Tech Support Scammer Fought High Chargebacks by Layering On More Fraud

Michael Cotter’s company Tech Live Connect ran a classic tech support scam operation out of an Indian call center. Victims were lured by fake virus pop-ups, connected to agents posing as Apple or Microsoft employees, granted remote access to their machines, and charged hundreds of dollars for bogus repairs.

When defrauded customers filed chargebacks in large numbers, payment processors threatened to cut off the company’s merchant accounts. Rather than stop the scam, Cotter devised a scheme to mask the fraud: he purchased virtual debit cards and used them to pay fake invoices back to his own company, artificially inflating legitimate-looking transaction volume and diluting the chargeback ratio.

The case is a textbook example of how payment fraud layers compound - one scam necessitated a second fraud to keep the first one running, turning a consumer protection signal into something that could be gamed with enough fabricated volume.