Yuji Naka has pleaded guilty to insider trading charges filed last fall. The Sonic the Hedgehog co-creator has admitted to violating Japanese financial law by buying shares in the game studio Aiming before its team-up with Square Enix on Dragon Quest Tact became public. Naka admitted to making a profit over 20 million yen (about $150,000) after selling his investment. He hasn't yet received a penalty for the illegal trade.

The veteran developer signed on with Square Enix in 2018, but abruptly left soon after his one project at the company (the mobile platformer Balan Wonderland) shipped to customers. He sued the company for removing him as director of Balan six months before launch. He was still with Square Enix when he heard about the Dragon Quest Tact work.

Two other former employees, Taisuke Sasaki and Fumiaki Suzuki, were also arrested for buying Aiming shares using insider knowledge. Square Enix says it's cooperating with investigators and has established a system that prevents insider trading. It's not clear how well that protection will work in practice, but the guilty plea theoretically discourages developers from using industry secrets to manipulate the stock market.

Nishad Singh, a co-founder of collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, has pleaded guilty to US federal fraud and conspiracy charges. Singh, who was FTX's director of engineering, is the third member of Sam Bankman-Fried's inner circle to agree to cooperate with prosecutors in the case against him. Former executives Caroline Ellison and Zixiao "Gary" Wang previously pleaded guilty to fraud charges.

Singh pleaded guilty to six criminal counts, including wire fraud and conspiracy to defraud the US by violating campaign finance laws. He agreed to forfeit the proceeds of his actions, as Reuters reports. Bankruptcy filings showed that Singh received a $543 million loan from Alameda.

Singh admitted to making illegal donations to political candidates and PACs under his name using funds from Alameda Research (FTX's sibling hedge fund and crypto trading firm). He claimed the donations were intended to bolster the political influence of FTX and Bankman-Fried (aka SBF), according to The Wall Street Journal. Singh added that he agreed with the stances of those he donated to but didn't pick the candidates. Per OpenSecrets, he contributed $8 million to Democratic PACs and campaigns during the 2022 election cycle.

Moreover, Singh said he found out in mid-2022 that Alameda was borrowing billions of dollars in customer funds from FTX. It emerged by September that Alameda wasn't able to repay those funds. Singh additionally claimed that he falsified FTX’s revenues at SBF's behest to make the company more palatable to investors.

SBF now faces 12 criminal charges after an indictment detailing four additional ones was unsealed last week. Among other things, he has been accused of stealing billions of dollars in FTX customer funds and misleading investors and lenders. Notably, in light of Singh's plea, the charges include alleged violations of federal campaign finance laws by donating to a super PAC under the names of two executives. SBF, who was arrested and extradited from the Bahamas in December, has pleaded not guilty to the charges. His trial is set for October.

On the same day Singh made his guilty plea, the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission filed civil complaints against him. The agencies said Singh is cooperating with the SEC's ongoing investigation and that he agreed to settle with the CFTC.

Back in 2021, the European Commission issued antitrust charges against Apple after deciding that the company may be abusing its dominant position when it comes to music streaming apps. The commission sent the tech giant a Statement of Objections listing issues that it believes warrant further investigation. In it, the EU's executive body outlined its issues with Apple, namely making developers use its payment system and preventing them from telling subscribers about alternative (and often cheaper) payment options outside of iOS apps. Now, the commission has announced that its antitrust investigation will only touch upon the second issue, or the "anti-steering obligations" Apple imposes upon developers. 

Its revised Statement of Objections drops its position regarding the legality of the company making developers use its in-app payment system. It's going all in on the anti-steering allegations instead, citing concerns that Apple's rule prevents developers from notifying users about more affordable subscription prices elsewhere. 

The commission said these anti-steering obligations imposed upon developers are "unfair trading conditions" in breach of Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (‘TFEU'). It explained that the obligations are "neither necessary nor proportionate for the provision of the App Store on iPhones and iPad," that they're detrimental to Apple users who'll likely end up paying more, and that they negatively affect music streaming app developers "by limiting effective consumer choice."

This particular antitrust case was a result of the complaint Spotify filed against Apple in 2019, wherein it accused the tech giant of having discriminatory practices designed to suppress competitors to Apple Music. If the commission decides that Apple has indeed broken antitrust laws, then it could prohibit the conduct that's in breach of the rules — in this case, preventing developers from pointing users to external payment options — and could fine the company up to 10 percent of its annual turnover worldwide. Apple told The Wall Street Journal that it was pleased the scope of its case had been narrowed and that it hopes the commission "will end its pursuit of a complaint that has no merit."

The Department of Justice (DOJ) is accusing Google of routinely destroying internal messaging chat histories, which the company is required to preserve under federal rules for an antitrust lawsuit. Google is grappling with not just one, but a couple of antitrust lawsuits filed by the DOJ and groups of states. This particular case pertains to the lawsuit the department filed back in 2020 for "unlawfully maintaining monopolies" around search and search-related advertising.

In the DOJ's filing, it said company employees typically used their internal chatroom, which was set to delete history every 24 hours, to discuss "substantive and sensitive business." Apparently, the agency expected Google to change its chat history setting in 2019 when the company "reasonably anticipated [the] litigation," but it left the decision to individual employees. Only a few people deemed their chat histories relevant to the case and preserved theirs for the court, and Google continued deleting most people's chats even after the lawsuit was filed. 

Despite that, Google reportedly told the government that it had already "put a legal hold in place" to suspend auto-deletion on its chat tool. The DOJ alleges that the company's claim was a lie and that it only truly stopped deleting chat histories this week after it was warned that the agency would file a motion for sanctions. It's now asking the court to rule that Google had violated a federal rule and to order a hearing that would determine how the company would be sanctioned. The DOJ also wants the court to order Google to provide more information about its chat practices. 

Google, however, denies the DOJ's allegations. A spokesperson told The Wall Street Journal: "Our teams have conscientiously worked for years to respond to inquiries and litigation. In fact, we have produced over 4 million documents in this case alone, and millions more to regulators around the world."

Bungie has been embroiled in a legal battle with cheat provider AimJunkies since 2021, with both sides slapping the other with lawsuits. Now, the game developer has walked away with $4.3 million in damages and fees after a victory in an arbitration proceeding, according to TorrentFreak. Bungie first sued AirmJunkies in 2021, accusing it of copyright and trademark infringement for hosting "Destiny 2 Hacks" on its website. 

US District Court Judge Thomas Zilly ruled mostly in favor of AimJunkies last year, deciding that Bungie had failed to provide sufficient evidence to prove its claim. However, he gave Bungie the chance to present more evidence. That copyright infringement lawsuit is still headed to trial, but Zilly apparently referred the non-copyright-related aspects of the case to arbitration. 

TorrentFreak says arbitration Judge Ronald Cox has decided that AimJunkies and "Destiny 2 Hacks" developer James May violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Cox based his decision on May's previous testimonies that he connected reverse engineering tools to the game in order to create cheats for it. May also said that Bungie caught and banned him several times for doing so, but that he looked for methods to circumvent the bans. 

Since AimJunkies sold and profited from May's creation, the judge found it liable. Cox also found AimJunkies and its parent company Phoenix Digital Group liable for selling not just game cheats, but also the loader used to inject cheats into games. Based on evidence presented, AimJunkies sold over 1,000 copies of the cheats and over 1,000 copies of the cheat loader. In addition to the evidence and May's statements, one other reason why Cox sided with Bungie was because AimJunkies owner David Shaefer underreported the website's cheat sales. "Given respondents' egregious and willful conduct, including their ongoing concealment of sales, Bungie is entitled to the full statutory damages available," he wrote in his decision. 

As a result, Bungie was awarded $3.65 million for all DMCA-related violations and an additional $700,000 for fees and other costs. According to TorrentFreak, Bungie will use this victory as part of its argument in AimJunkies' countersuit in which it accused the developer of violating its ToS for reverse-engineering its cheat software. AimJunkies also previously claimed that Bungie illegally hacked May's computer, but the court dismissed that complaint last year. 

NBA Hall of Famer Paul “The Truth” Pierce agreed to pay $1.4 million to settle charges from the Securities and Exchange Commission over a cryptocurrency he promoted on Twitter. The SEC charged Pierce with making false and misleading promotional statements about EthereumMax (EMAX) and failing to disclose the $244,000 payment in tokens he received for plugging it on social media.

The SEC said Pierce also posted a misleading screenshot of an account showing much more in EMAX holdings and profits than his account had. Pierce also tweeted a link to the currency’s website, including instructions on purchasing EMAX tokens. The government agency found that Pierce violated anti-touting and antifraud provisions of federal securities laws.

The retired NBA legend and former ESPN studio analyst didn’t admit or deny the SEC’s findings as part of the settlement. However, he did agree not to promote crypto for three years. Pierce’s case echoes Kim Kardashian’s $1.26 million settlement in October for plugging the same currency. Pierce and Kardashian were also sued last year for their involvement in the scheme.

“This case is yet another reminder to celebrities: The law requires you to disclose to the public from whom and how much you are getting paid to promote investment in securities, and you can’t lie to investors when you tout a security,” said SEC Chair Gary Gensler in a statement today. “When celebrities endorse investment opportunities, including crypto asset securities, investors should be careful to research if the investments are right for them, and they should know why celebrities are making those endorsements.”

It's not just international police trying to hold Terraform Labs accountable for a collapse that took $40 billion from investors. The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged Terraform and its CEO Do Kwon with securities fraud for allegedly running a "multi-billion dollar" crypto asset scheme. The blockchain startup purportedly misled investors by falsely claiming that its TerraUSD asset was a stablecoin pegged to the US dollar, with high yields (up to 20 percent). The firm also fooled people by claiming its Luna token would gain value thanks to a Korean mobile payment app that used the Terra blockchain to settle transactions.

Terraform and Do Kwon didn't provide "full, fair and truthful disclosure" for their crypto asset securities, SEC chair Gary Gensler says. The charges include registration and anti-fraud violations of the Securities Act and Exchange Act.  

TerraUSD and Luna lost their peg to the US dollar in May 2022, with the prices of both plunging to near-zero. Investors lodged complaints accusing Terraform and Kwon of running a Ponzi scheme, and the freefall contributed to the collapse of the crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital. The crypto exchange Binance quickly faced a lawsuit over claims it incorrectly marketed TerraUSD as a safe asset. While Kwon insisted that he wasn't evading capture, he left his native South Korea, refused to face investigators' questions and was put on Interpol's "red notice" list.

The SEC's charges join a string of efforts to crack down on reported fraud among some of the crypto industry's biggest names. Authorities have most notably pursued FTX and its founder Sam Bankman-Fried over that exchange's downfall, while former Celsius Network chief Alex Mashinsky is also accused of defrauding investors. While crypto may still have a future, it's clear government bodies want stricter enforcement of financial laws in this arena.

A former product manager at Coinbase has pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud in what's believed to be the first crypto-related insider trading case in the US. Ishan Wahi initially pleaded not guilty last year.

Federal prosecutors claim that, on at least 14 occasions, Wahi shared confidential information with his brother Nikhil Wahi and friend Sammer Ramani about cryptocurrencies that Coinbase was planning to let its users trade so the pair could buy them in advance. Once Coinbase announced that it would list the tokens, their values rose. Nikhil Wahi and Ramani are said to have then sold the assets to make a profit. The scheme allegedly generated north of $1.5 million in ill-gotten gains.

Ramani has not been apprehended. Nikhil Wahi pleaded guilty to a wire fraud conspiracy charge in September and was last month sentenced to 10 months in prison. Ishan Wahi faces a prison sentence of between 36 and 47 months as part of his plea deal, according to Reuters. He'll be sentenced in May.

Along with the criminal charges, Wahi faced a civil lawsuit from the Securities and Exchange Commission. He asked a judge this week to dismiss the suit, having claimed that the cryptocurrency tokens in question are not securities, meaning they would not be subject to SEC regulation.

Activision Blizzard will pay $35 million to settle charges from the Securities and Exchange Commission that it “failed to maintain disclosure controls and procedures to ensure that the company could assess whether its disclosures pertaining to its workforce were adequate.” The settlement also resolves charges that Activision Blizzard violated whistleblower protection regulations. The company is settling the charges without admitting to or denying them.

"The SEC’s order finds that Activision Blizzard failed to implement necessary controls to collect and review employee complaints about workplace misconduct, which left it without the means to determine whether larger issues existed that needed to be disclosed to investors,” SEC Denver regional office director Jason Burt said in a statement. 

The SEC claims that, between 2018 and 2021, the company “lacked controls and procedures among its separate business units to collect and analyze employee complaints of workplace misconduct." Because of that, Activision Blizzard higher ups didn’t have the information they needed to fully comprehend the substance and number of workplace misconduct complaints, according to the order. Nor did management review whether there were any material issues that would have warranted public disclosure, the SEC found.

In addition, the SEC determined that the company violated a whistleblower protection rule as a result of separation agreements it carried out between 2016 and 2021. Activision Blizzard allegedly required former workers to provide it with notice if the SEC contacted them for information. "Taking action to impede former employees from communicating directly with the Commission staff about a possible securities law violation is not only bad corporate governance, it is illegal,” Burt, one of the supervisors of the investigation, said.

"We are pleased to have amicably resolved this matter. As the order recognizes, we have enhanced our disclosure processes with regard to workplace reporting and updated our separation contract language," an Activision Blizzard spokesperson told Engadget in a statement. "We did so as part of our continuing commitment to operational excellence and transparency. Activision Blizzard is confident in its workplace disclosures.”

The agency started investigating Activision Blizzard over these issues by September 2021, according to reports at the time. Two months earlier, the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) sued the company over allegations of systemic gender discrimination and widespread sexual harassment.

The SEC probe related to how Activision Blizzard managed complaints over such incidents. It says that the company changed its processes for handling complaints between 2020 and last year to make sure that it documented the complaints more thoroughly and better communicated them to its senior management and legal team. Last June, Activision Blizzard agreed to release an annual report that discloses how the company handles sexual harassment and gender discrimination complaints, and what it's doing to prevent such incidents.

In January 2022, Microsoft said it planned to buy Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion. The Federal Trade Commission has sued to block the takeover bid. Regulators in the UK and European Union are also scrutinizing the pending merger.

The National Labor Relation Board (NLRB) has determined that Apple's rules around leaks violate worker's rights, Bloomberg has reported. Apple's actions and statements from executives "tend to interfere with, restrain or coerce employees" from exercising their rights, a spokesperson said in a statement.

The decision stems from complaints by former employees Cher Scarlett and Ashley Gjøvik. Scarlett alleged that Apple work rules "prohibit employees from discussing wages, hours or other terms or conditions of employment," in violation of labor laws. Gjøvik, meanwhile, complained that an email sent by CEO Tim Cook vowing to punish leakers violated federal laws. Apple's policies prohibiting staff from disclosing business information, talking to reporters and other actions were also illegal, Gjøvik alleged. 

In the email in question, Cook wrote that "we do not tolerate disclosures of confidential information, whether it's product IP or the details of a confidential meeting... people who leak confidential information do not belong here." That was in response to the leak of a company-wide meeting that was effectively tweeted live by a journalist, as TechCrunch noted.  

The NLRB will issue a complaint against Apple unless the company settles, the spokesperson said. Apple has yet to comment, but a company attorney previously said, "Apple fosters an open and inclusive work environment whereby employees are not just permitted, but encouraged, to share their feelings and thoughts on a range of issues, from social justice topics to pay equity to anything else that they feel is an important cause to promote in the workplace."

Gjøvik was fired by Apple in 2021 for leaking confidential information and told TechCrunch she believes she was let go in retaliation after filing an EPA report about toxic fumes in her office. She complained to the NLRB that she was let go illegally, but the board has yet to issue a ruling on that subject. 

The NLRB recently found that Apple violated federal law with anti-union meetings in Atlanta. Earlier this month, Apple agreed to review its labor practices, saying in an SEC filing that it would assess its "efforts to comply with its Human Rights Policy as it relates to workers’ freedom of association and collective bargaining rights in the United States by the end of calendar year 2023."