Let’s say you were a musician with a pile of money. How might you try to break into the music business? Would you pay your dues? Work your way up? Or would you buy your way to the top by, say, creating a bunch of bots to stream your songs thousands or millions of times on Spotify?

Or, maybe you’re thinking bigger. If a million streams is cool, why not a billion streams? Why not turn fake listeners into real money?

That, according to a criminal complaint, was the plan hatched by a guy named Mike Smith, who lives in Cornelius, just north of Charlotte. It went well! At first. Then the streamers caught on. After that, the feds swooped in.

So! How did the guy try to pull it off? For that, I turned to Wired senior writer Kate Knibbs, who wrote the definitive story of a musician from North Carolina who ended up at the center of the first criminal case involving AI music and streaming fraud. You can listen to our conversation in the latest episode of the North Carolina Rabbit Hole Podcast (Listen here on Apple Podcasts or Spotify), which you can also watch on YouTube.

One more note! I also turned last week’s story into a podcast episode. I’m trying to do more of them, and the best way to listen is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever.