Published
Mon, Sep 11, 2023, 08:00
- According to a Swedish newspaper, gangs are using the platform to wash illicit cash.
Criminal gangs are using Spotify to launder the proceeds of crime, according to Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet.
The report, published last week, says gangs are converting illicit cash into Bitcoin, then buying fake streams for artists they manage or control. Spotify then pays out for the cumulative streams, resulting in laundered income for the gang.
The newspaper claims it has spoken to members of four different criminal networks in Stockholm, as well as a police investigator, who all confirmed Spotify had been used in this way. "I can say with 100 percent certainty that this goes on," one gang member reportedly told the paper. "We have paid people who have done this for us systematically."
The police investigator, whose name was not revealed by the newspaper, corroborated the claim. "Gangs launder money from drug dealing, robberies, fraud and assassination missions via the platform," they said. "Spotify has become a bank machine for the gangs."
With Spotify only paying around €0.003-€0.005 per stream (though the exact amount varies depending on location and other factors), it's unclear how profitable it would be as a money-laundering tool. However, one of the gang members the paper spoke to said buying fake streams also helped to promote artists affiliated with gangs, which was a useful recruiting and propaganda tool for their organisations.
Spotify was contacted and released a statement. Here's part of it. "Manipulated streams are an industry-wide challenge and Spotify has been working hard to address this issue. That said, Spotify is not aware of any contact by law enforcement concerning the suggestions in the SVD article, nor have our internal teams found anything or been provided with any data or hard evidence that indicates that the platform is being used at scale in the fashion described."