On August 22, 2025, U.S. District Judge Jinsook Ohta from the Southern District of California sentenced 35-year-old Chinese national Jiaci Liu to 2 years in prison for serving as a money mule for a Microsoft technical support scam, where:
- The scammers will create fake virus popups urging their victims, in this case a 63-year-old from Poway, to call a designated “suppoat” line.
- The scammers who answer will transfer the call to a series of co-workers posing as representatives with their victims’ bank to falsely claim there was “unauthorized transactions.”
- In order to “safekeep” their money, the victims will be asked to withdraw $28,000 from their bank account and hand it off to a designated courier or money mule, who operates under the guise of a U.S. Marshall.