Jail for fraudsters who ripped off Queen

Two Italian music producers who fraudulently claimed to have written songs by Paul McCartney and Queen have been jailed after their scam was exposed.

Athos Poma and Giuseppe Fedi received around £185,000 in royalties after they exploited a flaw in the Italian Society Of Authors And Publishers’ (ISAP) computer system which meant composers of many popular songs were not properly registered.

The pair claimed rights to 220 songs between 2006 and 2008, including Paul McCartney’s My Love, Tom Jones’ Sex Bomb, Queen’s Liar, Radiohead’s All I Need and People Are Strange by The Doors. McCartney dedicated My Love to his late wife Linda.

Poma has been sentenced to 18 months in jail while Fedi – who worked for ISAP and helped facilitate the scam – was jailed for 20 months. Lawyers defending Poma say their client will appeal, The Telegraph reports.

They add: “Athos Poma is one of the most important music producers in Italy and over the last 25 years, he has always carried out his work in a professional manner.”

Stef wrote close to 5,000 stories during his time as assistant online news editor and later as online news editor between 2014-2016. An accomplished reporter and journalist, Stef has written extensively for a number of UK newspapers and also played bass with UK rock favourites Logan. His favourite bands are Pixies and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Stef left the world of rock'n'roll news behind when he moved to his beloved Canada in 2016, but he started on his next 5000 stories in 2022.