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A gang of ten has been arrested for their roles in an international scheme to defraud iTunes and Amazon.  The men and women involved in the crime circle had been buying their own music through these sites with stolen credit cards, according to the Metropolitan police. The case was brought to a culmination through the work of the Met as well as members of the FBI.

According to reports, the ten allegedly created a number of songs, which they then gave to a US business that uploaded the songs to iTunes and Amazon.  Once the tracks were online, the criminals spent five months buying their own songs thousands of times – spending about $750,000 with stolen credit cards. For their efforts, they earned themselves an estimated $300,000 in royalties paid by the two online companies. Both Amazon and iTunes had been unaware of the fraud being committed against them.

The Met’s central e-crime unit dispatched sixty officers to arrest seven men and three women located in the cities of London, Birmingham, Kent, and Wolverhampton. All ten are being held in custody at facilities in London and the Midlands on charges of conspiracy to commit fraud and money laundering.

From Wolverhampton three men, aged 19, 23, and 41, and one woman, 37, were arrested; from Dartford a woman, 22, was taken in to custody; from Kent a woman, 36, and two men, 34 and 40, were arrested; and two men, 22 and 46 came from Peckham, south London.  The digital entertainment survey indicates that the best way to prevent piracy is to ensure that ISPs punish the pirates