Category: _enforcement

A Romanian national was sentenced today to 89 months in prison for his role in a transnational, multimillion-dollar scheme to defraud American victims. He is the 24th member of the organized criminal group to be sentenced, of the 28 who were charged. Ionut-Razvan Sandu, 35, of Romania, pleaded guilty in April 2022 to conspiracy to commit a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) offense. Four other defendants pleaded guilty to this offense and were sentenced for their roles in…

On December 29, 2022, the French Data Protection Authority (the “CNIL”) announced that it imposed an €8,000,000 fine on Apple for violations of the French rules on targeted advertising and the use of cookies and similar tracking technologies. Background The CNIL received a complaint concerning Apple’s ad personalization practices on the App Store and carried out several investigations between 2021 and 2022. The CNIL’s investigations concluded that Apple was collecting the identifiers of users that visited the App Store using…

Two Dubai entities and several individuals were charged in an indictment unsealed in the District of Maryland recently for their roles in a multimillion-dollar scheme to export non-organic grain into the United States to be sold as certified organic. Hakan Agro DMCC and Hakan Organics DMCC, both based in Dubai, and Goksal Beyaz, Nuray Beyaz and Mustafa Cakiroglu, all of Turkey, were each charged with conspiracy, smuggling, and wire fraud. An initial appearance for Hakan Agro and Hakan Organics was…

The former Bolivian Minister of Government was sentenced today to 70 months in prison for conspiracy to launder bribes he received in exchange for corruptly helping a U.S. company win a lucrative contract from the Bolivian government. Arturo Carlos Murillo Prijic, 58, of Bolivia, pleaded guilty on Oct. 20, 2022, to one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering. According to court documents, Murillo received at least $532,000 in bribe payments from a Florida-based company in exchange for helping that company secure…

  U.S. Department of Justice FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Tuesday, December 20, 2022 A federal grand jury in the District of Maryland returned an indictment that was unsealed today charging two men for their roles in schemes to defraud investors in CytoDyn Inc., a publicly traded biotechnology company (OTCQB: CYDY) based in Vancouver, Washington. According to court documents, Nader Pourhassan, 59, of Lake Oswego, Oregon, and Kazem Kazempour, 69, of Potomac, Maryland, allegedly engaged in a conspiracy to defraud investors through…

  In a civil complaint filed today, the Department of Justice alleges that AmerisourceBergen Corporation and two of its subsidiaries, AmerisourceBergen Drug Corporation and Integrated Commercialization Solutions, LLC (together “AmerisourceBergen”), collectively one of the country’s largest wholesale pharmaceutical distributors, violated federal law in connection with the distribution of controlled substances to pharmacies and other customers across the country, contributing to the prescription opioid epidemic. The complaint alleges that this unlawful conduct resulted in at least hundreds of thousands of violations…

Bladimir Moreno, 55, was sentenced for leading a federal racketeering and forced labor conspiracy that victimized Mexican H-2A agricultural workers in the United States between 2015 and 2017. U.S. District Court Judge Charlene Edward Honeywell of the Middle District of Florida sentenced Moreno to 118 months in prison with three years of supervised release and ordered him to pay over $175,000 in restitution to the victims. Moreno, the owner of Los Villatoros Harvesting LLC (LVH), the labor contracting company that…

  The Federal Trade Commission is ordering an end to illegal business tactics that Mastercard has been using to force merchants to route debit card payments through its payment network, and is requiring Mastercard to stop blocking the use of competing debit payment networks. Under a proposed FTC order, Mastercard will have to start providing competing networks with customer account information they need to process debit payments, reversing a practice the company allegedly had been using to keep them out…

A federal grand jury in the District of Maryland returned an indictment that was unsealed today charging two men for their roles in schemes to defraud investors in CytoDyn Inc., a publicly traded biotechnology company (OTCQB: CYDY) based in Vancouver, Washington. According to court documents, Nader Pourhassan, 59, of Lake Oswego, Oregon, and Kazem Kazempour, 69, of Potomac, Maryland, allegedly engaged in a conspiracy to defraud investors through false and misleading representations and material omissions relating to CytoDyn’s development of…

According to the company’s admissions and court documents, between 2010 and 2014, Honeywell UOP conspired to offer an approximately $4 million bribe to a then-high-ranking executive of Petróleo Brasileiro S.A (Petrobras) in Brazil. Specifically, Honeywell UOP offered the bribe to secure improper advantages in order to obtain and retain business from Petrobras in connection with Honeywell UOP’s efforts to win an approximately $425 million contract from Petrobras to design and build an oil refinery called Premium.

Thrower alleged that from January 2008 through April 2017, Academy had an underwriting process that led employees to disregard FHA rules and falsely certify compliance with underwriting requirements. Thrower further alleged that, as a result of Academy’s knowingly deficient mortgage underwriting practices, the government paid insurance claims on loans improperly underwritten by Academy.

“Lenders that knowingly cause the government to guarantee loans that are materially deficient put both homeowners and the public fisc at risk,” said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian M. Boynton, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Division. “The settlement announced today is a result of the relator’s efforts to develop this case in litigation and complements the department’s actions to prevent abuse of government programs designed to foster home ownership.” 

On November 25, 2022, Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (“DPC”) released a decision fining Meta Platforms, Inc. (“Meta”) €265 million for a 2019 data leak involving the personal information of approximately 533 million Facebook users worldwide. In the decision, the DPC argued that Meta failed to comply with the GDPR’s requirement of providing privacy “by design and default” when it failed to prevent the disclosure of users’ phone numbers, email addresses, full names, dates of birth and other personal information on…

BOSTON – A former co-owner of the now-defunct New England Compounding Center (NECC) was sentenced today in federal court in Boston in connection with conspiring to defraud the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Gregory Conigliaro, 57, of Southborough, Mass. was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Richard G. Stearns to one year in prison and one year of supervised release. In December 2018, Conigliaro was convicted following a 41-day jury trial of one count of conspiracy to defraud the United…

Please note that Bittrex is a crypto exchange / trading platform. Crypto exchanges are like merchants that sell and trade cryptocurrencies, while cryptocurrencies (like Monero, Bitcoin, ZCash, etc.) are the ‘products’ sold by the merchants. The failure of a merchant does not entail that there is a failure in the product. Cryptocurrency experts recommend that if you are going to own any cryptocurrency, you should never leave it on an exchange. Keep it on a hard wallet such as Ledger…

Jun 27, 2022. The European Union’s governing body has published a list of new sanctions against Moscow, accusing Russia of a “continuing war of aggression against Ukraine.” The sixth batch of restrictions since February contains a phased embargo on oil imports, restrictions against some Russian banks and broadcasters, and the blacklisting of people Brussels accuses of war crimes. The Council of the European Union officially announced the sanctions package on Friday. EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy…