New York on Thursday filed a lawsuit against Sprint Nextel Corp looking to collect more than $300 million, Reuters reported. The wireless company is accused of tax fraud for deliberately not collecting or paying more than $100 million in taxes over the past seven years. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman filed the complaint in the New York State Supreme Court on Thursday. The tax suit, which is the first filed under the state’s False Claims Act, could require Sprint to pay triple the amount it ...

Korean regulators on Thursday fined domestic mobile phone manufacturers and carriers 45.3 billion won (roughly $40.2 million) for price-fixing and consumer fraud. According to the Fair Trade Commission, the companies secretly agreed to inflate the prices of cell phones while advertising offers with considerable incentives. The companies’ actions apparently tricked consumers into thinking they were buying a new phone for a bargain. “Companies took advantage of the complicated price setting practice...

A research analyst and a former executive who revealed insider information about Apple’s sales have both been charged, reports Reuters. Analyst John Kinnucan on Friday was charged with two counts of securities fraud, two counts of conspiracy and one count of insider trading from a civil case filed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Between 2008 and 2010, Kinnucan allegedly paid insiders with cash, trips and other incentives for inside information regarding Apple. Kinnnucan then sold the inf...

An MSNBC investigative report, and related lawsuit, claims that AT&T has “systematically overstated” the data usage of iPhone and iPad customers. Lawyers for the plaintiffs, seeking class action status, hired an independent computer firm to compare the actual amount data used by iPhone and iPad customers with the amount that AT&T bills users for. “Did you find overcharges on every single transaction,” asked MSNBC’s Lisa Myers, speaking with the investigating firmR...

Charges have been filed by federal prosecutors in Seattle against a Microsoft employee accused of wire fraud. Robert D. Curry was arrested Tuesday morning and charged with stealing $515,000 from Microsoft using a series of wire transfers sent from Microsoft to Curry’s bank account. According to Curry, the transfers were payments for services rendered but prosecutors contend that Curry provided no such services. According to the charges, Curry created a shell company and used one of Microsoft’s v...

Reuters is reporting that former Apple global supply chain manager, Paul Devine, has pled guilty to wire fraud, conspiracy and money laundering in a San Jose, CA federal court. Mr. Devine, who worked for Apple from 2005 to 2010, was accused of taking kickbacks and “using his position to pass confidential information to help suppliers negotiate favorable contracts with Apple.” As part of his plea, Devine forfeits $2.28 million in cash and property. ”Mr. Devine is a good man who made a mistak...

This one has us scratching our heads. When attempting to order the iPhone for zip codes in Los Angeles, San Francisco and other major cities, everything seems perfectly fine. However, NYC zip codes, more specifically Brooklyn, removes the iPhone as an option for online sales. We called several stores in the NYC area, including one in Brooklyn, and the sales reps said stock was perfectly fine. So we chatted up online sales and they told us it wasn’t available in that area and, as noted by the image below...

Allow us to quickly bring you up to speed: The Daily Background did a bit of digging when it came across some ads on Mechanical Turk offering to compensate people for writing positive reviews about Belkin products, as well as up-voting pro-Belkin comments. What did the digging uncover? A Belkin rep on the Business Development / eCommerce team posted the ads. Busted. Now that you have all the background you need, enjoy a snippet from Belkin President Mark Reynoso’s response:Belkin does not participate in...