Under the revamped whistleblower provision, a whistleblower can receive up to 30% of a penalty obtained through a BSA enforcement action. A whistleblower would qualify if the whistleblower provided original information and the action culminated in sanctions above $1 mil.
Monday, March 15, 2021 And the sign said, Long-haired freaky people … need not apply. – Signs, Five Man Electrical Band, Good-byes and Butterflies (1970)
Arbitrary judgments are as old as humanity itself. Law evolved in part to try to spare us all from some of them and provide order and predictability in their place. That evolution, and occasional revolution, eventually gave rise to notions of due process, which in the United States presume that citizens know, or have an opportunity to know, what their laws require so that they may govern their conduct accordingly and avoid liability or, worse, prosecution, for having violated them.
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The DOJ’s Fraud Section 2020 Annual Review: Financial Enforcement Focused on Major Corporate Resolutions and Emerging COVID-19 Fraud Friday, March 12, 2021
On February 24, 2020, the DOJ’s Criminal Division Fraud Section published its annual year-end summary (available here). This post addresses white-collar and financial fraud enforcement activity by two Units of the DOJ’s Fraud Section: the Market Integrity and Major Frauds (MIMF) Unit and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) Unit. Our previous post discussed health care enforcement by the Fraud Section’s Health Care Fraud Unit (available here).
For the MIMF Unit, COVID-19 fraud became an unexpected enforcement priority. And, even despite the pandemic, both the MIMF Unit and FCPA Unit obtained large corporate resolutions in 2020. Many of these resolutions share a common theme: the Fraud Section’s emphasis on corporate compliance.
Thursday, March 11, 2021
The CPSC recently announced its first civil penalty of 2021. Cybex International, Inc. (Cybex) agreed to pay $7.95 million after the workout equipment manufacturer allegedly failed to immediately report to the CPSC the defects in two of its products.
The first product was an arm curl machine, which had a defective weld that could cause the machine’s handle to separate unexpectedly and strike the consumer in the face. Cybex received 85 reports of broken handles, including one report of permanent vision loss, but allegedly failed to immediately report the defect to the CPSC. Cybex eventually recalled the arm curl machines in August 2015. The second product was a smith press machine, whose weight bar could fall and strike the consumer. Cybex received 27 reports of fallen weight bars, including reports of paralysis and spinal fracture, but allegedly failed to immediately report the defect to the CPSC. Cybex eventually recalled the smit
Thursday, March 11, 2021
The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed that pay-per-click advertisers may be liable under the Lanham Act for “click fraud.”
WickFire, LLC v. Laura Woodruff et al., Case No. 17-50340 (5th Cir. Feb. 26, 2021) (Owen, J.)
WickFire and TriMax Media are advertisers that compete in the pay-for-performance search engine marketing business, also known as pay-per-click marketing. In this type of marketing, every time a user clicks on an advertisement, the advertiser pays the search engine (
i.e., Google) a small fee. If the user makes a purchase on the merchant’s site, the merchant pays the advertiser a commission. When a pay-per-click campaign runs smoothly, the advertiser pays a small amount for a click, the click results in a sale, and the commission to the advertiser is more than the advertiser paid for the click.