I bet this happens more than we hear about.
It is almost that when dealing with online businesses you should have to prove the authenticity of accounts.
In its complaint, JPMorgan accuses Javice and Amar of asking Frank’s director of engineering to create fake customer details by using data generated by computer algorithms. After the engineer refused, the pair found a “data-science professor” at a college near New York and persuaded him to create millions of fake accounts, the suit alleges.
Now the professor prob thought he was creating test data. This is common.
That sounds like fraud to me.
It is. It’s highly illegal.
He was… testing JP Morgan! 
A number of years ago a major company got into trouble for overstating their income on their financial report for stockholders by not deducting returns from total sales.
And America Online listed those ubiquitous free install discs as Capital Expenditures.