Two Sydney men have been extradited to the US over their alleged role in a 50 Million USD scam to fraud mobile phones in a premium messaging service.
As reported by the Brisbane times, Michael Pearse, 52, from Sydney, and Yongchao ‘Kevin’ Liu, 33, a Chinese national living in Sydney, were flown to the US on Monday to face charges relating to one of the biggest telecom scams in American history.
They can face a possible 20 years in prison if convicted.
They accused of using a practice called “auto-subscribing” to charge monthly fees for unsolicited messages about celebrity gossip, horoscopes, jokes, love tips, and trivia, without customers’ knowledge or permission.
Prosecutors said that the victims were charged AU$12.99 even if they deleted or ignored the message and were often unaware until unintelligible items such as “96633IQ16CALL8668611606” began appearing on their phone bills.
Michael Pearse has pleaded not on the court, according to his lawyers.
