What goes around comes around: one of the disc jockeys busted with running a six-figure iTunes scam has admitted his role.
Lamar Johnson, 19, admitted he was involved in this modern take on chart rigging, pleading guilty to one count of conspiracy to defraud in court.
Nine British djs are charged with using 1,500 stolen or cloned credit cards to buy their own tracks to the tune of £500,000 (about USD $780,000). They were paid £185,000 (USD $288,000) in royalties before getting caught.
The fake buys also boosted them up higher in the iTunes sales rankings, generating further buzz and more royalties. It all started in September, when the DJs used American music distributor TuneCore to get their music on iTunes.
The scam played out with the police in London in New York about three months later after Apple got hit with ‘stop payment’ orders from credit card companies, saying accounts were fraudulent.
The DJs, ages 19 to 41, were arrested in London and the Midlands on suspicion of conspiracy to commit fraud and money laundering.
Johnson, currently serving a five-year prison sentence for causing grievous bodily harm, is the youngest member of the group of 11 other defendants accused of downloading the songs between January 2008 and June 2009.
Nicole Martinelli is a San Francisco freelance writer who heads up Cult of Mac Magazine, our weekly publication available on iTunes. You can find her on Twitter and Google+. If you’re doing something new, cool and Apple-related, email her.
2 responses to “DJ Admits Role in Six-Figure iTunes Scam”
We, the Macbrothers, Inc., released two songs at Tunecore, Priscilla & Egypt, over a year ago. We haven’t made a red cent on either song since the release date at the beginning of February 2011. In all the distribution outlets Tunecore is affiliated with you would believe confidently that one individual from the whole of the worldwide web would have bought a copy of one of the two inexpensive released songs: at least. Not so. Zilch. This smells of manipulation or favoritism on the part of Tunecore and whoever else is involved. We plan to elicit the succor of the U.S. Justice Department about the moral integrity of this online service for songwriters and musicians. I don’t believe Tunecore is as forthright as it boasts itself to be. In contrast, it doesn’t appear in the forefront to be shady, but when one plus one doesn’t equal two, as the Principia Mathematica teaches us, then one needs to check at the backdoor to find out what’s going on.
Wesley McCants
Member of BMI
Disabled Vietnam Veteran
Post Script: How can a company swindle a disabled veteran and sleep at night?