According to a new report from the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet, gang members are using Spotify to launder money.
Per the report, gang members convert money received from drug deals, robberies, fraud, and assassination missions into Bitcoin, then use the cryptocurrency to acquire fake streams for artists with gang associations. They then collect the money paid out to those streams at a later date.
Svenska Dagbladet quoted three anonymous gang members, as well as an anonymous police officer. One source said Spotify is “very good for recruiting purposes,” since gang members can rely on popular artists, particularly in Sweden’s gangster rap scene, as a front for their activities. “If you’re a network and you want to attract kids and you have a rapper who’s going big, that’s half the job for you,” the source said.
Related Video
One French study found that 3% of streams on services like Spotify are known to be fraudulent, with hip-hop artists making up 84.5% of fake streams detected in 2021. However, hip-hop is the most popular genre in the French streaming market, and only .4% of the total hip-hop streams recorded in the country in 2021 were determined to be fraudulent.
Spotify declined to comment for the Svenska Dagbladet story beyond saying that “We have no evidence that money laundering occurred via Spotify.”
Speaking of Spotify, the company recently increased the cost of its Premium plan for the first time in over a decade. Subscribers will now pay $10.99 per month for the no-ads option, up from its longtime rate of $9.99.
