News Coverage

Signals from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over how seriously it takes cybersecurity, combined with a Supreme Court ruling on whistleblower protections, are putting pressure on companies to be more careful about how they deal with potential tipsters, lawyers say.
The securities regulator issued guidance in February on how companies should handle cybersecurity issues. In April it fined Altaba Inc., formerly Yahoo Inc., $35 million over its handling of a 2014 hack, marking the...

Latest Development: Uber Technologies Inc. faces a nationwide class action alleging the company illegally classifies its drivers as independent contractors and cheats them out of overtime wages and tips.

Potential Impact: The action could compel the courts to clarify whether gig economy companies such as Uber, Lyft, GrubHub, Upwork, Fiverr and Thumbtack can characterize their workers as independent contractors or traditional employees entitled to protections under federal labor laws....

• Claims taxpayer was warned by accountant of illegal conduct
• Appeal puts government at risk of losing first FBAR disclosure circuit court case

The CEO of a pharmaceutical manufacturing company acted recklessly when he failed to disclose a Swiss bank account he owned, and isn’t entitled to a refund on a penalty he paid for his failure, the government said....

Allied Home Mortgage Capital Corporation has lost a decade-long battle in a verdict that tripled damages from $93 million to $268 million on September 14. United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Joon H. Kim, announced an additional judgement of $25 million against Allied Capital President and CEO, Jim Hodge, for False Claims Act and FIRREA violations involving the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) mortgage insurance program.
Branch Manager Peter Belli Claims...

Hunton & Williams LLP has become the latest law firm to settle allegations that it aided Robert Allen Stanford’s $7 billion Ponzi scheme, inking a $34 million deal that would benefit some of Stanford’s thousands of victims.
With Stanford now five years into a 110-year federal prison sentence, ​Hunton's ​big-dollar settlement is a significant step in a swarm of suits that arose from the 2009 collapse of Stanford International Bank and other companies Stanford...

An Orlando woman alleges that she earns less than the minimum wage for her work with a national telephone sex-talk purveyor and has filed a class-action complaint.
Anne Cannon filed a complaint on behalf of all others similarly situated on June 27 in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California against Tele Pay USA alleging violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act.
According to the complaint, the plaintiff has been employed by the defendant since 2008 as an actor...

Phone sex advertisements have long been a staple of overnight television, airing in the wee hours between reruns and infomercials when few people are tuned in.
Anyone who’s clicked through the channels during that time knows the format: A 1-900 number flashes across the bottom of the screen in bold yellow text. The soft-focused video shows a nubile woman sprawled across satin bedsheets, smiling in the candlelight and chatting on a landline. Smooth jazz plays in the background....

A major nationwide phone-sex purveyor, Tele Pay USA, was hit with a class-action lawsuit in federal court this week for allegedly cheating its contract workers out of compensation. As the Washington Post reports, the lawsuit offers a rare look at how the phone-sex industry operates — and it’s nothing like the cushy advertisements you saw during late-night TV years ago.
According to the Post, a Tele Pay phone-sex worker, Anne Cannon, filed a lawsuit on behalf of a potential...

A phone-sex worker filed a collective action against her employer Tele Pay USA in California federal court Tuesday, claiming the company has violated the Fair Labor Standards Act by paying her less than minimum wage, no overtime and shorting her for “off-the-clock” work.
At best, the suit claims, women who talk for Tele Pay, like lead plaintiff Anne Cannon, make $6 per hour. If their average call times drop below six minutes, their hourly rate drops to $4.20 per hour, the suit...

Phone sex might be expensive and short-lived for consumers, but it doesn’t pay much for the workers on the other line.
That’s according to a class action filed on Tuesday alleging a California-based phone sex operator misclassifies its “phone actors” as independent contractors, depriving them of overtime pay and “off the clock” work. As a result, the sex talk workers, most of whom are women, are paid below the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per...