Martin Shkreli, former chief executive officer of Turing Pharmaceuticals AG, exits court in New York, US, on Wednesday, Oct. 4, 2023. (Bloomberg / Contributor/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Martin Shkreli’s lifetime ban from the pharmaceutical industry was upheld by a federal appeals court in New York on Tuesday.
A three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Shkreli was punished appropriately for antitrust violations.
Shkreli increased the price of the antiparasitic drug Daraprim — an anti-malaria medication often prescribed for HIV patients — by 4,000%, from $17.50 per pill to $750 per pill in 2015.
Shkreli, a former pharmaceuticals CEO who was nicknamed “Pharma Bro” after hiking the cost of the lifesaving drug, was convicted of securities fraud and had faced a sentence of up to 20 years in prison.
In 2018, Shkreli was convicted of securities fraud and other offenses and was sentenced to seven years in prison.
At the time of his sentencing, Shkreli apologized for his “disgraceful judgment” and dispensed with his prior criticisms of the court and his conviction.
“The only person to blame for me being here is me,” he said. “There is no government conspiracy to take down Martin Shkreli. I took down Martin Shkreli with my disgraceful and shameful actions.”
After serving about five years, Shkreli was released from prison early in May 2022.
After the Federal Trade Commission sued him a court ordered the lifetime ban and made him repay $64 million.
Shkreli argued the lifetime ban was excessive and limited his public speech. The appellate court found the ban was a reasonable measure to protect the public from future price-fixing.
“Given Shkreli’s pattern of past misconduct, the obvious likelihood of its recurrence, and the life-threatening nature of its results, we are persuaded that the district court’s determination as to the proper scope of the injunction was well within its discretion,” according to the opinion.
Shkreli’s company, Vyera Pharmaceuticals, settled allegations it suppressed competition for Daraprim, its most valuable drug, and filed for bankruptcy last year.
(NEW YORK) — With tax season set to kick off next week, the IRS is launching a new initiative to redesign and simplify common tax documents.
The changes will eventually apply to around 170 million letters that are sent out to individual taxpayers every year. The notices, for example, remind taxpayers of how much they owe, that they have made an error on their returns, or that they have been victims of identity theft.
The current IRS forms are often complicated, confusing and filled with legal jargon. The redesigned versions are shorter with clearer language about the steps taxpayers need to take in the specific notice they receive.
“We need to put more of these letters into plain language, something an average person can understand without needing to hire a tax or legal professional,” IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel said on a call with reporters Tuesday.
Letters affecting about 20 million taxpayers will be redesigned for the current 2024 tax season. Werfel said the goal is to cover 90% of all notices sent to taxpayers by next year’s filing season.
“This is a big undertaking to the IRS, and it will take time and resources” Werfel said, crediting funding that was made available through the Inflation Reduction Act.
That legislation, passed in August 2022, allocated $80 billion to the IRS over 10 years, as part of a push to modernize the agency. Some of those funds have since been clawed back amid ongoing spending fights in Congress.
The IRS says the new “Simple Notice Initiative” builds on a previous effort to improve paperless processing, making it easier for taxpayers to submit documents online.
The 2024 tax filing season officially kicks off on Jan. 29.
(NEW YORK) — Venmo, Zelle and Cash App are leaving consumers vulnerable to fraud that’s “draining bank accounts of significant sums of money,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said in letters to the companies that own those financial apps. He demanded they increase protections.
Bragg’s letters said he was writing “in response to a growing number of incidents” involving fraud and theft “through the exploitation of your company’s mobile financial applications on personal electronic devices such as iPhones.”
Peer-to-peer payment services now handle an estimated $1 trillion in payments and the district attorney said “frauds and scams have proliferated” as usage climbs.
In the past year, there have been thefts stretching from Los Angeles, where several people were robbed of thousands of dollars through Venmo at knifepoint, to Orlando, where a woman had thousands drained from her Venmo after a child asked to use her phone. Similar thefts and robberies have been publicly reported in West Virginia, Louisiana, Illinois, Kansas, Tennessee, Virginia and elsewhere across the United States.
“These crimes involve an unauthorized user gaining access to unlocked devices and then draining bank accounts of significant sums of money, making purchases with mobile financial applications, and using financial information from the applications to open new accounts,” Bragg’s letters said. “Offenders also take over the phone’s security by changing passwords, recovery accounts, and application settings. The ease with which offenders can collect five- and even six-figure windfalls in a matter of minutes is incentivizing a large number of individuals to commit these crimes, which are creating serious financial, and in some cases physical, harm to our residents.”
The district attorney called on Venmo, Zelle and Cash App to adopt additional security measures, including imposing limits on transactions, requiring secondary verification of up to a day and better monitoring of unusual activity.
“I am concerned about the troubling rise in illegal behavior that has developed because of insufficient security measures connected with your software and business policy decisions,” Bragg’s letters said.
He is requesting meetings with the companies.
Paypall, the owner of Venmo; Square Inc, the owner of Cash App; and Zelle did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
(NEW YORK) — A children’s clothing brand is facing criticism for the way it handled one employee’s request to work remotely while her newborn son was treated in the neonatal intensive care unit.
The controversy erupted into public view last week when Ying Liu, the founder and CEO of Kyte Baby, a company that sells infant sleep sacks and clothing made with bamboo material, took to TikTok to issue an apology to the employee, identified as Marissa, whose parental leave request was denied.
“Hey guys, it’s Ying. I wanted to hop on here to sincerely apologize to Marissa for how her parental leave was communicated and handled in the midst of her incredible journey of adoption and starting a family,” Liu, a mother of five, according to the Kyte Baby website, said in the 90-second video, posted to Kyte Baby’s TikTok account on Jan. 18. “I have been trying to reach out to her to apologize directly as well.”
Liu said in the video that Kyte Baby “prides itself” on being a “family-oriented company,” and said she would be reviewing the company’s human resources “policy and procedures,” in light of the incident.
The employee, Marissa, reportedly adopted a son who was hospitalized in the NICU following his birth in late December. ABC News has not been able to reach the employee for comment.
Liu’s apology, which received more than two million views, drew criticisms from some TikTok users who characterized it as inauthentic and not going far enough to support the employee. Other commenters threatened to boycott the brand.
Shortly after posting the first video, Liu posted a second video on TikTok in which she acknowledged the first apology was “scripted” and “wasn’t sincere.”
She explained in the second video that she was the leader who “vetoed” Marissa’s request to work remotely while her son was in the NICU, saying, “I own 100% of that.”
“When I think back, this was a terrible decision,” Liu said. “I was insensitive, selfish and was only focused on the fact that her job had always been done on-site and I did not see the possibility of doing it remotely.”
Liu also said in the video, which received six million views, that she agreed with people who said Kyte Baby needs to set an example as a women-led business focused on baby products.
“I think a lot of comments are right. We need to set the example because we are in the baby business,” she said. “I want to [go] above and beyond in protecting women and giving them the right protection and benefits when they’re having babies.”
Spotlight on lack of protections, flexibility for parents
The Kyte Baby controversy has turned a spotlight on the lack of paid protections for new parents in the United States.
Currently, the U.S. is part of only a small pool of countries worldwide that do not guarantee paid leave.
Just one-quarter of all U.S. workers have access to paid family leave from their employer, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Under current U.S. policy — the Family and Medical Leave Act — employees who qualify can take time off to care for a newborn or loved one or recover from illness without fear of losing their job, but in many cases the leave is unpaid.
Some commenters on TikTok also raised the issue of a lack of protections for adoptive parents in the U.S., questioning whether the outcome would have been different had the Kyte Baby employee carried her baby.
The backlash against Kyte Baby denying its employee’s request for remote work also comes as working moms continue to rebuild following the coronavirus pandemic, during which approximately 3.5 million moms of school-age children had to leave active work, shift into paid or unpaid leave, lost their job or exited the labor market altogether, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
While many women had to leave the workforce due to child care issues, the pandemic also highlighted the benefits of remote work, particularly for working moms. Since last year, the participation rate for women in the workforce between the ages of 25 and 54 has been at an all-time high, according to researchers from the Brookings Institution. Researchers attributed that rise, in part, to the increased ability to telework.
Despite those figures, many employers have instituted or continued to push for in-office mandates over the past year, arguing that returning to the office contributes to greater productivity, collaboration and overall workplace culture. Cities themselves say the shift in remote work at some companies has also forced them to reconsider what to do with empty or unfilled office buildings, with some attempting to convert unused space into housing.
Kyte Baby pledges to change its maternity leave policy
While much of the backlash against Kyte Baby focused on the company doing too little, too late, the company was applauded by some for apologizing and course-correcting in wake of the outcry.
“We all make mistakes. The fact that you are owning it and making it right is what matters. Change comes from learning, learning comes from mistakes,” wrote one commenter.
A spokesperson for Kyte Baby told ABC News in a statement Monday that the company is revising its maternity leave policy.
The spokesperson said the employee in question, Marissa, has “declined” the company’s offer to return to her position at Kyte Baby.
“We continue to apologize to both Marissa and our Kyte Baby community for the handling of her maternity leave. Over the last few days our team has been working to make changes to ensure that something like this does not happen again. We are revising our maternity policy to give new parents, both biological and nonbiological, more time off and creating a better process to support our employees,” the spokesperson said.
According to the spokesperson, Marissa worked with Kyte Baby as an on-site employee in the company’s photo studio, and had been with them for “a little over seven months” when she made the remote work request.
“Based on our maternity policy at the time, all parents, whether biological or non-biological, who have worked for the company for at least six months, but less than one year, receive two weeks paid maternity time and are required to sign a contract saying that they will return to their job for six months after their paid leave is complete. Employees with the company over one year receive four weeks paid maternity time and are required to sign a contract saying that they will return to their job for six months after their paid leave is complete,” the spokesperson said.
“Marissa was offered the standard package with two weeks maternity time, but given her son’s situation, was unable to sign the six-month contract. She did propose a remote option for her job that, in the moment, did not work for us since she worked a largely on-site position in our photo studio. We let her know that her job would be here if and when she opted to return. Marissa opted to leave at this point. However, upon reflection we should have taken more steps to accommodate her situation,” the spokesperson said.
“We’ve since realized that Kyte Baby needs to stand by their values of being a woman owned, family company,” they added. “We have reached out to Marissa directly and let her know that her job is here if and when she is ready to come back. We have also offered to work with her on a remote position. At this time Marissa has declined our offer. We are revising our maternity policy by Feb. 1 and will be updating our internal team at that time.”
(NEW YORK) — TikTok users are loud and proud, not just about their dance moves and style choices, but also when it comes to budgeting.
The recent #loudbudgeting trend, which has racked up nearly 10 million views and counting, is all about sharing your savings goals and shouting it from the proverbial rooftops, and TikTokkers and financial experts alike say the viral trend could help people cut back on impulse purchases and make smarter financial choices.
Among the vocal advocates behind loud budgeting is Lukas Battle.
“It’s not ‘I don’t have enough,’ it’s ‘I don’t want to spend,'” Battle explained in a now viral TikTok video.
Battle told “Good Morning America” that staying quiet about your finances and setting spending limits don’t have to be shrouded in shame.
“My friend wants to go out to dinner. I’m gonna just text them ‘loud budgeting’ this month. I think financial transparency with your friends is something that you don’t have to be embarrassed about,” Battle said.
With the cost of living and home prices still high, financial educator Tiffany Aliche of “The Budgetnista” told “GMA” people can use loud budgeting on their journey to achieving financial goals.
“Budgeting out loud, it’s not just the words, but also having these tools in place,” Aliche said. “It holds you accountable. But also, it allows the people that care about you to also hold you accountable.”
One way Aliche said she puts loud budgeting into action is to place a “deactivation sticker” on her credit card as a visual reminder to save money.
“Whenever I take out the card, it’s a physical reminder, because I’m budgeting out loud,” Aliche explained. “Is this a need? Is this a love? Because if it’s just a like or a want, that’s $10, $20, $30 less that I can put toward my [goal of a] dream trip.”
To get started with loud budgeting, Aliche recommends a few beginner tips.
Budgeting basics
Start a “money list.”
Check credit and debit card statements.
Divide your money into categories.
Write down your spending per month in each category.
Aliche also recommends taking the guesswork out of dividing your funds by asking your bank and/or employer to automatically split your paycheck into separate accounts.
Each account can be dedicated to a purpose or goal, such as one for bills, one for savings, and another for entertainment purchases.
(NEW YORK) — The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above 38,000 for the first time ever on Monday, setting a record high and capping a steady rise that stretches back to last week.
The S&P 500 also reached a record high, closing at about 4,850.
The major stock indexes kicked off the year with sluggish performance but began to turn upward in the middle of last week.
The recent surge follows a stellar showing for markets in 2023, driven in large part by optimism about the prospects for a “soft landing,” in which inflation comes down to normal levels while the economy avoids a recession.
Investor enthusiasm about AI also helped drive returns.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(NEW YORK) — Microsoft revealed Friday that some of its corporate email accounts were hacked by a Russian-backed group.
The tech company said in a blog post that its security team detected the attack on Jan. 12 and quickly identified the group responsible: Midnight Blizzard, “the Russian state-sponsored actor also known as Nobelium.”
In late November, the group allegedly used a “password spray attack,” where a user uses a single common password against multiple accounts on the same application, to “compromise a legacy non-production test tenant account and gain a foothold,” according to Microsoft.
The group then “used the account’s permissions to access a very small percentage of Microsoft corporate email accounts, including members of our senior leadership team and employees in our cybersecurity, legal, and other functions, and exfiltrated some emails and attached documents,” the company said.
The hackers allegedly were targeting email accounts for information related to Midnight Blizzard, Microsoft said.
“To date, there is no evidence that the threat actor had any access to customer environments, production systems, source code, or AI systems. We will notify customers if any action is required,” the company said.
The company said it is in the process of informing its affected users.
(NEW YORK) — Sports Illustrated employees were notified on Friday that their jobs were being terminated.
The Sports Illustrated union posted on X: “This is another difficult day in what has been a difficult four years for Sports Illustrated under Arena Group (previously The Maven) stewardship. We are calling on ABG to ensure the continued publication of SI and allow it to serve our audience in the way it has for nearly 70 years.”
The magazine is owned by Authentic Brands Group.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(NEW YORK) — The U.S. Postal Service will increase stamp prices starting Sunday, a USPS representative confirmed to “Good Morning America.”
The cost of first-class stamps will rise from 66 cents to 68 cents for letters weighing one ounce or less.
Package shipping costs will also increase by nearly six percent, with Priority Mail Express costs going up by 5.9 percent, Priority Mail increasing by 5.7 percent, and Ground Advantage going up 5.4 percent.
The price hikes, the fifth increase in two years, are part of the Postal Service’s ten-year “Delivering for America” plan to raise rates and recover from plunging profits – a projected $160 billion loss over the next ten years
Some of the cost-cutting measures have already translated into slower deliveries, while the increased prices will more significantly affect residents in the non-contiguous states and territories, like Alaska and Hawaii. Those areas will see an increase of more than nine percent, prompting lawmakers like Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan to speak out.
“No state, including Alaska, should be punished by our own federal government because of geography,” Sullivan said in part in a statement in December. “These hikes have the potential to severely negatively impact Alaskans – already reeling from inflation – who are more reliant on the USPS for basic goods and services than other Americans.”
(NEW YORK) — U.S. credit card debt has soared over the last couple of years and recently it reached a major milestone.
Americans’ combined credit card balances topped $1 trillion dollars last year, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
By comparison, combined credit card balances were $680 billion a decade ago, according to federal data.
While growing online sales have fueled the spike, business experts say the numbers are concerning as more people are not paying off their full balances and facing costly interest payments.
During the pandemic, many Americans used stimulus payments from the government to help pay off their credit card debt, but things drastically changed once the stimulus dollars dried up.
At the end of 2021, 39% of credit card holders carried debt from month to month, but that jumped to 47% in 2023, according to data from Bankrate, a consumer financial services company.
The number of Americans missing payments also has increased as the average credit card balance now stands at just over $6,000, which is the highest in more than a decade, according to TransUnion.
Credit card delinquencies are rising fastest among lower-income borrowers, millennials and people who hold other kinds of debt, like auto or student loans, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Experts say the effects of rising inflation are one of the major factors behind the problem.
With prices rising, consumers have had to spend more on their cards for their goods.
At the same time, the Federal Reserve has raised interest rates to combat inflation, leaving credit card users with higher payments if they don’t pay off their monthly balance in full.
For example, a credit card user with a balance of $5,000 would have to pay an additional $7,000 in interest with a 21% rate if they paid their bill’s $35 minimum, according to Bankrate. And it would take 16 years to pay off the debt.
Credit card holders do have options to alleviate the debt, according to experts.
They can sign up for a balance transfer credit card, which allows a user to move existing debt to a new card, usually at much lower interest rates for a set amount of time.
Consumers can also call their credit card company and try to negotiate a lower interest rate. Credit counseling services are also a strong option to lower debt, according to experts.
Experts also warn against opening and closing credit card accounts too quickly as it can lower your credit score.
