US Court Charges Eight “Influencers” Over 12 Fraud Cases Worth US$114 Million

Eight individuals who portrayed themselves as social media influencers in the US were recently charged with 12 counts of fraud by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The suspects and scammer group are said to have conspired to run a pump-and-dump scheme, where they would target companies and purchase thousands of dollars in stock, and then scam people by selling them as “hot tickets” on their respective social media accounts.

Collectively, the 8-member scammer group had around 1.5 million followers on Twitter, but they also had a server on Discord called “Atlas Trading”. In order to lend credibility to their schemes, the group also claimed to be Wall Street experts on a trading podcast called “Pennies: Going in Raw”, hosted by two of the scammer group’s cohorts, Daniel Knight and Mitchell Hennessey.

It should be noted that the scammer group believed that their conversations on Discord were private, but investigators had reportedly recorded their discussions or retrieved transcripts of them. Naturally, it doesn’t help their case that the documents contain really damning statements, several of which have members of the group outrightly acknowledging that what they’re doing could and will get them into hot water with the law.

One member of the scammer group, Knight, practically admitted that what his group did was akin to robbing folks; during a Discord chat, when the participants were discussing targetting a company called GTT Communications and buying its stocks “in the right way”, Knight simply responded with the followed reply:

“The f**king right way? We’re robbing f**king idiots of their money.”

Both the US DOJ and SEC state that in the two years that the scammer group was in business, it collected more that US$114 million (~RM502 million) in profits, in small increments over the period. As an example of how that works: the group bought over 300000 shares in GTT Communications at US$1.76 (~RM7.76) per share. Following their purchase, it would then dump all the shares at US$1.99 (~RM8.77) after misleading its followers by claiming that they were on the verge of “something big”.

All eight members of the scammer group now stand accused of 11 counts of securities fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud by the DOJ. Each count carries a life sentence, which is 25 years in the US. That means if they are found guilty on all counts, they’ll be in jail for nearly 300 years. Mind you, that’s just the criminal indictments; the SEC has its own issues against the group as well, and the government body could strip away the group’s ill-gotten gains, as well as impose additional financial penalties too.

Xiao-i, a leading cognitive intelligence enterprise in China, has asked a Shanghai Court to Stop Production of Apple's iPhone 13

At the height of Apple's iPhone 13 production, it's being reported by Hong Kong's SCMP that a Chinese artificial intelligence firm has asked a Shanghai court to stop the production and sale of Apple’s iPhone in the country over a long-standing patent dispute involving virtual assistant Siri.

Shanghai Zhizhen Intelligent Network Technology, also known as Xiao-i Robot, last Friday applied to the Shanghai Higher People’s Court for a preliminary injunction to ban the manufacture, sale and export of iPhones containing Siri that infringe on its patent, according to the Chinese company’s statement that was posted on its official WeChat account on Tuesday.

Xiao-i Robot chief executive Yuan Hui said in the statement that Apple did not respect its intellectual property. “Apple should immediately stop the infringement, take down and stop selling the related products,” Yuan said.

The statement came a few hours before Apple, with a market capitalization of US$2.59 trillion as of Wednesday, announced a “special event” in the US on September 14, when the company is expected to launch its latest iPhone 13 line and other devices.

Responding to a request for comment on Wednesday, an Apple spokeswoman referred to the company’s previous statement issued in August 2020, when it refuted the allegations in Xiao-i Robot’s patent infringement lawsuit that sought 10 billion yuan (US$1.5 billion) in damages.

The 2020 statement read: "Siri does not contain features included in their patent, which relates to games and instant messaging … Independent appraisers certified by the Supreme People’s Court have also concluded that Apple does not infringe Xiao-i Robot’s technology."

In June last year, China’s Supreme Court ruled that Xiao-i Robot’s patent was valid, after multiple legal battles with Apple since 2012. The Chinese company first applied for its patent, described as a chat robot system that can complete conversations in natural language, in 2004. It was granted that patent in 2009, before Apple first integrated Siri with its iPhone 4s model in 2011.

Cloud Mining Company Wins Chinese Court Case; Regains More Than 485000 AMD Radeon GPUs

Genesis Mining, An Iceland-based cloud mining outfit, recently won a lawsuit in a Chinese court, against a Chinese hosting provider, Chuangshiji Technology Limited. By decree of China’s Supreme Court, the defendant was ordered to return the Radeon RX 470 8GB GPUs it seized from Genesis Mining and by all, we mean all 485681 units.

Genesis Mining’s legal woes began in 2018, when it took Chuangshiji Technology Limited to court, over multiple monetary issues with the latter. The lawsuit, which stretched over a span of several years, was filed in 2019, after the defendant began withholding said RX 470 GPUs, presumably purchased by Genesis Mining. The Genesis lawsuit specifically demanded that Chuangjishi hand over more than 560000 GPUs, along with 60000 ASIC miners after the company terminated its agreement with the company.

Naturally, things didn’t go according to plan for Genesis; Chuangjishi refused to comply and instead, began selling its ill-gotten gains, all without Genesis’ consent.

Sadly, Genesis’ victory in the Chinese court is a Pyrrhic one; while the Icelandic cloud-based mining company may have won back its nearly half a million RX 470 GPUs, China’s recent crackdown on cryptominers and their farms means that the company will have to consider two alternatives: shift its operations out of China and into a country where cryptomining isn’t banned or find new homes for them, the latter being an arduous task, given the age of the RX 470 and its GPU core.

That said, selling them to actual gamers might actually net Genesis a tidy profit, especially given the ongoing chip and GPU shortage that is happening around the world.

Apple Claims Microsoft Using Epic Games As A Front In App Store Court Case

Apple raised the possibility that long-time rival Microsoft was using and hiding behind Epic Games to pursue legal action against the iPhone maker. Microsoft predictably dismissed the allegation, calling it a distraction.

Both Apple and Epic are engaged in a high-profile, high-stakes legal battle that could decide the fate of Apple’s App Store and its relatively closed ecosystem. Epic’s lawsuit claims that the commission fee and rules Apple imposes on app developers are unreasonable and anticompetitive.

But according to Bloomberg, Apple is challenging the credibility of Epic’s court witnesses, officially petitioning the court to ignore the testimony of Xbox Business Development Vice President Lori Wright.

“A reasonable observer might wonder whether Epic is serving as a stalking horse for Microsoft,” Apple said in a legal filing. “Microsoft shielded itself from meaningful discovery in this litigation by not appearing as a party or sending a corporate representative to testify.”

Microsoft responded by saying that it was clear that Apple didn’t like Wright’s testimony but has no basis to challenge the substance of it.

But Apple didn’t just take issue with Wright, highlighting numerous Epic witnesses – five in total – who had or have links to Microsoft, including Stanford University economist Susan Athey.

Microsoft said Apple was trying to distract from “legitimate concerns” held by many businesses about its App Store rules.

“Epic speaks and acts for itself, and Microsoft and many other companies have raised concerns through our own voices, including directly with Apple itself,” the software giant said.

EU Court Favours Huawei In Logo Spat With Chanel

An EU court has overruled Chanel’s objections to a logo that Huawei plans to use for its computer hardware. The French fashion house had argued that the logo was too similar to its own.

But the EU General Court in Luxembourg found that, while the logos were similar in some ways, their visual differences were significant, a BBC report said.

“Chanel’s marks have more rounded curves, thicker lines and a horizontal orientation, whereas the orientation of the Huawei mark is vertical. Consequently, the General Court concludes that the marks are different,” the court said.

The BBC noted that in 2017, Huawei applied for EU trademark protection for a logo it wanted to use for computer hardware, but ran into opposition from Chanel.

Then in 2019, the EU Intellectual Property Office rejected the fashion house’s claim, concluding that the logos were different and the public weren’t likely to confuse the two. Chanel appealed that ruling, leading its defeat at the aforementioned General Court.

Still, the company may seek further appeal at the European Court of Justice, which is the EU’s highest court when EU law is concerned.

Apple Could Make Android Version Of iMessage But Didn’t; Court Documents Show

The legal battle between Apple and Epic Games is still ongoing. It had even brought unrelated third parties like Valve involved. But just as it can pull in uninvolved parties, it can also reveal other details unrelated to the legal tussle between the two.

One such detail is why Apple does not have an Android version of iMessage. And evidence of this was submitted by Epic Games, of all parties. According to the court filing, the iPhone maker could have made iMessage be available on the competing platform back in 2013. But the company choose not to, so that it could lock users in its own ecosystem.

The documents detail an email conversation between an unnamed ex-Apple employee and Phil Shiller, then a key marketing figure in the company. The former complained that iMessage “amounts to serious lock-in” of its users. In response, the latter said that “moving iMessge to Android will hurt us more than help us”.

In all honesty, this should come as no surprise. There have been incidents of former iPhone users getting SMS texts stuck in iMessage limbo because they migrated from Apple to Android. Hopefully these days, WhatsApp is a service that’s used more frequently on iOS. Then when the messaging app finally rolls out cross-platform chat history migration, users have one less thing locking them in.

US Court Throws Out Cryptomining Lawsuit Against NVIDIA

Back in 2018, NVIDIA was hit by a class-action lawsuit. It alleged that the GPU maker made false and misleading statements about the state of the cryptocurrency market at the time, to its shareholders. Earlier this month, a US court ruled in favour of NVIDIA on the case.

The lawsuit was dismissed by a US District Court Judge based in the Northern District of California at the behest of NVIDIA, on the grounds that it was lacking evidence to prove the plaintiff’s claim. Specifically, the lawsuit accuses NVIDIA of under-reporting its revenue generated from the cryptocurrency surge of 2018 by around US$1.13 billion (~RM4.65 billion). Not only that, the lawsuit also says that the company hid those profits by claiming that approximately 70% of its GPU sales were “gaming revenue”. When it was actually gained from GPU mining.

The 2018 cryptocurrency surge eventually dwindled, but not before Bitcoin peaking at RM82000. Fast forward to today, and digital coin now has an average worth of RM230000 and in response to the new surge, NVIDIA announced that it was launching its Cryptocurrency Mining Processor (CMP), a GPU lineup dedicated entirely to mining not Bitcoin, but the second most lucrative cryptocurrency on the market, Ethereum.