Earlier this week a federal court in Florida issued a temporary restraining order shutting down a series of organizations in the business of peddling fake software and nonexistent tech support services, temporarily freezing the assets of those companies’ and placing them under the control of a court-appointed receiver.

The scam relies on its victims downloading a piece of free trial software that claims to enhance computer performance or increase security. Once the software is installed, it runs a fake scan on the machine. The defendants’ scanner allegedly always detects a number of problems. Of course, the trial software then informs users that they will need to purchase the full version of the software in order to remedy the issues detected by the scanner.