Consumer Fraud Articles

Investment and securities fraud is one area of consumer fraud litigation pursued by the attorneys at Beasley Allen. Litigation includes individual cases as well as class actions that have been filed throughout the country. Cases in this area also involve matters including wrongful conduct of insurance and finance companies including fraud and bad faith, mortgage loan fraud, general consumer fraud and employment issues. Pending cases include securities and investment fraud litigation against companies including Stanford Securities and Regions Morgan Keegan, among others.

Our firm also is representing people who have been taken advantage of in the workplace, through violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). In these cases, employers intentionally misclassify employees as independent contractors or managers in order to reduce costs such as overtime compensation, employee benefits, payroll taxes, unemployment compensation and workers compensation.

FTC: ‘Your Baby Can Read’ program is ‘false and deceptive’

Posted: September 1, 2012

It seemed almost too good to be true – teaching your baby to read before he is barely able to speak. Yet, the “Your Baby Can Read” program showed proof on its television and YouTube commercials with babies reading words

SEC awards first whistleblower under new fraud-busting law

Posted: August 23, 2012

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) awarded its first payout under a new whistleblower program to an individual who provided the regulatory agency with information that helped expose an active Ponzi scheme.

Maker of children’s vitamins to pay refunds after making false claims about nutritional value

Posted: August 17, 2012

More than $2 million in refunds are being offered to consumers who bought children’s vitamins that claimed to contain far more nutritional substance than they actually did. The vitamin’s maker, NBTY, and two of its subsidiaries, Rexall Sundown and NatureSmart, claimed

New health care law will reduce medical fraud, report finds

Posted: August 10, 2012

The new health care law passed in 2010 gives Medicare and Medicaid more teeth to fight back against corporate health care fraud, such as subjecting healthy patients to unnecessary and dangerous procedures and overbilling the government programs, a USA Today

Overbilling, unnecessary medical procedures routine in corporate hospital chain

Posted: August 9, 2012

C.T. Tomlinson, a traveling nurse who had experience working for dozens of hospital cardiac catheterization labs, knew he was witnessing a fraudulent procedure as he watched a heart surgeon prepare to insert a stent in a patient with healthy arteries.

Johnson and Johnson reaches tentative settlement with shareholders over legal, quality problems

Posted: July 16, 2012

Johnson & Johnson has reached a tentative settlement with its shareholders who filed a lawsuit against the company’s management for allowing serious problems to persist for years with little attempt to fix them.

Complaints accuse Merck of mumps vaccine fraud

Posted: July 8, 2012

An Alabama health care provider filed a lawsuit against Merck Monday, June 25, a week after a 2010 whistleblower lawsuit against the drug manufacturer was unsealed, revealing allegations that for a decade, Merck may have knowingly made and marketed a

Whistleblowers to get cut of record fines in health care fraud case

Posted: July 3, 2012

Drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline will pay a combined total of $3 billion in civil and criminal fines and plead guilty to pushing two of its popular drugs for unapproved purposes and withholding important safety information about a third drug from U.S. regulators.

Vet brings awareness to whistleblower laws with cross-country walk

Posted: June 19, 2012

A Gulf War veteran who wants to raise awareness about corruption and fraud, which he says he personally witnessed while working for the Northern Arizona VA health care system, has taken his message to the streets in a cross-country walk-a-thon.

OSHA advisory committee to strengthen whistleblower protections

Posted: May 23, 2012

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has announced it plans to establish a Whistleblower Protection Advisory Committee to help inform the agency on ways to improve the whistleblowing protections it offers to those who have taken a stand against