The Arizona Attorney’s Office announced on Wednesday that it filed a lawsuit against two men, accusing them of asking musicians and affiliate companies for more than $20 million in royalties for music played on YouTube.
On November 16, 2021, the grand jury brought 30 charges against Jose Tran, 36, of Scottsdale, Arizona, and Webster Batista, 38, of Doral, Florida. Transaction money laundering, and serious identity theft related to the scheme to steal YouTube payments.
“In short, Batista and Tran, as individuals and through various entities they operate and control, fraudulently claim to have the legal right to monetize a music library of more than 50,000 songs,” the indictment [PDF] claim.
“Battista and Tran committed fraud by making false statements to YT [YouTube] And to the intermediary company AR, which is responsible for strengthening its music library, they are the owners of a large amount of music and are entitled to any royalties arising from it. “
The government claimed that around April 2017, two men signed a contract with AR, which manages and distributes YouTube royalties, through their company MediaMuv, LLC, claiming to control a catalog of 50,000 songs.
The indictment stated that they then sent the corresponding song files to AR, which in turn uploaded the files to YouTube. Court documents with the song “Friday without your love,” AR is said to have been uploaded to YouTube in 2017 and has earned approximately US$24,000 in royalties since then.
Allegedly, this was done for a large number of songs. Finally, under the guidance of MediaMuv, AR wrote to YouTube, “in order to remove potential copyright conflicts from MediaMuv’s entire music catalog in batches.”
AR was not identified in the complaint, but a possible candidate for these acronyms is a digital rights management company Ad comment (adrev.net). The indictment mentions an email as evidence, which has been sent to the “Vice President of Finance” “pxxxx@xxxxx.net”.
Register I have written to AdRev’s vice president of finance, and his five-letter name happens to start with “P” to confirm that AR really refers to AdRev. We also asked if the company would like to comment. We have no response.
YouTube did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The lawyer representing Teran also did not respond to a request for comment.
According to Arizona’s USAO, Teran and Batista used their $20 million to purchase real estate, jewelry, luxury cars, etc.
If convicted, the two men could be sentenced to up to 5 years in prison for conspiracy, up to 20 years in prison for wire fraud, up to 10 years in prison for transaction money laundering, and serious identity theft. Sentenced to two years in prison and may be fined up to $250,000 per felony conviction. ®
