Hitachi Executives Plead Guilty to Disk Price Fixing, Will Serve Prison Time
Hitachi Executives Plead Guilty to Disk Price Fixing, Will Serve Prison Time
Posted 12/14/2011 at 11:34am
| by Paul Lilly
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A trio of executives at Hitachi and LG will spend some time behind bars for conspiring to rig bids and fix prices for the sale of optical disk drives, the U.S. Department of Justice announced today. Young Keun Park, Sang Hun Kim, and Sik Hur (aka Daniel Hur) each agreed to plead guilty, with Park and Kim agreeing to serve eight months in prison and Hur agreeing to seven months. All three also agreed to pay $25,000 in criminal fines.
"Today’s plea agreements demonstrate the Antitrust Division’s continued commitment to protect competition in the high tech industry," said Sharis A. Pozen, Acting Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division. "The division will continue to pursue and prosecute those who participate in bid-rigging and price-fixing conspiracies that harm businesses and consumers in the optical disk drive industry."
The three men conspired with co-conspirators to fix prices for optical disk drives sold to Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and Microsoft at various times between November 2005 and September 2009, according to felony charges filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco.
This is the second round of charges against Hitachi-LG Data Storage Inc. (HLDS) resulting from the DoJ's ongoing investigation into the optical disk industry. On November 8, 2011, HLDS pleaded guilty to 14 counts of violating federal antitrust laws, as well as one count of participating in a scheme to defraud. At the time, HLSD was ordered to pay $21.1 million in criminal fines and to assist the department in its ongoing investigation.
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Morete
December 15, 2011 at 5:52am
The bleeding heart corporatism fanboys will still say that the only corporations that price fix are the ones that get caught.
immersive
December 14, 2011 at 10:09pm
For real? 25k? Thats it? They probably made 50 Mill + with the price fixing. Guess thats the power of the 1%. The would is shit. Can't wait for this crap to change!
dethdeks
December 14, 2011 at 6:11pm
is it just me or does anyone else see that the "fine" they have to pay is relativly a joke compaired to what they are worth. charging a millionare with a $25,000 fine is a joke. 25k to them is pocket change for what they really are worth. im glad they got jail time but really we all know they are probably gonna spend maybe a month at tops in jail and the will be released "on good behaviour" or some dumb shit like that.
Jox
December 14, 2011 at 5:11pm
Excellent news! I've been calling for prison terms for price-fixing execs for some time now - glad to see it finally happening. Cast them down with the sodomites!
-Jox
timmyw
December 14, 2011 at 3:38pm
I was surprised to see jail time too. The cynical side of me sees why they got jail time: "The three men conspired...to fix prices for optical disk drives sold to Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and Microsoft." If they conspired to fix prices for Joe Consumer do you think there would have been jail time?
Trekker1091
December 14, 2011 at 12:44pm
Wait, big company execs, aka millionaires, are actually going to prison? It's about time the courts actually did something right for a change.
Holly Golightly
December 14, 2011 at 11:42am
Wow, actual prison time. Usually these cases end in one big fine, but prison time for something like this is news to me.
Gosh, optical disk drive... Something I have not used in a very, very long time. Not even my laptop has an optical disk drive. They have become the most useless part of a computer. I suppose I will use it again come time to install Windows 8 on my desktop.
AntonioGarrison
December 14, 2011 at 2:18pm
They should have gotten a bigger fine. But yes, the physical media aspect on computers lately has gone downhill. I give it 10-15 years at most before physical media is done for. Everything will be downloaded and bought from online retailers.
I'll probably buy a downloadable version of windows install it on a thumbdrive and go from there. Physical media speeds are total crap.
Vano
December 14, 2011 at 6:29pm
First of all, thumbdrives are as physical as it gets.
Secondly, you do know there are still millions and millions dialup users in USA alone, right? 10-15 years - not a chance.
themohawkadmin
December 14, 2011 at 1:27pm
My guess is they will probably offer Windows 8 on read-only flash drives, since tablets and ultrabooks don't have dvd drives either.
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