On December 10th, the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice announced its first criminal indictment targeting an alleged conspiracy to reduce employee wages. The DOJ charged the former owner of a therapist staffing company with conspiring to reduce pay rates for healthcare worker contractors, but did not charge the company itself. Specifically, the indictment alleges that, for a six-month period in 2017, the defendant and his co-conspirators exchanged non-public information on rates paid to healthcare workers; discussed and agreed to decrease rates paid to healthcare workers; implemented rate decreases in accordance with their agreement; and paid healthcare workers at collusive and noncompetitive rates. The indictment alleges that the defendant’s behavior constitutes a per se violation of the antitrust laws and seeks penalties including fines and potential imprisonment. The indictment also includes an obstruction of justice charge, stemming from allegedly false or misleading information the defendant provided the Federal Trade Commission during the agency’s investigation of the same subject matter.
Continue Reading Antitrust Division Brings First Criminal Wage-Fixing Charge
Phillip Warren
Phillip Warren specializes in global antitrust and competition law practice, representing corporations and executives in criminal antitrust and other white-collar government investigations and litigation, and related multi-district class actions. He also provides corporate compliance counseling and conducts internal corporate investigations.
Before joining Covington, Phillip served in the U.S. Justice Department’s Antitrust Division for more than 30 years. He was Chief of the San Francisco Office from 2002 to 2013. At the Justice Department, he led or supervised more than 50 international cartel investigations and several major antitrust trials.
In his role as Chief, Phillip oversaw all aspects of grand jury investigations and plea negotiations in international cartel matters in more than a dozen industries, including commodity chemicals and many high-technology products such as DRAM, TFT-LCD panels, cathode ray tubes, optical disk drives, and lithium ion battery cells. He also closely supervised all aspects of several major criminal antitrust trials, including the LCD panel price-fixing trials—U.S. v. AU Optronics Corp., U.S. v. Leung, and U.S. v. Bai. Under his leadership, the Division’s San Francisco Office obtained more than $2.5 billion in fines in criminal cases.
He worked with Division officials on developing the Antitrust Division’s international cartel enforcement policy, including application of the Division’s Leniency Program, policies for negotiating plea terms with corporations and executives, and practices for coordinating investigations with foreign enforcement authorities.
In addition to his criminal enforcement experience, Phillip has an extensive background in civil antitrust enforcement. He reviewed and approved all staff analyses of premerger filings involving California-based, high-technology firms, and oversaw all aspects of preliminary inquiries and Second Requests of proposed transactions that raised potential competitive issues.
Prior to his position as Chief, Phillip was a trial attorney and then served as the Assistant Chief in the office from 1997 to 2002. In these positions, he was lead attorney on many significant Division cases, including U.S. v. Archer Daniels Midland Co. (citric acid), U.S. v. Sprint/France Telecom/Deutsche Telekom, and U.S. v. All Star Industries.
While at the Department of Justice, Phillip coordinated investigations of international cartels with enforcement agencies worldwide, including Canada, the European Commission, Japan, Korea, Mexico, and Singapore. In addition, he led or participated in training sessions for enforcement officials in many jurisdictions.
Phillip has been a regular speaker on antitrust panels and programs around the world for more than two decades. He currently serves on the International Cartel Task Force of the American Bar Association’s Antitrust Section and is a Non-Governmental Adviser to the International Competition Network, an informal network of all the world’s competition authorities formed to promote best practices in antitrust enforcement globally.