The order, issued late last month in New York at the request of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), also froze $180,000 of the defendants' assets.

Most of the alleged scams were based in India and targeted English speakers in the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Australia, Ireland and New Zealand, the FTC said on Wednesday in unsealing the case.

Con artists often use online ads to lure victims to websites with that pretend to fine malware and then sell software to remove it. In the latest cases, the use of boiler-room telemarketing blended old school tactics with the digital world.

"The tech support scam artists we are talking about today have taken scareware to a whole other level of virtual mayhem," FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz .

Five of the companies used telemarketers, while the sixth placed ads with Google, so they would appear on results when a person searched for their computer company's tech support number, the FTC said.