A Sony Life Insurance employee stole more than $154 million from the Sony Group subsidiary in May and converted the funds to bitcoins worth more than $180 million, alleged DOJ in a “civil forfeiture” complaint Monday in U.S. District Court in San Diego to “protect and ultimately return” the seized money to Sony. The employee, Rei Ishii, diverted the funds to a private account at a bank in La Jolla, California, by falsifying transaction instructions, said DOJ. Ishii was criminally charged in Japan, and all the bitcoins “traceable to the theft have been recovered and fully preserved,” it said. "We would like to express our gratitude to the U.S. and Japanese authorities, for the stolen funds being located, and recovery procedures are progressing,” emailed a Sony spokesperson Tuesday. Attempts to reach Ishii’s lawyers in Japan for comment were unsuccessful.

Florida’s social media law includes “modest regulations” requiring tech companies to publish platform rules upfront, apply them consistently and notify users about violations, and requiring “platforms to host certain content by journalists and political candidates,” the state replied Monday at the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (case 21-12355). The law’s challengers, NetChoice and the Computer and Communications Industry Association, ask the 11th Circuit to affirm a lower court’s preliminary injunction (see 2111090062). It's contradictory for tech companies to “disclaim responsibility for the user speech they host” while arguing “their platforms are full of the platforms’ own speech,” said Florida. "Plaintiffs insist they are no different from newspaper editors, but in truth they are more like a telephone company, controlling the very instrument others use to express themselves.”

A former Netflix tech executive was sentenced Monday to 30 months in federal prison for doling out lucrative contracts to nine Netflix tech vendors in exchange for bribes and kickbacks, said DOJ. A San Jose jury convicted Michael Kail, 52, in April on 28 of 29 counts of mail fraud, money laundering and other charges in connection with a pay-for-play scheme he ran until his three years as Netflix vice president-internet technology operations ended in July 2014, it said. Acting U.S. Attorney Stephanie Hinds said Kail used his “highly compensated Netflix position to siphon cash and valuable stock options from his tech vendors, the same vendors whose Netflix contracts he signed and whose technologies he pushed his teams to use.” Kail pocketed more than $500,000 in cash and stock options from the outside vendors, using his kickback payments to pay his personal expenses and to buy a home in Los Gatos, California, said DOJ. When personally questioned by Netflix CEO Reed Hastings about potential wrongdoing, Kail falsely denied he was receiving improper compensation from Netflix vendors, said Kail's April 2018 indictment. Hastings testified at Kali's trial as a prosecution witness. U.S. District Judge Beth Labson Freeman ordered Kail to surrender March 8 to begin serving his sentence. Neither Kail's lawyers nor Netflix responded Wednesday to requests for comment.

A Manassas, Virginia, man pleaded guilty Monday to defrauding Amazon of more than $300,000 by running a mail fraud scheme to buy high-end products, claim a refund, then return a similar item of significantly lesser value, said DOJ. Farhaad Riyaz, 34, operated the scheme from his home through multiple Amazon accounts he opened between 2017 and 2020, it said. During the scheme, said DOJ, Riyaz fraudulently got a $37,000 home theater system by returning a $2,000 alternative for a full refund of the original purchase. He’s scheduled for sentencing on March 22 and faces a maximum 20-year prison term. Attempts to reach his lawyers for comment Tuesday were unsuccessful. Amazon didn't comment.

SiriusXM and its Stitcher and Pandora podcasting properties not providing transcripts for most podcasts they stream violates the Americans with Disabilities Act, New York State Human Rights Law and New York City Human Rights Law, the National Association of the Deaf said Tuesday in a complaint in U.S. District Court in Manhattan (docket 21-cv-10542). Not providing transcripts, even when they're available from third-party podcast producers, denies deaf and hard-of-hearing people access to the benefits hearing users are offered, said plaintiffs NAD and five of its members. Sirius XM didn't comment.

The Tax Injunction Act (TIA) doesn’t bar businesses’ challenge of Maryland’s digital ad tax, said the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in a Monday brief at U.S. District Court in Greenbelt, Maryland. A “principally punitive” assessment is a penalty, not a tax, said plaintiffs in case 1:21-cv-410-LKG. “Countless individual refund suits spanning many years -- all pending while the Act’s highly burdensome penalty is being exacted -- would not be an ‘efficient’ state-court alternative to a single, pre-enforcement federal-court challenge, within the meaning of the TIA.” Plaintiffs “are waiting for a decision and have no expected timeline,” emailed their attorney Stephen Kranz of McDermott Will. The court hasn’t scheduled oral argument. In state litigation against the same law, Comcast and Verizon last week opposed the Maryland comptroller’s motion to dismiss case C-02-cv-21-000509 at the Maryland Circuit Court for Anne Arundel County. The comptroller argued plaintiffs must first exhaust administrative remedies by waiting to be assessed the tax and challenging it in state tax court or paying the tax and filing a refund claim with the comptroller, but plaintiffs can’t do either until 2023, the telecom companies said. “There is a long history of this State’s courts hearing and deciding constitutional challenges to newly enacted statutes where plaintiffs claim that the statute was beyond the power or authority of the legislature to adopt.”

Texas is appealing a U.S. district court’s decision to pause the state's social media law, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a filing Tuesday, as expected in case 1:21-cv-00840 (in Pacer, and see 2112030033). Texas has raised legal questions never considered by the 5th Circuit of the Supreme Court regarding common carriers and the First Amendment, the state argued: A stay pending appeal is “warranted given the serious, novel legal questions at issue." The appeals court should have the opportunity to consider the issues before the injunction is implemented, argued Texas, calling the plaintiffs’ standing “highly questionable” and the injunction “vague and overbroad.”

China Telecom Americas didn't satisfy "the stringent requirements for a stay pending court review," the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said in an order Thursday (docket 21-1233) denying the company's emergency motion for a stay of the FCC’s October order revoking the company’s domestic and international authorities (see 2111080056). The decision was made by Judges Cornelia Pillard, Justin Walker and Judith Rogers. China Telecom outside counsel didn't comment. The company is also appealing the revocation (see 2111150025).

“Written order forthcoming” on whether a Texas social media law can take effect Thursday, said a description of a sealed minute entry Monday in case 1:21-cv-00840 at U.S. District Court in Austin. Judge Robert Pitman held oral argument, in-person only, Monday on NetChoice and the Computer and Communications Industry Association seeking preliminary injunction. The Texas law is “an overbroad, content-, speaker-, and viewpoint-based law compelling the global dissemination of speech by out-of-state platforms,” plaintiffs said in a reply brief posted Monday.

Amazon doesn’t actually own the digital content it sells the public, but sublicenses from the content owner, and when a licensing agreement terminates, Amazon pulls the content from a consumer’s purchased folder and music library “without prior warning, and without providing any type of refund or remuneration,” alleged a class-action complaint filed Friday in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York. Amazon’s sale of digital content it doesn't own “is made more egregious” because Amazon “charges just as much for that content,” sometimes even more, than stores like Best Buy and Target that “actually transfer title” to its customers, access to which “can never be revoked,” said the complaint. Amazon continues to “mislead consumers into believing it's selling them digital content, “even though it is merely providing them with a license to view it, which can be terminated at any time, for any reason and without any type of warning so that a consumer can take steps to attempt to preserve it,” said the suit. Amazon has sold more digital content, “and at substantially higher prices per unit, than it would have in the absence of this misconduct, resulting in additional profits at the expense of deceived consumers,” it said. The complaint seeks “punitive or exemplary” money damages, alleging unjust enrichment and violation of consumer protection laws. Amazon didn’t comment.