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How do the scammers get the money if they use someone else's (stolen) identity and bank account? Also, how do they succeed in keeping this scheme for more than

How do the scammers get the money if they use someone else's (stolen) identity and bank account? Also, how do they succeed in keeping this scheme for more than a few days after the identity theft is noticed and reported to the police? And why would they not just take the very music they just bought and paid for, and publish that as any other artist do? There's no crime in buying the rights from another artist -- that's exactly what all music labels do.

noitpmeder 4y ago
My take was that it's about getting _some_ of the dirty money out. So the dirty cash they are spending to fund this campaign is returning some % worth of Spotify commission. Even better if it somehow hooks the algorithm to recommend it to non-botted accounts.
hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
> How do the scammers get the money if they use someone else's (stolen) identity and bank account? Because if you have a stolen identity and open a bank account, as long as that account isn't trying to defraud the bank (e.g. write bad checks, commit ACH fraud), it can go on living for a long time before it's discovered and closed. In this case, they opened up a bank account with stolen identity, and then used that to get their Spotify payouts, and then eventually transferred that to another account (cash, crypto, whatever). From that bank's perspective, unless they were specifically informed of the bad account, there wouldn't be a ton of unusual activity that would flag the account.
pessimizer 4y ago
> Also, how do they succeed in keeping this scheme for more than a few days after the identity theft is noticed and reported to the police? Why would a stolen identity not being used to steal from the person whose identity was stolen, but just to process legal payments, be noticed in a few days? Or even a few years? Maybe at some point the IRS might find the account that used my identity and send me an angry letter, but that seems like it would be years down the line.

noitpmeder 4y ago

My take was that it's about getting _some_ of the dirty money out. So the dirty cash they are spending to fund this campaign is returning some % worth of Spotify commission. Even better if it somehow hooks the algorithm to recommend it to non-botted accounts.

hn_throwaway_99 4y ago

> How do the scammers get the money if they use someone else's (stolen) identity and bank account? Because if you have a stolen identity and open a bank account, as long as that account isn't trying to defraud the bank (e.g. write bad checks, commit ACH fraud), it can go on living for a long time before it's discovered and closed. In this case, they opened up a bank account with stolen identity, and then used that to get their Spotify payouts, and then eventually transferred that to another account (cash, crypto, whatever). From that bank's perspective, unless they were specifically informed of the bad account, there wouldn't be a ton of unusual activity that would flag the account.

pessimizer 4y ago

> Also, how do they succeed in keeping this scheme for more than a few days after the identity theft is noticed and reported to the police? Why would a stolen identity not being used to steal from the person whose identity was stolen, but just to process legal payments, be noticed in a few days? Or even a few years? Maybe at some point the IRS might find the account that used my identity and send me an angry letter, but that seems like it would be years down the line.