Amazon made more than $1 billion in excess profits by employing a secret algorithm codenamed “Project Nessie” that inflated prices, according to newly unredacted portions of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)’s antitrust lawsuit against the e-commerce giant.
Project Nessie, which Amazon used between 2015 and 2019, was able to raise prices on and off the platform by predicting whether other online stores would follow an Amazon price hike, the FTC said.
AI-powered software has allowed gas station operators across California to illegally collude and drive up prices at the pump, according to a federal lawsuit.
The proposed class action lawsuit, filed Monday, accuses gas station giants including Marathon and Circle K of violating California’s antitrust law through Kalibrate, a fuel-pricing software system used across the world. The plaintiffs describe Kalibrate as the “central nervous system for a conspiracy to extinguish retail price competition among gas stations.”
According to the lawsuit, Kalibrate helps “coordinate high prices” and even discourages its users from pricing their gas lower than competitors, saying that doing so would trigger a “downward spiral.”
“Kalibrate promises that if gas stations surrender their pricing decisions and competitively sensitive cost and volume data to Kalibrate Fuel Pricing, the software will enable them to avoid competing with other area stations and to charge higher prices to consumers,” the lawsuit said.
Likely the above the above will result in a cost of doing business fine. A model JP Morgan has been been following since Jamie Dimon has been in charge there.
Perhaps a China method of punishment would deter US corruption by US CEOs.
https://goldsea.com/article_details/china-executed-14-billionaires-for-corruption
China executed 14 people with assets of at least a billion yuan ($155 million) during the past eight years in its aggressive campaign to root out corruption, according to Changchun-based New Culture News.