Archive

May 5, 2022

Kohl’s and Walmart will pay $5.5 million in penalties for alleged violations of the Textile Fiber Products Identification Act, Textile Rules, and FTC Act for deceptively advertising rayon products as being made of bamboo, for falsely attesting to their environmentally-friendly qualities. They engaged in this behavior despite being warned by the FTC in 2010 that advertising rayon products as bamboo products violated the Textile Rules and FTC Act. DOJ

May 5, 2022

Arthur Hayes, Benjamin Delo, and Samuel Reed, co-founders of BitMEX, were ordered to pay $30 million for AML violations and for illegally operating a cryptocurrency derivatives trading platform. From late 2014 through 2020, the defendants failed to implement and enforce preventative controls against unlawful conduct. BitMEX operated without CFTC approval to operate as a Designated Contract Market or a Swap Execution Facility. Further, BitMEX operated without registration as a Futures Commission Merchant, failed to implement a Customer Information Program, did not employ proper KYC procedures, and failed to implement an adequate AML program. CFTC

May 4, 2022

Brenda Smith, former investment manager for Broad Reach Capital LP, pleaded guilty to seven counts of securities fraud. She will pay $47.2 million in restitution, spend 109 months in prison, and spend another 3 years thereafter under supervised release, for orchestrating a $100 million securities fraud scheme. To further her fraud, Smith provided investors with false monthly account statements, made false representations about her personal investment in the company, satisfied redemption requests by diverting other investors’ funds to pay the redemption amounts, and transferred clients’ funds to investments that were outside the scope of the promised investment strategy. NJ USAO

May 4, 2022

Intuit reached an agreement with all 50 states to pay $141 million in restitution for deceptively steering low-income taxpayers to a paid tax preparation service rather than the free service as advertised. Intuit utilized deceptive television ads (“free, free, free”), paid search advertisements to direct customers to Intuit’s “freemium” product, and blocked its IRS Free File landing page from search engine results during the 2019 tax filing season. NYAG; NJ OAG; DE AG; FL AG; NY AG; PA AG; NC AG

May 4, 2022

Bank of America has been ordered to pay a $10 million civil penalty for processing illegal, out-of-state garnishment orders totaling nearly $600,000 against 3,700 customers’ bank accounts beginning in 2011.  According to the CFPB, the bank deceived customers about their rights, imposed unenforceable clauses, and failed to adhere to consumer protections governing customer bank accounts.  As part of the resolution, the nation’s second largest bank must also fix its broken garnishment process and eliminate unenforceable clauses from its contracts.  CFPB

April 28, 2022

Publicly-traded asset manager Medley Management and its former CEOs, Brook and Seth Taube, have agreed to pay $10 million in civil penalties to resolve SEC charges of making material misrepresentations to investors and clients.  Through multiple public filings dating back to at least 2016, Medley and the Taubes allegedly overstated assets under management, failed to disclose certain risks, and made unfounded projections of Medley’s likely future growth to sway investors toward voting for a merger between Medley and two of its clients.  SEC

April 25, 2022

The SEC has awarded five whistleblowers a total of $6 million for their assistance in a single successful enforcement action.  According to the agency, one group of the whistleblowers provided key documents that prompted the agency to request additional documents from the respondent, while the second group provided firsthand accounts of the misconduct.  SEC

April 21, 2022

Bernard L. Compton, former accountant at Domino’s Pizza, will pay nearly $2 million for insider trading. Compton illicitly leveraged his insider role at Domino’s to trade ahead of 12 of the company’s earnings announcements between 2015 and 2020. Compton attempted to hide his crime by spreading the trades across several different brokerage accounts held by himself and his family members. Compton is permanently enjoined from practicing before the SEC. SEC

April 20, 2022

Waste management company Stericycle Inc. agreed to pay a total of $84 million and enter into a deferred prosecution agreement admitting to the payment of millions of dollars in bribes to government officials in Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina in order to obtain and retain business and to secure improper advantages in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.  The company’s foreign subsidiaries maintained false records to conceal the bribes, which were typically paid in cash and recorded on spreadsheets using code words and euphemisms, including describing the payments made in Argentina as “alfajores.”  Stericycle’s total payment consists of a $28 million payment to resolve an investigation by the SEC, a $52.5 million criminal penalty, and $9.3 million to resolve investigations by the Controladoria-Geral da União (CGU) and the Advocacia-Geral de União (Attorney General’s Office) in Brazil, part of which will be credited to reduce the criminal penalty.  DOJ; SEC

April 19, 2022

John Rick Winer, 68, will spend 262 months in federal prison and pay $11 million in restitution for conspiring to defraud investors via a scheme spanning several US states. Winer, with his co-conspirators, solicited millions from donors for nonexistent charitable or humanitarian projects, and then laundered the proceeds. The conspirators utilized numerous fake entities, including one “House of Winer” to further the fraud. Winer is required to forfeit a residence in Norway, a luxury vehicle, approximately $4 million in silver coins, and a laptop. Upon completion of his prison term, Winer will spend 3 years under supervised release. USAO SD