A Russian television talent show has been cancelled after a millionaire's daughter won due to thousands of fraudulent votes.
According to the BBC, complaints came rolling in after The Voice Kids contestant Mikella Abramova, 10, won 56.5 percent of the phone-in votes.
Mikella is the daughter of a famous Russian pop singer Alsou and wealthy businessman Yan Abramove.
Group-IB, a security firm, was hired to examine the votes to investigate whether or not they were legitimate.
"The interim results of the check confirm that there was outside influence on the voting, which affected the result," State-owned broacaster Channel One, who airs the show said in a statement.
According to investigators, more than 8,000 text messages were sent from about 300 phone numbers during the vote.
"More than 30,000 votes came in for one contestant from those phone numbers," Group-IB said.
"Bots were used in this case," the security firm concluded.
Channel One said the voting scam "must be the first and last time that anyone tries to control the audience's choice".
"A new voting system will be used before the next season of the talent show," it went on to say in the statement.
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