Compliance & Ethics

The machinery meant to keep oily waste out of the ocean was aboard the MSC Samira III. So was the monitoring equipment meant to catch a violation. When those protections became inconvenient, senior crew members found ways around them. For months, oily bilge water was moved through the ship and discharged into the sea while the records meant to account for such discharges told a different story. On Friday, the companies responsible for the vessel pleaded guilty to federal pollution charges and were sentenced to pay a combined $1.75 million fine.

DermTech, the skin cancer testing company which filed for bankruptcy in 2024 and is now liquidating as DTech Liquidating, has agreed to resolve allegations that it violated the False Claims Act by knowingly submitting claims to Medicare for unreliable tests. Under the settlement announced Wednesday, the federal government received an allowed Class Three General Unsecured Claim of $5,038,011 in DermTech’s bankruptcy proceeding.

Google has agreed to pay £260 million to settle a lawsuit brought on behalf of UK app developers who accused the company of using its control over the Play Store to impose unfair commissions and restrictions on how their apps could reach customers, according to Reuters.

KKR & Co. has agreed to pay $250 million to settle Justice Department allegations that it repeatedly violated federal premerger review requirements, a penalty without precedent under a law whose effectiveness depends, in no small part, on companies telling regulators what they are required to know.

The Villages Health System has agreed to a $541.5 million settlement over diagnosis codes that made Medicare Advantage patients appear sicker than their medical records supported, increasing what the federal government paid their health plans and, ultimately, what those plans paid the Florida provider group.

Meta has agreed to pay as much as $17.1 billion and redesign central features of Instagram and Facebook under a nationwide settlement that would place hard limits on how its platforms engage young users.

The subscription eHarmony sold could last longer than the one its customers thought they were buying. Australians who signed up for premium memberships of six, 12 or 24 months were given the impression that those were the boundaries of the deal, the Federal Court has found. They were not. The memberships automatically renewed for another 12 months, and the price of that second stretch could be as much as five times the price of the first. By the time a customer discovered what had happened, another year of payments could already be theirs to make.