June 28, 2023

June 28, 2023

Michael Ackerman of Ohio has been banned from participating in CFTC-regulated markets and ordered to pay $27 million in restitution as well as $27 million in civil monetary penalties for operating a digital asset fraud scheme.  He was also ordered to pay $31 million in restitution and serve 5 years of probation and 1 year of home confinement in a related criminal proceeding.  According to the CFTC, Ackerman solicited funds...

June 27, 2023

ACI Worldwide and its subsidiary, ACI Payments, will pay a $25 million civil penalty for improperly initiating around $2.3 billion in unlawful mortgage payment transactions, impacting nearly 500,000 homeowners with mortgages serviced by Mr. Cooper f/k/a Nationstar. ACI offers payment processing services across a wide range of industries. ACI conducted tests of its electronic payments platform on April 23, 2021. Rather than using deidentified, dummy data, ACI used client data...

June 27, 2023

Publishers Clearing House has been ordered to pay $18.5 million and overhaul its sweepstakes entry and sales processes.  The FTC had charged the company with misleading consumers through “dark patterns”—including misleading email subject lines and manipulative website design—to convince consumers to make unnecessary purchases, and to disguise hidden shipping and handling costs on so-called “risk free” purchases.  FTC

Non-Compete Clauses in Healthcare Employee Contracts: A Changing Legal Landscape and Potential Antitrust Implications

James Kovacs and Daniel Vitelli along with co-author Jonathan Sumrell published an article in the ABA Health eSource discussing the changing landscape of non-compete agreements, the FTC’s proposed rule to ban them, and continuing antitrust enforcement over other employer agreements. Non-Compete Clauses in Healthcare Employee Contracts: A Changing Legal Landscape and Potential Antitrust Implications (June 27, 2023)(subscription required)

FTC Warns Against Rise of Text Message Scams - What to Watch Out For

Scammers are everywhere these days.  There is no escaping.  And, as the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has recently warned, bogus text messages are becoming their latest vehicle of choice.  An analysis the agency just published found consumers reported losing $330 million to text message scams in 2022, with a median reported loss of around $1,000.  That total is more than double the reported losses in 2021 and almost five times...

June 26, 2023

Sanjay Singh, of Broward County, Florida, and his company, Royal Bengal Logistics Inc., have been charged by the SEC for fraudulently raising $112 million through a 5-year, Ponzi-like scheme, which targeted as many as 1,500 primarily Haitian-American investors through an unregistered securities offering. Singh promised investors guaranteed returns of 12.5 to 325 percent, and that the investors’ funds would be used to expand operations and increase its fleet of semi-trucks...

June 26, 2023

U.S.-based citizens Ronald Flynn and Richard Marchitto, their U.S.-based company Vuuzle Media Corp., and UAE-based company Vuuzle Media Corp Limited have been ordered to pay over $26 million in civil monetary penalties, and another $26 million in disgorgement and prejudgment interest, after they were found to have fraudulently raised over $25 million through high pressure sales tactics.  Using a boiler room of salespeople based largely in the Philippines, the defendants...

June 26, 2023

In the largest ever Post-9/11 GI Bill fraud case, co-conspirators Michael Bostock, Eric Bostock, and Philip Abod, through their VA-approved technical training school, California Technical Academy, defrauded the federal government out of nearly $105 million by making false and fraudulent representation to the VA. More specifically, from January 2012 through June 2022, the co-conspirators submitted falsified course completion records for enrolled veterans, including approved courses of study, class attendance, and...

Opinion: The Titan sub implosion was a preventable tragedy

Whistleblower attorneys Marlene Koury and Chris McLamb were published in Los Angeles Times, Opinion: The Titan sub implosion was a preventable tragedy (June 23, 2023).

June 23, 2023

Whistleblower attorney Chris McLamb was quoted in a Law360 article, Thomas Dissent Could Signal ‘Twilight’ for False Claims Act.