Criminal gangs use fake Spotify streams to launder money

Criminal gangs involved in shootings and bombings in Sweden are using fake Spotify streams to launder money, respected Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet reported Tuesday.

For several years, criminals have been using money from drug deals, robberies, fraud, and even contract killings to pay for fake streams of songs by artists with ties to the gangs. Payment from Spotify for the streams effectively means that the illegal funds have been laundered into “clean” money.

“I can say with 100% certainty that this goes on. I have been involved in it myself,” one anonymous gang member told the paper…. We have paid people who have done this for us systematically.” The scheme dating back to 2019, was confirmed by three other gang members from multiple criminal networks based in Stockholm and an anonymous police investigator.

“Spotify has become a bank machine for the gangs. There’s a direct link to the gangs and the deadly violence,” the police investigator told the paper, who said Spotify had not returned his calls to discuss the matter.

In a statement Tuesday, Spotify told AFP that it was not aware of any contact by the police and that it had not found “any data or hard evidence that indicates that the platform is being used at scale in the fashion described.” Fake streams are “an industry-wide challenge and Spotify has been working hard to address this issue… Less than 1% of all streams on Spotify have been determined to be artificial, and those are promptly mitigated prior to any payouts.”

Bruce Houghton is the Founder and Editor of Hypebot, a Senior Advisor at Bandsintown, President of the Skyline Artists Agency, and a Berklee College Of Music professor.