Tag: District of Columbia

The FTC alleged that Facebook violated its privacy promises to consumers and subsequently violated a 2012 Commission order.

In September 2024, the FTC announced that Ryan Cohen, managing partner of RC Ventures, LLC, and Chairman and CEO of GameStop Corp., will pay a $985,320 civil penalty to settle charges that his acquisition of Wells Fargo & Company shares violated the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act.

The Federal Trade Commission has sued Facebook, alleging that the company is illegally maintaining its personal social networking monopoly through a years-long course of anticompetitive conduct. The complaint alleges that Facebook has engaged in a systematic strategy—including its 2012 acquisition of up-and-coming rival Instagram, its 2014 acquisition of the mobile messaging app WhatsApp, and the imposition of anticompetitive conditions on software developers—to eliminate threats to its monopoly. The Commission vote to authorize staff to file for a permanent injunction and other equitable relief in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia was 3-2. Commissioners Noah Joshua Phillips and Christine S. Wilson voted no.

The FTC has taken action against an alcohol addiction treatment service for allegedly disclosing users’ personal health data to third-party advertising platforms, including Meta and Google, for advertising without consumer consent, after promising to keep such information confidential.

Two tech support companies will pay $26 million to settle FTC charges that they bilked tens of millions of dollars from consumers, particularly older consumers, by duping them into buying computer repair services in violation of the FTC Act and the Telemarketing Sales Rule.

The Federal Trade Commission has acted to stop Nexway, a multinational payment processing company, along with its CEO and chief strategy officer, from serving as a facilitator for the tech support scammers through credit card laundering. The defendants in the case have agreed to proposed court orders that prohibit them from any further payment laundering and require them to closely monitor other high-risk clients for illegal activity. The complaint and proposed orders were filed by the U.S. Department of Justice on behalf of the FTC.

The Federal Trade Commission is sending more than $610,000 in refunds to consumers who lost money to a tech support scam facilitated by the payment processing company Nexway.

The Federal Trade Commission sued 7-Eleven, Inc and its parent company, Seven & i Holdings Co., Ltd., alleging the convenience store chain violated a 2018 FTC consent order by acquiring a fuel outlet in St. Petersburg, Fla. without providing the Commission prior notice.

The FTC sued the health information company Surescripts, alleging that the company employed illegal vertical and horizontal restraints in order to maintain its monopolies over two electronic prescribing, or “e-prescribing,” markets: routing and eligibility.  According to the complaint, Surescripts monopolized two separate markets for e-prescription services: The market for routing e-prescriptions, which uses technology that enables health care providers to send electronic prescriptions directly to pharmacies; and the market for determining eligibility, a separate service that enables health care providers to electronically determine patients’ eligibility for prescription coverage through access to insurance coverage and benefits information, usually through a pharmacy benefit manager.The FTC alleges that Surescripts intentionally set out to keep e-prescription routing and eligibility customers on both sides of each market from using additional platforms (a practice known as multihoming) using anticompetitive exclusivity agreements, threats, and other exclusionary tactics. Among other things, the FTC alleges that Surescripts took steps to increase the costs of routing and eligibility multihoming through loyalty and exclusivity contracts.

In July 2023, the FTC filed a proposed order that would resolve the Commission’s charges. The proposed order prohibits Surescripts from engaging in exclusionary conduct and executing or enforcing non-compete agreements with current and former employees. The proposed order also goes beyond routing and eligibility, extending the same prohibitions to Surescripts’ medication history services and the company’s on-demand formulary services.

The FTC is suing Endo Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Endo International plc, Impax Laboratories, LLC, and Impax’s owner, Amneal Pharmaceuticals, Inc., alleging that a 2017 agreement between Endo and Impax violated the antitrust laws by eliminating competition in the market for oxymorphone ER. The complaint charges the defendants with violating Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act, which constitutes unfair methods of competition in violation of Section 5 of the FTC Act. Specifically, Endo, Impax, and Amneal are charged with entering into an illegal agreement in restraint of trade, and Amneal is charged with monopolization of the oxymorphone ER market. The complaint was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Jan. 25, 2021.

Restaurant chain owner and investment fund operator Biglari Holdings Inc. will pay a $1.4 million civil penalty to settle charges that two acquisitions it made on March 26, 2020 of shares of restaurant operator Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, Inc. violated the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act. According to the complaint, these two acquisitions, together with Biglari’s prior holdings of Cracker Barrel, caused it to exceed an HSR filing threshold, triggering its obligation to file an HSR Form and wait before completing the acquisition. Failing to do so violated the HSR Act.

In January 2022, New York City-based Vision Path, Inc., the online seller of direct-to-consumer Hubble lenses, agreed pay penalties and redress totaling $3.5 million to settle FTC charges that it violated the Contact Lens Rule in several ways, including by failing to obtain prescriptions and to properly verify prescription information, and by substituting Hubble lenses for those actually prescribed to consumers. The FTC also alleged the company violated the FTC Act when it failed to disclose that many reviews of Hubble lenses were not by unbiased consumers but were written by reviewers who were compensated for their reviews, and, in at least one instance, by one of its own executives.

In June 2022, the FTC took action against California-based Gravity Defyer Medical Technology Corporation and its owner Alexander Elnekaveh, filing a complaint in federal district court to permanently stop their allegedly deceptive pain-relief claims for Gravity Defyer footwear. In its complaint the FTC alleged that Elnekaveh violated a 2001 order barring him from such allegedly deceptive advertising by making scientifically unsupported claims and using misleading consumer testimonials to sell Gravity Defyer products.

Clarence L. Werner, founder of the Omaha, Nebraska-based truckload carrier Werner Enterprises, Inc. will pay a $486,900 civil penalty to settle charges that certain of his acquisitions of company stock while he was a director of the company violated the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act. The HSR Act requires companies and individuals to report stock purchases over a certain threshold to the FTC and DOJ and wait before closing the transaction so that the federal agencies can investigate the potential competitive impact of the acquisition. Smaller transactions may also be reportable under the Act due to the need to aggregate the new purchase with all current holdings.

The FTC sued Kohl’s, Inc. and Walmart, Inc. for falsely marketing dozens of rayon textile products as bamboo. Both companies also are charged with making deceptive environmental claims, touting that the “bamboo” textiles were made using ecofriendly processes, while in reality converting bamboo into rayon requires the use of toxic chemicals and results in hazardous pollutants. The court orders settling the complaint require the companies to stop making deceptive green claims or using other misleading advertising, and pay penalties of $2.5 million and $3 million, respectively.

Richard Fairbank, CEO of Capital One Financial Corp., has agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that his March 8, 2018, acquisition of Capital One Financial (COF) stock violated the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act. Under a negotiated settlement, Fairbank will pay a $637,950 civil penalty. The complaint alleges that in 2018,  Fairbank violated the notice and waiting period requirements of the HSR Act because he did not file before acquiring COF voting securities in excess of the $100 million filing threshold, as adjusted (which at the time was $168.8 million).

The Federal Trade Commission obtained an order permanently banning a payment processor that facilitated a fraudulent student loan debt relief scheme from processing debt relief payments. The order also requires the company and its owner to surrender $500,000 to the FTC for consumer redress.

The FTC’s complaint against Automatic Funds Transfer Services, Inc. (AFTS) and its owner, Eric Johnson, alleges that AFTS processed at least $31 million in consumer payments for a fraudulent student loan debt relief scheme sued by the FTC in 2019. The debt relief scheme used numerous names, including The Student Loan Group (SLG).

Kuuhuub Inc., Kuu Hubb Oy and Recolor Oy settled FTC allegations that they violated a children’s privacy law by collecting and disclosing personal information about children who used the app without notifying their parents and obtaining their consent.