TA-DUM…DA DUM DUM: It looks like Netflix will start clamping down on sharing passwords, following a brutal loss of some 200,000 streaming subscribers in the first three months of this year.
The Wall Street Journal reports the streaming service could lose as many as two million total subscribers this quarter.
The loss of 200,000 subscribers was the largest loss suffered by the company in a decade, and caused a 35% drop in the stock price for the streaming giant on Wall Street Wednesday.
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings revealed the grim subscriber statistics during an earnings call on Tuesday, in which he detailed plans to clamp down on subscribers sharing their passwords — which the company’s never seriously addressed — and also proposed a cheaper, ad-supported subscription rate.
The Journal reports Netflix had added more than 18 million subscribers in 2021, which was weaker than normal, and a drastic decline from the 36 million it had added in 2020, when millions of people were at home in front of their TVs during the early pandemic lockdowns.
Joe Jonas and his famous brothers are getting ready for their upcoming Las Vegas residency and, while the trio has been quiet about certain details, Joe promised one thing — it’s going to be fun.
Speaking on the Spout podcast, the DNCE frontman marveled, “The tickets sold really quick!”
Does that mean the Jonas Brothers are going to pull all the stops because expectations are high?
“I think if you’re a fan — I mean, you’re going to Vegas — it’s a good time. And I’ll have DNCE pop up onstage there,” Joe said. “I wanna figure out some interesting concepts that we can do live. The game has changed of what live shows are like.”
He also teased that his band’s “Dancing Feet” collaborator Kygo might also swing by, saying the DJ’s “got a bunch of really exciting gigs, so if you’re a fan of him, or us and you’re music lover… and if you like EDM and you want to go to a festival, then you may or may not see us onstage with him.”
The JoBros will be taking over Park MGM for a five-night residency from June 3 through June 11. Tickets are available to purchase on Ticketmaster.
Residency aside, Joe also revealed that he starts his day by “sitting in silence” and “[checking] in with myself before I’m checking on social media or I’m texting people.”
The “Cake by the Ocean” singer elaborated, “It’s so easy to look at your phone first thing in the morning and be like, ‘Oh, I have to do this work thing’ or ‘I missed this call’ or like, something’s going on in the world.”
His advice to fans? “Just check in with yourself before you check in with anything else.”
Florence + the Machine has released a new song called “Free,” a track off the band’s upcoming album, Dance Fever.
The tune is accompanied by a video starring frontwoman Florence Welch “as herself” alongside Love Actually and Pirates of the Caribbean actor Bill Nighy as Welch’s “anxiety.”
“Free” is available now via digital outlets, and you can watch its video streaming now on YouTube.
Dance Fever, the follow-up to 2018’s High as Hope, arrives May 13. It also includes the previously released songs “King,” “Heaven Is Here” and “My Love.”
Florence will play a pair of intimate concerts in Los Angeles and New York City on April 29 on May 6, respectively. They’ll launch a full U.S. tour in support of Dance Fever in September.
Chris Stapleton tops the bill for the 2022 Pilgrimage Music & Cultural Festival, along with a host of other big names from the country and Americana spheres.
Joining Chris as a headliner is Brandi Carlile. Elle King, the Avett Brothers, Brittney Spencer, Marty Stuart and many others also appear on the bill. Two-day general admission passes go on sale Thursday, with options for VIP packages also available.
Pilgrimage is now in its eighth year. The Franklin, Tennessee-based festival returned in 2021 following a two-year hiatus prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
This year, the event will be held September 24-25. As always, festival-goers will enjoy a wide variety of goods from local creators, including food, jewelry, locally-brewed beer and more.
(WASHINGTON) — The Justice Department has announced nearly two dozen arrests of alleged fraudsters who prosecutors say have engaged in elaborate and brazen schemes to exploit the COVID-19 pandemic, raking in nearly $150 million in illicit proceeds so far.
In a TV network exclusive, officials told ABC News the enforcement action includes criminal charges against 21 individuals in nine federal districts across the country for their alleged participation in COVID-19 fraud schemes.
The charges, brought against individuals ranging from medical business owners and executives to physicians and marketers, also involve multiple alleged manufacturers of fake COVID-19 vaccination cards.
Losses from the alleged schemes top $149 million and counting, according to the Justice Department. Officials say the DOJ has so far seized more than $8 million in cash from the coordinated takedown.
“This COVID-19 health care fraud enforcement action involves extraordinary efforts to prosecute some of the largest and most wide-ranging pandemic frauds detected to date,” Director for COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement Kevin Chambers said in a statement. “The scale and complexity of the schemes prosecuted today illustrates the success of our unprecedented interagency effort to quickly investigate and prosecute those who abuse our critical health care programs.”
Behind the scenes, federal officials say they have quietly persevered to “root out” fraudsters in action and hold them accountable, leveraging an interagency approach.
“Today’s enforcement action reinforces our commitment to using all available tools to hold accountable medical professionals, corporate executives, and others who have placed greed above care during an unprecedented public health emergency,” Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Polite Jr. of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division said in a statement.
The alleged fraud varies widely, from accusations of exorbitant billing for sham telemedicine encounters, to COVID-19 testing allegedly used as bait to bundle with other unrelated and unnecessary testing services for the submission of false claims, to the large-scale manufacture of forged vaccination records. The Justice Department has charged individuals across eight states — California, New York, New Jersey, Florida, Washington, Maryland, Tennessee and Utah — in connection with the schemes over the past week.
In one such alleged scheme in California, two owners of a clinical laboratory, Imran Shams and Lourdes Navarro, have been charged with a health care fraud, kickback and money-laundering scheme aimed at defrauding Medicare of over $214 million for laboratory tests, including more than $125 million in false and fraudulent claims during the pandemic for COVID-19 and respiratory pathogen tests. No pleas have yet been entered in the case.
In two separate cases, one in Maryland and one in New York, owners of medical clinics allegedly obtained confidential information from patients seeking drive-through COVID-19 testing, submitting fraudulent claims for lengthy office visits that investigators say did not, in fact, occur.
According to the indictment, the profits from these false claims were then allegedly laundered through shell corporations in the U.S., transferred abroad, and used to buy real estate and other luxury items.
In another case, investigators allege that a postal worker in New Jersey made “thousands of dollars” on sales of more than 400 fake COVID-19 vaccination cards, and enabled others to resell and redistribute the cards she made — which she produced using a printer and ink at the postal office where she worked, according to an indictment unsealed Tuesday. The defendant, Lisa Hammell, allegedly sought to hide their electronic payment transactions by describing them as items like “movie tickets” or “dinner and drinks.”
Hammell, who was arrested Tuesday and does not currently have an attorney listed on her court docket, allegedly messaged an unidentified individual on March 27, 2021, showing off two fake cards she printed.
Through “deceit, craft, trickery, and dishonest means,” investigators say those they have now brought charges against “knowingly and intentionally” conspired to defraud the United States by impairing federal health authorities’ efforts to get shots in arms and beat back the spread of COVID-19. No further pleas have yet been entered.
In another unsealed indictment, investigators allege a Colorado man and unnamed co-conspirators made “hundreds” of fake vaccine records earning “thousands of dollars” from the scheme, selling fraudulent cards to “hundreds of individuals in at least a dozen states,” according to the indictment.
The man, Robert Van Camp, allegedly sold cards to at least four undercover law enforcement officers for between $120 and $175 per card, and claimed that he had sold fake cards to three unnamed Olympians and their coach.
“I’ve got people that are going to the Olympics in Tokyo, three Olympians and their coach in Tokyo, Amsterdam, Hawaii, Costa Rica, Honduras,” Van Camp told an undercover agent, according to the indictment.
Van Camp took care to customize the cards, according to a criminal affidavit, asking one undercover agent if they preferred any particular dates for when they purportedly got their shots — explaining if they were flying soon, airlines preferred the second dose to be administered at least a couple weeks before the flight. He allegedly asked if any of the individuals getting the fake cards were married, offering to make a partner’s card “look different from one another, so that the cards would not look like they came off an assembly line when they travelled together,” the filing said.
“My cards are f—ing worldwide,” Van Camp told one undercover agent, according to the affidavit. “I mean, these things are gold.”
He boasted he had a “hookup on the real, real ‘V’ card,” that he had “done it for about 700 of my customers.”
As of Wednesday morning Van Camp has not entered a plea or retained an attorney in his case.
ABC News first reported last year on the burgeoning market for counterfeit COVID-19 vaccination cards, which had set off alarm bells for federal health officials, who warned the demand for fake proof of immunity was on the rise, threatening the nation’s hard-fought gains against the virus.
The illicit industry for forged cards hit its stride just as new vaccine requirements were put in place at the federal, state and local levels, and in both the public and private sectors — requiring proof of inoculation in order to work at a hospital, teach or attend school, work out at the gym, or eat inside a restaurant — yet some Americans held back, with some railing against the mandates.
For enterprising fraudsters, that hesitance posed a ripe opportunity.
One unnamed individual listed in the indictment allegedly privately messaged Hammell last summer: “Good morning, random question … can you get me a vaccine card? My mom works for [a hospital] and they are forcing everyone to get the vaccine and she definitely is adamantly against it.”
“I can as long as no one knows where it came from,” Hammell allegedly responded, according to the indictment.
Earlier this month, a naturopathic doctor in California who was arrested last year for allegedly scheming to sell fake COVID-19 immunizations and vaccination cards pleaded guilty — and is allegedly linked to the larger string of arrests announced by federal authorities Wednesday.
“The attempt to profit from the COVID-19 pandemic by targeting beneficiaries and stealing from federal health care programs is unconscionable,” Inspector General Christi Grimm of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said in a statement Wednesday. “HHS-OIG is proud to work alongside our law enforcement partners at the federal and state level to ensure that bad actors who perpetrate egregious and harmful crimes are held accountable.”
Appraising fraudsters’ exploitation of the pandemic relief system this spring, top federal oversight officials warned members of Congress that the COVID-19 pandemic had created a “perfect storm” for fraudulent compensation claims, with a lack of proper oversight pairing with an unprecedented cash infusion to incentivize criminals amid a global crisis.
Criminal COVID-19 schemes have been an ongoing and thorny issue for the government to pursue, with the pandemic creating an avenue for fraudsters to supercharge their schemes. So far, the Justice Department has filed criminal charges against more than 1,000 defendants, opening more than 240 civil investigations into more than 1,800 individuals and entities, “together involving billions of dollars in suspected fraud,” OMB deputy director for management Jason Miller estimated in March.
But officials note that the current figures likely reflect only a fraction of the funds that experts believe may have been defrauded over the pandemic’s two plus years.
The ultimate amount of COVID-19 fraud will be “very large,” Justice Department Inspector General and Chair of the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee Michael Horowitz testified before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs in March, adding that agencies would jointly use “all of our tools — criminal, civil administrative suspension and debarment, forfeiture, to try and recover the funds that have been stolen.”
“We’re doing that and we’re making every effort,” Horowitz said.
(NEW YORK) — Russia’s military issued another warning to Ukrainian forces in a Mariupol steel plant on Wednesday, telling them to lay down their arms and leave, according to Russian state media.
Russia claimed a ceasefire would begin at the Azovstal steel plant at 2 p.m. Moscow time to allow Ukrainian fighters to safely leave. Ukrainian forces rejected a similar offer on Tuesday.
The Mariupol city council claimed Tuesday that there are at least 1,000 civilians seeking shelter in the plant, mostly women with children and the elderly. Ukrainian authorities have not confirmed the number of Ukrainian marines and Azov fighters at site.
A Russian official, Dmitry Polyansky, accused Ukrainian troops of using civilians at the plant as human shields.
“One month into the siege of Azovstal plant, those same radicals and neo-Nazis suddenly declared that allegedly there had been civilians inside the plant all that time, even though until yesterday, they had never uttered a word about it,” Polyansky told the U.N. Security Council during a session on Ukraine on Tuesday.
In a video posted online, Serhiy Voyna, the commander of the 36th Separate Marine Brigade and commander for Ukraine’s marines in Mariupol, made an appeal to world leaders, asking for an extraction from the plant to the territory of a third-party state.
“This could be the last appeal of our lives. We are probably facing our last days, if not hours. The enemy is outnumbering us 10 to 1. They have advantage in the air, in artillery, in their forces on land, in equipment and in tanks,” Voyna said.
Voyna spoke to the Washington Post via satellite phone on Tuesday, and said his forces would not make the same mistake made by others and trust Russian guarantees of safe passage, only to see them open fire.
Voyna said more than 500 Mariupol military battalion soldiers are wounded.
“We are only defending one object, the Azovstal plant where, in addition to military personnel, there are also civilians who have fallen victim to this war. We appeal and plead to all world leaders to help us. We ask them to use the procedure of ‘extraction’ and take us to the territory of a third-party state,” Voyna said.
Lorde paid tribute to hometown heroes The Strokes during her show at New York City’s Radio City Music Hall Tuesday night.
Footage from the concert posted to Twitter shows the “Royals” artist delivering a rendition of “The End Has No End,” a track off Julian Casablancas and company’s 2003 sophomore effort, Room on Fire.
Last night’s performance was the second of Lorde’s two dates at Radio City, the first of which marked her first show back after postponing two shows due to a case of laryngitis.
Lorde is currently touring the U.S. in support of her latest album, Solar Power, which dropped last August. The outing continues Wednesday in Philadelphia.
Trivium frontman Matt Heafy has announced a new children’s book called Ibaraki and Friends.
Published by frequent rock collaborators Z2 Comics, Ibaraki and Friends finds Heafy retelling Japanese folktales and legends.
“A dragon, a samurai and even a koi, Ibaraki and Friends shows through accessible prose the exciting history and myths of Japan,” reads the book’s description.
Ibaraki and Friends will be released in August. You can pre-order it now via Z2Comics.com.
Earlier this year, Heafy launched a black metal side project called Ibaraki project. The debut Ibaraki album Rashomon, which features a collaboration with My Chemical Romance’s Gerard Way, will be released May 6.
Heafy and Trivium are currently on the Metal Tour of the Year alongside Megadeth, Lamb of God and In Flames. During Tuesday night’s show in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Heafy sang with Lamb of God for a few songs in place of the band’s frontman Randy Blythe, who tested positive for COVID-19.
Sam Smith has been teasing their comeback for a while and, on Wednesday, shared the news fans have been waiting for — new music is finally on the way.
Using the same black-and-white motif Sam used since they first began teasing their return, the six-time Grammy winner announced the title and release date of their next single, titled “Love Me More.” The song drops on April 28 at 11 p.m. British time.
You can pre-save the song now and also join Sam’s official mailing list to stay in the loop.
The “Stay With Me” singer also took to TikTok on Tuesday to share a preview of a new song, which fans now believe is “Love Me More.” Dubbing the background music as “Unreleased Snippet – Sam Smith,” Sam strung together several clips of them walking around their house and greeting, “Hi, everyone!”
Fans also caught a glimpse of Sam’s dog, Velma, who stares quizzically into the camera. The video then ends with Sam showing off a rather unique sculpture they’ve acquired, which is of a naked, cartoonish man bending over and exposing himself.
Fans made sure to let Sam know in the comments they weren’t prepared for the last second of the short clip.
Prior to that, Sam shared a safe for work video, again filmed in black and white, of Sam singing a few notes into a microphone.
“Love Me More” marks Sam’s first original single since 2020, their last being “The Lighthouse Keeper,” which dropped November 20 as part of their The Holly & the Ivy EP.
(SAINT-DENIS, France) — French President Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen, his far-right rival in the presidential elections, will face off in the highly anticipated televised debate Wednesday, which could prove crucial in swaying voters ahead of the final round of voting this weekend.
Macron and Le Pen took the top two spots in the preliminary round of voting earlier this month, just as they did in 2017. The debate of that year proved disastrous for Le Pen, who struggled under questioning. Macron ultimately won a sweeping victory in 2017, winning 66% of the vote.
This campaign cycle has been notably different, however. The war in Ukraine has dominated the headlines, Le Pen has sought to soften her National Rally party’s image and ease voters’ concerns about a far-right president, while Macron has been a notably absent figure on the campaign trail.
Polling in France has shown an upswing in Le Pen’s popularity and decline in Macron’s, though the French president retains a narrow lead in most reported opinion polls.
Le Pen has faced criticism in France for a softer approach to Russia and past support for President Vladimir Putin. While she has said she is in favor of the broad package of sanctions announced by the French government, she has publicly opposed restrictions on oil and gas imports from Russia, citing concerns about the rising cost of living in France that has become a critical issue in the campaign.
Le Pen was previously banned from entering Ukraine in 2017, when she spoke out in favor of Russia’s annexation of Crimea.
While Le Pen has pledged if elected to take France out of NATO’s integrated command, she said she would not intend to leave the organization altogether, nor renounce Article 5, which refers to the “mutual protection between members of the Atlantic Alliance.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in an interview with French television channel BFMTV aired Wednesday, went as far as to urge Le Pen to reconsider her position on Russia.
“If the candidate were to understand that she was wrong, our relationship could change,” Zelenskyy said. While ensuring not “to have the right to influence” the French electoral campaign, Zelenskyy recognized that “obviously, I have relations with Emmanuel Macron and I would not want to lose them.”
The final outcome of the election may well be decided by matters closer to home, however, with Macron’s team touting his experience in power at a time of stability, while Le Pen’s campaign has targeted the incumbent for, they say, being out of touch with ordinary people.
The far-right candidate focused her campaign on purchasing power, a topic expected to be one of the main factors in deciding the outcome of the election. Le Pen’s project, however, still centers on the fight against immigration. The National Rally candidate has presented several flagship proposals, including a bill to drastically limit immigration, the abolition of the right of soil, and restricting the routes for people to claim asylum in France.
“Fear is the only argument that the current president has to try and stay in power at all cost,” Le Pen said in a new clip posted by her campaign Tuesday.
Much will depend on which candidate the supporters of far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon turn to in the final round. Mélenchon secured 22% of the first round of voting in third place, and while he publicly told his supporters not to vote for Le Pen, her populist vision may prove more enticing to a base dissatisfied with Macron, a centrist with a background in the financial sector.
The debate, airing at 8 p.m. local time (3 p.m. EST), is the first and only time voters will have a chance to see the candidates face off.
ABC News’ Ibtissem Guenfoud contributed to this report.
