Want a straightforward technique to make $23 million? Have you ever ever thought of just claiming music others uploaded to YouTube as your individual and amassing the royalties?

That is mainly all two Phoenix males did to swindle Latin music artists like Daddy Yankee and Julio Iglesias out of thousands and thousands of {dollars} in royalties, as detailed in a new piece from Billboard final week. 

In keeping with Kristin Robinson of Billboard, Jose “Chenel” Medina Teran and Webster Batista arrange a media firm known as MediaMuv and claimed to personal the rights to numerous Latin music songs and compositions. In complete, MediaMuv claimed to personal greater than 50,000 copyrights since 2017, when Teran and Batista started their scheme.

To ensure that MediaMuv to say these copyrights and acquire royalties via YouTube’s Content material ID system, the fraudulent firm wanted to companion with AdRev, a third-party firm that has entry to YouTube’s CMS and Content material ID instruments and helps artists handle their digital copyrights. MediaMuv created a few pretend paperwork and supplied AdRev with this paperwork in order to show possession over the music it claimed. From there, AdRev not solely helped MediaMuv acquire royalties for these copyrights but in addition supplied Terana and Batista with direct entry to YouTube’s CMS so they might declare copyrights on its personal. 

Teran and Batista’s four-year-long royalties heist got here to an finish late final yr following an investigation from the IRS. In keeping with Billboard, the 2 had been indicted on “30 counts of conspiracy, wire fraud, cash laundering and aggravated id theft.” Teran pleaded not responsible. His trial is in November. Batista, on the opposite hand, took a plea deal on one rely of wire fraud and one rely of conspiracy. As a consequence, Batista supplied much of the details about how the 2 pulled off their scheme.

As Billboard factors out, Teran and Batista’s case was particularly “brazen.” It is believed to be one of many “largest YouTube music royalty scams in history.” 

Whereas the scale of the heist and the breadth of the scheme could also be very distinctive, it is definitely a scenario that many YouTube content material creators have confronted earlier than. YouTube’s Content material ID system, meant to assist creators, has been weaponized by unhealthy religion actors in order to become profitable off content material that is not theirs. Whereas some false claims are just errors attributable to automated techniques, the MediaMuv case is a good instance of how fraudsters are additionally purposefully making the most of digital copyright guidelines.

YouTube makes an attempt to be cautious with who it gives CMS and Content material ID device entry due to how highly effective these techniques are. As a consequence, unbiased creators and artists can’t test for these false copyright claims nor have they got the ability to immediately act on them. They should undergo a digital rights administration firm that does have entry. And it looks as if thieves are doing the identical, falsifying paperwork to realize entry to those YouTube instruments via these third events which might be “trusted” with these instruments by YouTube.

The Billboard piece – which you must try for much more particulars on this over-the-top scheme – makes mentions how Content material ID scammers usually declare a portion of a music, hoping that with so many songwriters and such, a small share of possession in the music could go by unnoticed. MediaMuv, nevertheless, was daring sufficient to say copyright over songs in their entirety. Whereas it is definitely unbelievable that these two con artists pulled this off for thus lengthy, just take into consideration what number of extra cautious scammers are nonetheless skimming royalties off of an untold variety of artists.