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D · Exploitation United States Convicted

First conviction under the TAKE IT DOWN Act draws 180 months

James Strahler II, 37, of Columbus, Ohio, pleaded guilty on 7 April 2026 to cyberstalking, producing obscene visual representations of child sexual abuse, and publication of digital forgeries, and was sentenced on 8 September 2026 to 180 months in federal prison. The forgery count is the first conviction in the United States under the TAKE IT DOWN Act, enacted in May 2025. Investigators found more than 24 AI platforms and over 100 web-based models installed on his phone.
Mechanism — The new Act reaches digital forgeries of identifiable adults but expressly carves out material already covered by the child-obscenity and child-pornography statutes. That division is why the case carries separate counts rather than one, and it marks the boundary of what the Act actually added.
Sources P · U.S. Attorney's Office, S.D. Ohio P · U.S. Attorney's Office, S.D. Ohio P · U.S. Congress S · 404 Media updated 2026-09-14
· United States Convicted

Bot accounts and a contracted supply of AI songs used to take $8m in streaming royalties

Michael Smith, 54, of Cornelius, North Carolina, obtained more than $8 million in streaming royalties between 2017 and 2024 by running roughly 10,000 bot accounts against music he owned on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music and YouTube Music. From 2018 he bought that catalogue — hundreds of thousands of AI-generated tracks — from an AI music company executive under a monthly supply contract. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud in March 2026.
Mechanism — Platform detection looked for implausible play counts on individual tracks. Volume was the binding constraint on evading it, and a contracted supply of AI songs removed that constraint — the same revenue, spread thin enough per track to sit inside normal variation.
Sources P · U.S. District Court, SDNY P · U.S. Attorney's Office, SDNY S · Bloomberg Law T · Help Net Security updated 2026-09-14