Some $3.3 million must be paid to their victims, José “Chenel” Terán and Webster “Yenddi” Batista Fernández, who are responsible for what they call ““YouTube’s Biggest Licensing Scam.”
That figure is a fraction of the $23 million these scammers siphoned off, primarily from Latino music creators Don Omar, Julio Iglesias, Prince Royce and Anuel AA, approximately between 2016 and 2021.
Billboard reported that these men founded the company MediaMuv and claimed to own the copyrights to more than 50,000 sound recordings and compositions and used the profits through November 2021 to fund lavish lifestyles, including Lamborghinis, real estate, diamond jewelry and other luxuries They were charged with 30 counts of wire fraudconspiracy, money laundering and aggravated identity theft.
The $3.3 million they have to pay will be split between the two and they will have to gradually pay the money back to their victims each month, a source told Billboard.
“The court sentenced Terán and Batista to pay only a small part of the many songwriters and artists who are owed royalties as a result of the fraud,” the aforementioned media published.
This was revealed in a court document Bad Bunny also fell victim to the false license claim claim by Terán and Batista, who produced them under the company name MediaMuv. The scammers stole $500 from the star and were asked to return it.
To achieve its goal of being recognized by YouTube and collecting royalties through that platform’s content identification system, the fraudulent company partnered with the company AdRev, which has access to YouTube’s CMS operating system and content identification tools. Content and helps artists manage their digital copyrights.
MediaMuv created some fake documents and provided these documents to AdRev to prove ownership of the music he claimed. From there, AdRev not only helped MediaMuv collect royalties for these copyrights, but also gave Terana and Batista direct access to YouTube’s CMS so that they could assert the copyrights themselves, the portal published the Spanish newspaper ABC about the complaint of Billboard.