Fraud is a broad legal term that refers to situations where someone is intentionally dishonest in order to receive some kind of benefit from a person, business, or entity. 

If you sell cookies for a charity that doesn’t exist, that’s fraud.

If you use a handicap sticker in your car so you can park up front, but you don’t have a disability. That is fraud 

When a sponsor pays to get in front of your actual audience and you pay a company to artificially inflate your stats, that is fraud.

This Hurts Everyone

Now the sponsor who thinks their product is getting in front of 20,000 people is only getting in front of 5000. So the reaction to the ad campaign is dismal. They don't renew their ad and tell all their other business owner friends how podcast advertising is a waste of money.

Legal Stealing

I had a high school teacher say, "Don't you think if there was a way to steal and not get caught, someone would've discovered it by now?"

There is a saying, "Success leaves clues." So does fraud, so when your sponsors show that a large amount of your downloads are coming from browsers, and all of a sudden, you have an audience in a country you can't pronounce, that's a red flag.

I've heard of advertising agencies refusing to pay for the campaign after you use a company that promises you to be at the top of the charts. You can't guarantee success in podcasting. There are best practices, but there are no guarantees.

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