scale.

      • and that coder is going to get some FPMITAP time

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by HBI ( 10338492 )

          I believe it happened back in the 70s or earlier. So that's over and done with, but the point is that the salami attack was proven to work.

    • Is it? What do you pay for?

      It's definitely *economically* roundabout, but bandwidth is pretty cheap, so it's mostly about stringing everything together at scales large enough to matter.

      Like: if a single phone can generate $.12 per hour ($.004 for a 2 minute stream), I'd expect a box of 1k crappy used phones (maybe $50k, generously, and taking up around 50 cubic ft - so a pallette or two) to generate $120/hr or $2880/day. You could probably string it together for probably less than $10k, so then you're just

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by jwhyche ( 6192 )

      Yup, thinking the same thing. I don't know how they are doing it but I'm sure there are much better ways,

    • Laundering in Sweden is difficult, significantly more than the US, fortunately. There are money laundering scores for countries.
      Authorities get information about all income through banks and nearly all payments are digital in the country. By using Spotify money is perfectly laundered and taxes get paid automatically.

  • This is probably the worst idea when it comes to laundering money.

    I mean, why not set up a chaturbate/onlyfans account instead? You'd make more money more quickly.

    • 1) Rent large botnets for cheap
      2) run a small tailored app on each botted device that streamlines/hides the streaming of songs: no one sees it, no one "hears" the songs.
      3) make the songs real short/"listen" for the minimum time required to generate a payout.
      4) no ??? needed, profit
      All automated and simple.

    • The issue with setting up those types of accounts is that the information of *subscribers* is verified. If you want to setup a fake OnlyFans profile you now need to have thousands of fake subscribers who pay with credit cards and that part can be quite burdensome. On the other hand, Spotify users can be essentially anonymous (you don't have to put a card on file to create an account).

      Money laundering is a whack-a-mole scenario. You want a business where the customers can be largely anonymous and then y

    • those too are full of crims washing money, I'm sure.
  • Is this why there are so many obviously worthless games on the Nintendo Switch store? Is Mario collecting cash from money mules, polishing it up and handing it over to murderers? I think we should be told.
    • in short, yes. most of the games on google play, switch etc look auto-generated or at least stolen/reskinned.
  • "Swedish"

  • It's amazing to me how the crime problem in Sweden is self-created. The government essentially stopped arresting people in immigrant neighborhoods, while at the same time allowing masses of "refugees" into the country without so much as a passport.

    Here's one example from 2020: "Gothenburg's most notorious crime family, the Ali Khan gang, set up roadblocks in the northeast of the city, shining torches into cars to hunt for members of a rival mob. Police broke up the checkpoints and made 20 arrests. But in a

    • None of this is even remotely true. There are no no-go zones in Sweden and our police arrest people in all neighbourhoods, in fact the number of arrests are by their very nature higher there than in other areas. Your masses of refugees was during the human crisis in Syria that inflicted the whole of Europe, refugees by their very nature does not have passports.

      The whole road-block thing is just something that alt-right news media made up, no one, including the police (which is why no one was fined), could f

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by quenda ( 644621 )

        Might be surprise to you but every single country on earth have criminals, shocker I know.

        What a stupidly trivial thing to say. As if a tiny bit of crime was the same as pervasive crime. You think Tokyo is the same as Cape Town, because both have shoplifting? Sweden might still have been a safe, cohesive society like Japan, if not for mass uncontrolled migration from some of the most violent and corrupt parts of the world. It should serve as a warning to others.

        • stop being stupid, we don't have more crime or more vile crime than other countries and Sweden was never (and so where never any other country) like Tokyo at any time in history. In fact crime was worse in the 70:ies long before we brought in those muslim migrants that you hate.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by quenda ( 644621 )

            In case anyone believes that:

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

            • what does that have to do with what I wrote? Do you actually believe that one criminal bombing another criminal is a more vile crime than what happens all over the world? And they are so vile that the number of dead so far is 1. Ranked by the crime index in Europe, the first Swedish city comes first at 7th place, strange how several other countries that have a far different migrate policy ranks higher...

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by quenda ( 644621 )

                You can select data for anything, but violent crime data in migrant areas tells a very different story.

                Looking into the "migrant rape crisis", while it has of course been exaggerated by right-wing elements, cherry-picking data in the same way as the denialists, there seems to be a very large basis in truth.

                https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

                > Swedish Television's investigating journalists found that in cases where the victims didn't know the attackers, the proportion of foreign-born sex offenders was more

                • Naturally there will be friction when 1-2M people are included as refugees in a short while, no one is disputing that. This is not the same that this is some kind of epidemic that right-wing elements wants to paint it as. But then not accepting those people would have led to an even greater humanity problem so the main issue here is that only Sweden and Germany took in them while the rest of Europe cowardly basically did nothing.

                  It also have to be noted that the main increase in those rape cases where at th

                  • Re: (Score:2)

                    by quenda ( 644621 )

                    But then not accepting those people would have led to an even greater humanity problem

                    Admirable in a way, but short sighted. It helps a small part of one generation from Syria etc, but does nothing to address the root causes such as over-breeding, corruption, tribalism, religion etc., but transplants those problems to Sweden, creating a problem for generations to come.
                    The refugee numbers will only grow. Will you take 10 million from the Sahel nations, where mass-starvation is inevitable when decades of population explosion in arid lands meets the next famine? (Sooner thanks t

                    • There are zero indications that "transplants those problems to Sweden" is a thing, this is just right-wing FUD. There are no social or economic problems in Sweden right now that we also didn't have before the war in Syria, in fact when it comes to crime we are even in a better position right now than what we where in the 70:ies which was before the former huge refugee stream from the Balkans.

                      And yes this will not stop until we do some real things about e.g the climate and the US and Russia (e.g the Syrian c

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