Category: Lawsuits

Judge Orders Rudy Guiliani to Pay $148M in Damages Immediately Because He’s ‘Unlikely to Win Appeal’

Obama-appointed DC district judge Beryl Howell sidestepped the First Amendment by finding Rudy Giuliani guilty of defaming two Georgia election workers before trial for allegedly “not complying with his discovery obligations” and now she’s ordering him to pay $148 million in damages immediately because he’s “unlikely” to have the jury verdict overturned on appeal. Just as we saw with the Colorado Supreme Court unilaterally disqualifying Trump from the 2024 election ballot, every basic tenet of our justice system is being…

23andMe updates user agreement to prevent data breach lawsuits

As Genetic testing provider 23andMe faces multiple lawsuits for an October credential stuffing attack that led to the theft of customer data, the company has modified its Terms of Use to make it harder to sue the company. In October, a threat actor attempted to sell 23andMe customer data and, after failing to do so, leaked the data for 1 million Ashkenazi Jews and 4.1 million people living in the United Kingdom. Threat actor leaking 23andMe data Source: BleepingComputer 23andMe told BleepingComputer that…

Rights organisations sue Netherlands over F-35 parts to Israel

HAGUE: A group of human rights organisations took the Dutch government to court on Monday, arguing its supply of parts for F-35 fighters contributes to violations of international law in Gaza. The case concerns US-owned F-35 parts stored at a warehouse in the Netherlands and then shipped to several partners, including Israel, via existing export agreements. Oxfam Novib, one of the groups filing suit, said the export “made the Netherlands complicit in violations of the laws of war and the…

Mercer to pay $12 million penalty for misleading representations and fee disclosure failures

Mercer Financial Advice has been ordered by the Federal Court to pay a $12 million penalty for breaching fee disclosure obligations and for wrongly charging fees to customers, ASIC has reported. “This is a significant penalty for a financial advice provider,” said Sarah Court (pictured above), ASIC deputy chair. “Mercer failed in its obligation to provide fee disclosure statements to clients, provided misleading information in the disclosure statements it did provide, and charged its clients fees for services it was…

US audit inspectors unveil $7.9mn fines on China-based firms

WASHINGTON: US inspectors announced fines against China-based firms Thursday, as part of a broader effort to hold US-listed Chinese companies up to American auditing standards amid simmering geopolitical tensions. These included PwC affiliates in Hong Kong and China, alongside a Chinese audit company. The $7.9 million in penalties unveiled by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) represent some of the highest imposed on any firm globally, it said. They mark the first time it “has been able to bring enforcement action…

Shopify Files Fresh Lawsuit over DMCA Takedown Harassment

At the peak of the online shopping season, Canadian e-commerce giant Shopify filed a new lawsuit to take a stand against DMCA abuse. The company filed a complaint at a Florida federal court, accusing an Orlando resident of filing dozens of false takedown notices, allegedly to advance their own commercial interests. Signed into law a quarter century ago, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) aimed to equip copyright holders with new tools to protect their works online. A key element…

Canada: Class action against Dye & Durham over price hikes, broken promises dismissed

An Ontario justice has thrown out a proposed $200-million class action lawsuit against legal software provider Dye & Durham Ltd. DND-T over price hikes and broken promises by the Toronto software company. Ontario Superior Court Justice Edward Morgan last month dismissed the action brought by real estate law firms and D&D clients Burford Law Professional Corp. and Tais Davis. D&D spokesman Wojtek Dabrowski said in an e-mail: “We are pleased with this outcome and glad to put this meritless lawsuit…

Operator of Central California Bio-Lab Indicted for Distributing Adulterated and Misbranded COVID-19 Tests and Lying to Authorities

U.S. Attorney’s Office Eastern District of California  FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Thursday, November 16, 2023 FRESNO, Calif. — A federal grand jury returned a three-count indictment today against Jia Bei Zhu, aka Jesse Zhu, Qiang He, and David He, 62, a citizen of China who formerly resided in Clovis, charging him with distributing adulterated and misbranded medical devices in violation of the federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act and for making false statements to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), U.S….

Guernsey firm alleges fraud by Thomas Flohr before he launched VistaJet, case not dismissed

Thomas Flohr, owner of luxury airline VistaJet, must fight a claim that he defrauded a Guernsey investment partnership two decades ago after London’s High Court refused to dismiss the case.  Flohr, who denies the allegations, had tried to have the case thrown out on technical grounds related to the circumstances of the case, in which a previously dissolved partnership was resurrected in 2021 in order to file the suit.  Frontiers Capital initially sued for breach of contract in 2021 but…

SEC Charges President/CCO of Prophecy Asset Management Advisory Firm with Multi-Year Fraud

Washington D.C., Nov. 2, 2023 — The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged John Hughes, president and chief compliance officer of registered investment adviser Prophecy Asset Management LP, for his involvement in a multi-year fraud that concealed losses of hundreds of millions of dollars from investors. Prophecy Asset Management advised multiple hedge funds and reported more than $500 million in assets under management. The SEC’s complaint alleges that Hughes and his associates at Prophecy Asset Management misled the funds’ investors,…

Sam Bankman-Fried denies taking denies $10bn customer funds theft in testimony at fraud trial

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried began testifying at his fraud trial on Friday, saying the innovative business he hoped would move the cryptocurrency ecosystem forward ended up doing the opposite and hurting customers. The onetime cryptocurrency golden boy lost his businesses and his reputation as a pioneering entrepreneur in an emerging facet of finance when a rush of customers withdrew their money last year, exposing that billions of dollars were missing. Bankman-Fried, 31, acknowledged some of his failures early in his…

23andMe hit with lawsuits after hacker leaks stolen genetics data

Genetic testing provider 23andMe faces multiple class action lawsuits in the U.S. following a large-scale data breach that is believed to have impacted millions of its customers. Late last month, a threat actor leaked 23andMe customer data in a CSV file named ‘Ashkenazi DNA Data of Celebrities.csv’ on hacker forums. The file allegedly contained the data of nearly 1 million Ashkenazi Jews who used 23andMe services to find their ancestry info, genetic predispositions, and more. Initial leak of 23andMe data on a…

EU is formally investigating X over content about the Israel-Hamas war

As a ‘very large platform’ under the EU’s new Digital Services Act, X is required to respond by next week and could face massive penalties. The European Union (EU) has formally opened an investigation into X, the platform previously known as Twitter, to ensure it’s complying with the Digital Services Act (DSA) following Hamas’ attack on Israel in early October and subsequent Israeli air assault on Gaza. According to the request, this comes after “indications received by the Commission services…

Amazon sellers say they made a good living — until Amazon figured it out

Suavecito was the first product that Douglas Mrdeza listed to sell on Amazon back in 2014. He had ordered a bit too much of the specialty hair pomade for his barbershop in East Lansing, Michigan. He wanted to see whether he could offload some online. It sold out. So, he ordered more. This time he paid Amazon some extra money to use its warehouse storage and shipping service. “I did the calculation, bought what would have sold in a month…

The Epic v. Google witness list: Andy Rubin, Sundar Pichai, and more to testify

It’s been almost 10 months since a trial date was set in Epic’s antitrust lawsuit against Google, and with all of the other big tech cases going on right now, including Google’s other antitrust proceedings, you’d be forgiven for forgetting about this one. But believe it or not, the trial will start in less than a month, on November 6th, in the United States District Court in California’s Northern District. The court released a tentative list of witnesses, mostly executives…

What’s the basis of the Republicans’ Joe Biden impeachment inquiry?

Sept 28 (Reuters) – Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives hold their first hearing on Thursday in an impeachment inquiry into Democratic President Joe Biden after months of investigations of his son Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings. They have not found any evidence of misconduct by Biden himself. The White House says Biden has done nothing wrong and Republicans have no basis for an impeachment inquiry. Following is some of the evidence that has come to light: HUNTER’S BUSINESSES Republicans have…