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A scrawny college kid built an empire by fooling people into buying ringtones. Now he’s in prison. The private jets, the women, the champagne? They were nice while they lasted.
October 20, 2021 — Damian Williams, United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced that Michael Pearse, an Australian national who was extradited to the United States from Australia in January 2021, was sentenced today to 109 months in prison for his participation in a fraudulent scheme to charge hundreds of thousands of mobile phone customers millions of dollars in monthly fees for unsolicited, recurring text messages without the customers' knowledge or consent – a practice the conspirators referred to as "auto-subscribing."