A gang of chart savvy popsters who allegedly made hundreds of thousands of pounds laundering money taken from stolen credit cards by buying their own sound recordings from iTunes and Amazon have been arrested in the UK.

The gang are alleged to have made several songs which they gave to an online US company which  uploaded them to be sold online – and over five months they bought their own songs thousands of times, spending around $750,000 (£468,750) on 1,500 stolen US and UK credit cards. According to the Metropolitan Police and the FBI, the criminal network then allegedly reaped the royalties from the tracks, pulling in an estimated $300,000, paid over by the two sites. Both sites were unaware of the fraud being committed against them. A chart topping sixty officers from the Met's central e-crime unit and West Midlands Police arrested seven men and three women in London, Birmingham, Kent and Wolverhampton who are being held on suspicion of conspiracy to commit fraud and money laundering. With all these 'legal' downloads - did the songs chart? Now that would have been top of the pops!

11/06/09