Former CEO and 10 Others Arrested for Music Chart Manipulation

On May 21, the 6th Criminal Division of the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office released a statement stating that former entertainment agency CEO Mr. Kim and 10 others were indicted on May 20 without detention. The charges include obstruction of business through computer interference.

The prosecutor’s office reported that between December 2018 and December 2019, Mr. Kim and his associates utilized more than 500 virtual PCs, a considerable amount of purchased IP addresses, and 1,627 pieces of unlawfully obtained personal information in order to repeatedly play 15 songs on prominent music websites, resulting in a total of 1,727,985 streams.

The individuals involved in this scheme recruited clients through brokers in order to manipulate music chart rankings. Their method involved using multiple virtual PCs and allocating multiple IPs to access music sites with numerous accounts, thus rendering the music sites’ abuse response systems ineffective, as they were unable to block access from the multiple accounts being used.

A prosecution official confirmed, “Our investigation has definitively proven that the longstanding allegations of systematic manipulation of music charts in the music industry were indeed accurate.”

The source can be found on Daum’s website at //v.daum.net/v/20240521183941062.