
I know someone who paid for it
Someone I know managed to install this software (or something very similar) and after a few attempts to remove it themselves, they were also misguided enough to pay the $45 in the hope that it would stop bothering them so frequently. Paying didn't make any difference and they got me to remove it about a month later. They also said that there were no other charges on their credit card. Perhaps the number of people who pay the $45 is already high enough and the scammers don't want to 'kill the golden goose' by making more obviously fraudulent transactions.
BTW my wife also managed to stumble onto one of these pages and I can tell you the endless popups are just as annoying even in Linux. She now knows how to use 'xkill' to escape from such nonsense.