Whistleblower News From The Inside — September 23, 2016

By the C|C Whistleblower Lawyer Team

Whistleblower lawsuit accusing Tier-1 carriers of overcharging California moves forward —  The lawsuit alleges that Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile ignored two cost-saving clauses included in the master contracts used by California’s state and local governments – overcharging the government customers by more than $100 million.  The clauses require carriers to tell government customers which rate plans would result in the lowest cost and provide wireless services at the “lowest available cost.”  Wireless Week

 Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf steps down from Federal Advisory Council — “It would be ironic if the Federal Reserve, a key federal banking regulator tasked in part with ensuring the fair and equitable treatment of consumers in financial transactions, continued to receive special insights and recommendations from senior management of a financial institution that just paid a record-breaking fine to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for ‘unfair’ and ‘abusive’ practices that placed consumers at financial risk.”  WSJ

 Chinese agencies mount coordinated crackdown on telecoms fraud — Six Chinese agencies announced a coordinated effort to tackle internet and telecoms fraud to get to grips with an explosion of such crimes it says have led to huge financial losses including where callers impersonate officials or authority figures and prey on the elderly, students or the unemployed.  Reuters

Canadian company processed tens of millions of dollars in global fraud — a Canadian payment processor named PacNet Services, Ltd. became one of the many targets of an unprecedented crackdown on global mail fraud that raked in millions from the sick and elderly — leaving them with nothing.  CNN

Chelsea Manning gets solitary confinement – Prison officials have sentenced Chelsea Manning to 14 days in solitary confinement following an attempt to kill herself in July.  Government officials drew the public’s ire after charging Manning with three counts of misconduct following the suicide attempt, including two which carried possible penalties of indefinite solitary confinement. The Guardian