Antitrust Matters Episode 6: The NCAA

Antitrust Matters provides engaging and timely conversations about competition policy in the digital age. Antitrust has always mattered to consumers and businesses, and to antitrust lawyers and economists, but today it also is in the political and public discourse more than ever. From the prices we pay for food, travel, financial services, payments to the way we interact daily using digital apps and platforms, antitrust touches each and every one...

May 17, 2022

Allianz Global Investors U.S. LLC pleaded guilty to securities fraud and agreed to pay a criminal fine of $2.3 billion, an SEC penalty of $675 million, and over $5 billion in disgorgement and restitution to victims.  Three former AGI senior portfolio managers, Gregoire Tournant, Trevor Taylor, and Stephen Bond-Nelson, also pleaded guilty to related charges and will be sentenced at a later date.  As part of its plea, AGI admitted...

April 27, 2022

Dr. Josef Schenker and his urgent care facilities, Josef Schenker, M.D., P.C., and Care Partners Medical Management, LLC will pay $564,217.70 for violations of the False Claims Act, by submitting up-coded claims to Medicare related to administration of the COVID-19 vaccine. Schenker and the two facilities provided higher-level CPT codes for services not actually provided, charging, e.g., for an office visit or exam when the patient only actually received a...

Gordon Schnell and Max Voldman Published in Newsweek on How Whistleblowers are Key to Reining in Prescription Drug Costs

Newsweek published an OpEd by Constantine Cannon whistleblower lawyers Gordon Schnell and Max Voldman on the need to expand the Medicaid Drug Rebate Program to Medicare.  The piece was prompted by DOJ's recent $235 million settlement with U.K. and St. Louis-based pharma company Mallinckrodt for allegedly violating the Medicaid rebate rule. On the books since 1990, the rule requires drug companies to rebate state Medicaid programs for price increases that...

Payments News Update – March 18, 2022

Legal and Regulatory Developments SPOTLIGHT: CFPB’s Chopra Blasts Potential Card Hikes Payments Dive – March 14, 2022 The director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said fee hikes by the card companies would add "insult to injury" at a time of inflation. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Rohit Chopra minced no words Friday in a rare TV appearance, offering a critical view of the state of the U.S. payments sector....

Payments News Update – March 4, 2022

Legal and Regulatory Developments SPOTLIGHT: Merchants Payments Coalition Launches Campaign to Fight Swipe-Fee Increase Slated for April ConvenienceStore News – March 2, 2022 The Merchants Payments Coalition (MPC) has unveiled an advertising campaign to educate Congress and other policymakers on increasing the swipe fees credit card networks and big banks charge merchants to process transactions. According to MPC, the campaign comes as Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc., which comprise nearly 80 percent...

Top 5 Reasons Why Nurses Make Great Whistleblowers

Nurses are rightly getting a lot of attention lately for the courageous and essential role they are playing on the front-line during the COVID-19 pandemic.  Whether in hospitals, nursing homes, hospices, or as home health workers, nurses are finally “learning what they are worth,” even as private equity firms seek to profit from nurses’ increased wage-earning power.  As reported by STAT, Congress is now investigating whether travel nursing agencies, controlled...

The Antitrust Week In Review

Here are some of the developments in antitrust news this past week that we found interesting and are following.   Microsoft starts a charm offensive to push through its Activision deal.  Microsoft kicked off a charm offensive in Washington to gain government approval for its $70 billion deal to buy the video game company Activision Blizzard, saying it would not give preferential treatment to its own games in its app...

Catch of the Week: A Tale of Two Cons

The start of February 2022 brought resolutions in two different COVID-19 fraud cases, one in the Paycheck Protection Program and one in the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program. Both involved scammers with previous criminal records who fraudulently obtained COVID relief money. The Department of Justice continues to prioritize enforcement against fraudsters who take advantage of the Paycheck Protection Program, even when the amounts involved are relatively low. On February 7, the...

Federal Indictment of Home Health Care Managers Highlights Antitrust Enforcers’ Increased Focus On Labor Markets

Antitrust enforcers’ growing interest in labor markets received further confirmation last week with a federal grand jury’s indictment charging four managers of home health care agencies with participating in an alleged conspiracy to suppress the wages and restrict the job mobility of essential workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. The indictment follows on the heels of a statement by Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter, the head of the Antitrust Division of...