Disney whistleblower accuses company of inflating revenue for years

A former Walt Disney Opens a New Window.  accountant reportedly accused the company of systematically overstating its revenue by billions of dollars for years in a series of whistleblower tips with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, sending shares Opens a New Window.  of the company down on Monday

Sandra Kuba, a former senior financial analyst in Disney’s revenue-operations department who worked with the company for 18 years, alleged in the filings that employees working in the parks-and-resorts business overstated revenue — sometimes by as much as $6 billion — by exploiting weaknesses in Disney’s accounting system that allowed the inaccuracies to remain undetected. read more »

PG&E plunges on fears the embattled utility could face $18

The California supplier of gas and electricity fell to $10.05 — about 30% — on the week’s first day of trading before paring one-day losses to about 25%.

U.S. Judge Dennis Montali finds that a jury can decide if PG&E is responsible for the 2017 Tubbs Fire, which killed 22 and destroyed more than 5,000 buildings.

That fire, the second most destructive in the state’s history, preceded the 2018 Camp Fire, which became California’s worst. read more »

CFTC Takes Down Disputed Press Releases as Chicago Judge Mulls Sanctions

A $16 million federal settlement with Kraft Foods Group Inc. and Mondelēz Global LLC contained a gag provision, and now a judge will probe whether enforcers went too far in their press statements.

The chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission and two commissioners must appear in court next month in Chicago as a judge weighs whether to sanction the agency for media statements that two major food producers contend went outside the scope of what enforcers were allowed to say.

Lawyers for the two companies, Kraft Foods Group Inc. and MondelÄ“z Global LLC, quickly went to court last week after the CFTC announced the $16 million settlement resolving alleged price manipulation in the wheat market. read more »

Government settles alleged False Claims Act violations with Sesolinc Group

Contractor agrees to $2.4 million settlement in whistleblower case

The Sesolinc Group has agreed pay up to $2.4 million to settle allegations that they supplied defective products and submitted false claims to the Army, Department of Veterans Affairs and General Services Administration.

This settlement resolves allegations that were originally part of a federal lawsuit filed under the whistleblower provisions of the False Claims Act, which allow private citizens with knowledge of false claims to file suit on behalf of the government and to share in the recovery. The government would like to sincerely thank Charles Jackson in this case for bringing the issue to the government’s attention and his assistance with the investigation of this matter. read more »

Uber Whistleblower: Autonomous Vehicles Need New Safety Metrics, Aren’t Really Any Safer

Over the past year the automotive industry has carefully walked back the expectations surrounding autonomous cars. Yet pretty much any change in rhetoric constitutes retracted goals. With numerous companies predicting self-driving fleets of commercial vehicles before 2021, the bar couldn’t have been set much higher.

A lack of progress is partly to blame. However, a bundle of high-profile accidents have also shaken public trust — especially after it was found that Uber whistleblower Robbie Miller was trying to alert the company to issues with its self-driving program just days before one of the company’s autonomous Volvos was involved in a fatal accident with a pedestrian.

That’s not the half of it. In April, Miller released a study claiming self-driving vehicles were actually recording incident rates higher than that of your typical motorist. Contrasting data from the Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP) and the California DMV, he concluded that autonomous test vehicles created more injuries per mile than the average human motorist with a few years of practice.

That’s not what we’re being sold. Automakers have repeatedly suggested that AV testing is a gateway to a safer world, with major breakthroughs close at hand. But Miller argued that focusing on the number of miles a manufacturer covers with its self-driving fleet doesn’t yield much more than reduced public safety. read more »