Whole Foods, and Mackey, are taking two contradictory paths in trying to gather the information. The first was by seeking subpoenas targeted at the 96 companies. Late last year that path caused a huge PR fallout in Portland, Oregon (but didn’t stop the motion for subpoenas), so this week Mackey decided to personally appeal to the CEOs of the various companies by sending them a letter.

This tactic is even more gutsy due to the nature of the information that Whole Foods is requesting. New Seasons, a Portland, Oregon-based natural foods retailer subpoenaed by Whole Foods, said it was asked to hand over two year’s worth of sales figures, future expansion plans and any internal communication regarding the Whole Foods/Wild Oats merger.

While Whole Foods says the info will only be going to their outside counsel, many involved are skeptical. Brian Rohter, CEO of New Seasons, may have put it best when he said, “That’s like trusting the fox to guard the henhouse – and we don’t have any faith it’s going to work like that. I’m sorry to say this, but some of the people at Whole Foods have a history of less than stellar behavior when it comes to competing fairly.”

Of course, he’s most likely referring to Mackey’s posing as an anonymous Internet user with the name ‘Rahodeb,’ posting over 1,200 comments on Yahoo! Finance message boards about Whole Foods in 2007.

The trial over the Whole Foods/Wild Oats merger is set for April, but in the meantime you can get your fix on news coverage of this story (from an insider’s perspective) by heading over to the New Seasons Market blog.

The suits allege that McKesson and First DataBank, a subsidiary of Hearst Corporation that specializes in medical databases, conspired to boost the profits pharmacies make on medicine sales. The plaintiffs argue that rather than profiting directly from the scheme, distributors manipulated pricing to gain favor with retailers such as Rite Aid Corp. and Wal-Mart and to increase its market share, according to Bloomberg.

Since the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act triples the damages awarded in racketeering cases, and because the plaintiffs claim the alleged backroom deal cost consumers $5 billion, the total damages that McKesson Corp faces is $15 billion. Even as the largest drug wholesaler in the U.S., that’s a number McKesson can’t ignore. According to experts, it’s almost a guarantee that the company will settle the case.

A Thai Member of Parliament (MP) and a newspaper critic face millions of dollars in damages and significant prison time after being sued for libel by Tesco, the UK's largest retailer, according to a story by the Guardian Newspaper. Both were sued for saying that Tesco, known as Tesco Lotus in Thailand, is expanding too aggressively in their country at the risk of "mom-and-pop" businesses and for accusing the company of using loopholes to avoid paying Thai taxes. Both the MP and newspaper critic say Tesco sued them as a bullying tactic to silence debate.

The story notes that if the newspaper critic loses the case and receives the maximum punishment he will go bankrupt. However, despite the massive damage claims, Thai courts have never awarded over £33,000 (approximately $65,000) for damages in libel cases.

Tesco responded in a statement:

"Tesco is of course not trying to intimidate Mr Kamol or Mr Jit, but we do have a right to defend our company and our colleagues against false allegations. We took this action reluctantly but felt we had no choice after a sustained campaign of misinformation spread by the two individuals over many months.

Tesco does not have a history of acting through the courts and will only do so under extreme provocation. In fact until 2008 we had never taken any libel action at all. It would therefore be irresponsible and misleading to suggest that Tesco had a policy of attempting to suppress criticism."

Well, Thailand isn't the only place where Tesco is suing someone for speaking out against the company; it's also filed libel charges in its own backyard. The company recently filed libel charges in the UK against the Guardian newspaper for reporting on similar tax avoidance. According to the Guardian:

Tesco said the Guardian knowingly misled its readers in a series of articles and a podcast. The retailer said the Guardian had wrongly alleged that Tesco had contrived a tax avoidance structure involving a series of joint venture partnerships held largely offshore to avoid paying up to £1bn of UK corporation tax on sales of its UK properties. Tesco also said the Guardian had wrongly accused the retailer of having already avoided corporation tax on £500m of profits from two property deals using that structure.

The Guardian, like the Thai dissenters, argued that Tesco's lawsuit was nothing more than an attempt to bully people from speaking out against the company. The newspaper continued:

"This looks like a deliberate tactic by Britain's largest retailer to shut down perfectly legitimate inquiries into their methods of tax avoidance. At the same time that two Tesco directors are reported to have lobbied the government in private on matters of taxation, the company is now seeking to chill public debate on the same issues"

The Guardian article also states that Tesco's new U.S. operations, Fresh and Easy, has come under fire by political activists, though the company says it has no plans to file libel charges in the U.S.

The department found that 3M was shaving six percent off its tape products (the company’s advertised one-inch tape actually came out to 0.94 of an inch), violating the state and federal Fair Packaging and Labeling Act, according to the Fresno County deputy district attorney who prosecuted the case. As part of the settlement, 3M agreed to pay $600,000 in civil fees, $75,000 to a state trust fund benefiting various California weights and measures offices and $18,000 to the Department of Measurement and Standards, according to one report.

As with most settlements, 3M didn’t admit or deny guilty, but in this case it won’t be that easy to get off the hook: one only needs a ruler to figure out that they were, in fact, misrepresenting the size of their tape. The company agreed to remove the one-inch and other inaccurate labels from its tape products. Crisis averted.

“He did it because he really, truly thought that Merck was doing the wrong thing and he just couldn’t abide by it, even though he was putting his career on hold,” said Steinke’s lawyer, Steven Cohen of Chicago.

The important thing about this is that Steinke’s reward just gave a lot of incentive for employees to report wrong-doing at their own companies. This is a welcome change of pace compared to the all-too-common story of careers ending, marriages falling apart or the generally depressing fallout by being a whistle blower (if you want to see Hollywood’s take, watch ‘The Insider’ starring Russell Crowe and Al Pacino).

It appears that Steinke, who is married but has no kids, has already embraced retirement. He recently left his new job at a smaller pharmaceutical company, one that “shared his values.”

Motley Fool attributes some of the company’s success to consumers having “the attention span of the kids for whom they’re buying toys.” While that might be partly true, the company also did pro-actively work to fix the situation and ensure that the same problems don’t come up in the future. Whatever the reasons for its success, Mattel can be happy it didn’t go the way of Topps Meat Co., which suffered a recall around the same time and immediately went out of business.

Motley Fool also notes that Hasbro, obviously a big rival to Mattel, is expected to release very “upbeat” reports on its own fourth-quarter results, which will likely overshadow Mattel’s meager but important progress. Hasbro, which recently bought the Cranium board game, is predicted to announce “a 30% increase in profits on a 9% increase in sales to $1.2 billion.”

Some doctors were in on the scheme, too. Amgen representatives allegedly sent letters to insurance companies on behalf of participating doctors seeking pre-prescription approval for Enbrel use on their patients. The doctors, then more willing to prescribe the drug, would benefit from “frequent patient visits to have the drug injected.” If guilty, the punishment could be considerable. The HIPAA doesn’t mess around when it comes to disciplining violators. The sentence for revealing patient’s health information can be as much as 10 years in jail and a $250,000 fine “if the information was transferred or used for commercial advantage.”

The two representatives that made the claim are Elena Ferrante of New Jersey and Mark Engelman of California. According to their lawyer, Lydia Cotz, their allegations have been backed up by Amgen sales representatives “from the northeast to Hawaii.” The two representatives say they refused to go along with the scheme and say they were punished for objecting to their superiors. Ferrante was fired in August 2005–the same year that the scheme allegedly began–and Engelman resigned in 2007 after receiving a negative performance evaluation from his boss. They’re now suing Amgen for over $15 million each, an amount that includes “lost pay, punitive damages and other compensation.”

Many people, even after being helped, “could not select a climate change leader, and among those that could no winner emerged.” The study suggests this provides a unique opportunity to businesses as environmentally-minded consumers aren’t going anywhere, according to Simon Glynn, senior partner at Lippincott, which helped jointly conduct the survey.

Six categories of climate-change awareness are presented: Campaigners, Optimists, Followers, Confused, Unwilling and Rejecters.

A quick break-down of each group:

• Campaigners: Know the issue and are ready to make change but pessimistic about chances of success.
• Optimists: The same as campaigners, only optimistic about success.
• Followers: Ready to change, but their motivation is in looking good and fitting in.
• Confused: Open minded but not sure what to do.
• Unwilling: Accept the issue but are not personally prepared to make any changes.
• Rejecters: Reject the issue and are unprepared to make changes.

The study also suggests that market leaders are more often named by consumers for their climate-awareness (such as Tesco), as well as companies with a brand “halo” (such as Disney).

The company reported on July 3rd that the administrator illegally downloaded the information and sold it to a third party data broker, who in turn sold the data to various marketing companies.

Fidelity National confirmed that the unnamed employee had been fired.

Commentary: Over 3.5 million credit card accounts were taken along with over 1.4 million credit card numbers. This is a prime example of how one employee can cause significant damage to a large corporation, their reputation, and their clients.

Investigators found that between 1997 and 2003, the operators regularly exchanged information about new and canceled contracts and used this information to maintain their market shares and match commercial strategies.

While the Conseil did not find specific evidence of price fixing, it did consider that the exchange of information restricted competition by allowing the three operators to react to one another’s marketing strategies.

Commentary: One interesting element of this case is that regulators did not find specific proof of price-fixing, but simply inferred it from the other information that was exchanged – that information, in regulators’ minds, would have been enough to coordinate strategies on product services, offerings, billing practices (and thereby resultant pricing).

On the positive side, we can commend the French school system for its history curriculum – one of the handwritten documents unearthed in discovery referred to the practices as a “market-share Yalta” among the competitors which would “pacify the market” (a reference to the historic 1945 agreement between Russia, the U.K. and the U.S. to partition post-war Europe influence).

David van Duyn, who worked as an anti-money laundering advisor for the company, accused Fidelity executives of instructing him to sidestep the Patriot Act, which laid out requirements for monitoring and reporting client transactions. To top things off, he accuses his former superiors of handing down orders to falsify documents. Duyn claims the company blatantly violated the Act and other laws intended to track money laundering and funding for terrorist networks.

Fidelity has countered with a suit of its own in an effort to prevent Duyn from divulging “confidential information” – which Fidelity insists would violate the company’s non-disclosure agreement signed by employees. The suit is in addition to its hurried efforts to stamp out from the public record any potentially damaging information or allegations surrounding its internal policies and possible negligence of customer accounts.

Commentary: Gotta hate it when the compliance officer himself is the whistleblower. That just doesn’t reflect well on the company. No wonder Fidelity is reportedly in a mad scramble to try and get all documents and filings related to the case put under seal.

Perhaps the most widely-known incident is the lawsuit filed two weeks ago by the Connecticut Attorney General, Richard Blumenthal, alleging that Best Buy was deceiving customers. According to the suit, Best Buy maintained discrepancies between promotions found on the Best Buy Internet website and “deals” found at in-store kiosks. Blumenthal described instances when employees of the country’s largest consumer electronics retailer charged higher prices for items by using its look-alike internal website.

In a comment to the Associated Press, Blumenthal stated, “Best Buy gave consumers the worst deal – a bait-and-switch-plus scheme luring consumers into stores with promised online discounts, only to charge higher in-store prices.”

Another headache for Best Buy was the April arrest of one of its “Geek Squad” employees for allegedly trying to tape a customer as she showered while the employee was in her home setting up equipment. The family, of course, filed a lawsuit, on the premise that they had relied on the company to screen and train agents before sending them into people’s homes – as their Geek Squad brochure promises to provide “agents you can trust.”

To top things off, one of the attorneys for Best Buy, Timothy Block, admitted last week to committing one of the ultimate sins in the legal profession: falsifying e-mails and a memo before turning them over to plaintiffs in a nationwide class-action lawsuit. This stems from a 2003 lawsuit against Best Buy and MSN which accused the companies of signing up at least 100,000 customers for trial subscriptions to Microsoft Corporation’s MSN Internet service from 1999 to 2003, in many cases without the customer’s knowledge

King County Superior Court Judge Douglass North Jr. has previously scolded Best Buy for not being forthcoming with documents related to the case. This new revelation will make it hard for Best Buy to dismiss the case, and in all likelihood will tack on tens of millions of dollars in damages to any judgment.

Commentary: We are surprised at these series of events surrounding Best Buy. Our analysis of Best Buy’s operations has historically suggested a relatively strong commitment to compliant and ethical business practices. Are these isolated problems, or symptoms of a larger, systemic cultural and business issue? Time will tell. Our advice would be to try and get these cases settled as soon as possible rather than letting them drag on through the courts and continue to damage the company’s reputation.

Throughout the trial, prosecutors pushed for a punishment of up to 20 years in prison and described Kaiser’s fraud as “an astonishing degree of corruption at the highest levels of corporate America.” Kaiser reportedly orchestrated a fraud that would overstate earnings by $800 million over the years 2000 to 2003 by falsifying supplier rebate reports – all of which left the fraud participants with more significant bonuses.

Kaiser was convicted in November of all six charges, which included one count of conspiracy, one count of securities fraud and four counts of making false filings with the SEC. In addition to his 84 month sentence, Kaiser was sentenced to two years of supervised release and ordered to pay a $50,000 fine.

Ahold, the holding company of Foodservice, claims that the fraud at Foodservice is mostly to blame for its own overstatement of earnings by more than $1 billion in 2003. As a result, Ahold stock value dropped by 60 percent and nearly bankrupted the company. According to reports, Ahold is in the midst of selling the subsidiary as a result of the scandal.

Commentary: Hopefully this helps close the book on this massive fraud and is part of the process to allow US Foodservice to focus on the future and not the past. On a side note, we were particularly amazed that the CEO of US Foodservice was never swept up in this scandal, despite the fact that it happened on his watch. Lucky Charms to him!

The WSJ article was all about how a cottage industry has sprung up to try and remove negative information about people and companies – or at least lower the placement of such items – on search engines:

“…a company called ReputationDefender Inc. that promises to help individuals “search and destroy” negative information about them on the Internet. Businesses and others have long employed so-called search-engine-optimization techniques to try to make themselves appear higher in Web-search results. Now services like ReputationDefender and DefendMyName are charging fees that can run into hundreds of dollars to help clients remove or downplay unflattering online information.

The companies cite success stories of customers who have buried snippy blog comments, embarrassing photos or critical mentions of their names. But, as [one client] found out, the services can’t wipe everything off the Internet, and their efforts can backfire. ReputationDefender sent a letter to political blog Positive Liberty asking it to remove [a client's] name from a critical entry on the grounds the post was “outdated and invasive.” Blogger Jason Kuznicki refused, and posted a new entry mocking the request. He says he “had a good laugh over it.”

ReputationDefender also sent a takedown request to Consumerist, a Gawker Media blog that had written about a man who was briefly jailed for harassment after repeatedly calling online travel agent Priceline.com Inc. for a refund. The letter asked the blog to remove or alter the archived post, saying it was “outdated and disturbing” to its client. Consumerist editor Ben Popken blasted the request with a profanely titled entry, calling it an attempt at censorship. “It’s not like we’re spreading libel,” he said. “They were trying to put the toothpaste back in the tube.”

Commentary: Okay – the WSJ piece raises some legitimate issues, some of which we have already written about (see the Ethisphere Q1 Edition cover story, “Is Google Labeling Your Company Unethical?”). The bottom line is that in the online world, it is going to be very hard to control what people say about your or your brand unless it is clearly defamatory (an example of defensiveness is illustrated in the Ethisphere Q2 Edition article, “What’s Ailing Johnson & Johnson?,” which discusses J&J’s purchases of negative domain names such as www.thepatchkills.com in order to try to head off negative online postings).

Oh so often we are reminded that life is stranger (and funnier) than fiction. Poor Segev.

Apparently, this product does not contain fluoride. Instead, it contains Diethylene Glycol (DEG). DEG is often described by its more layman’s term: antifreeze.

Doug Arbesfeld, an FDA official, said that testing had found the chemical in a product bearing Colgate label, but that the FDA was unsure whether it really was Colgate or a counterfeit.

The FDA pointed out an important method of distinguishing the bogus toothpaste:

For alert consumers it should be easy to identify the problem tubes as the counterfeit packages examined so far have several misspellings including: “isclinically” “SOUTH AFRLCA” “South African Dental Assoxiation.”

The Company said in a statement that it does not use Diethylene Glycol as an ingredient in Colgate toothpaste anywhere in the world nor does it import toothpaste from South Africa into the United States.

Commentary: DEG is a deadly substance that has been found in many other products over the years, often with fatal results. There are a number of questions surrounding this recall, including some asking why Colgate was slow in making an announcement once they learned of the problem.

Perhaps Colgate is due for a check-up. Say AHHHH.

The plan is detailed in a New York Times report:

The voluntary changes, which will be put in place over the next year and a half, will apply to about half of the products that Kellogg currently markets to children worldwide, including Froot Loops and Apple Jacks cereals and some varieties of Pop Tarts.

The president and chief executive, David Mackay, said those products would either be reformulated to meet the nutrition guidelines or would no longer be advertised to children.

“It is a big change,” Mr. Mackey said. “Where we can make the changes without negatively impacting the taste of the product, we will.” And if the product cannot be reformulated, the company will either market it to an older audience or stop advertising it.

Last November, for instance, 10 of the largest food and beverage companies, including McDonald’s, General Mills and Kellogg, vowed that at least half of their advertising directed at children under the age of 12 would promote healthier foods or encourage active lifestyles.

The companies also agreed not to advertise in elementary schools and to reduce the use of licensed characters to promote food. Those companies are expected to complete individual plans for how they will address the guidelines in the next 60 days or so.

In a related initiative, Kellogg said that it would introduce new “Nutrition at a Glance” labels on the top right-hand corner of cereal boxes this year to make it easier for consumers to glean nutrition information. The new labels will show consumers the percentage of calories, total fat, and sodium in a single serving, based on a 2,000-calorie daily diet. The label will also disclose the amount of sugar and specific nutrients like fiber and calcium contained in a serving.

Commentary: Let’s put aside the fact that Kellogg was subject to a lawsuit about its marketing practices from the Center for Science in the Public Interest and the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (an action which was dropped as part of this announcement) and simply applaud them for demonstrating leadership.

Kellogg was among the 93 global companies honored several weeks back by Ethisphere Magazine and the Ethisphere Council as one of 2007′s World’s Most Ethical Companies. In reformulating products and highlighting nutrition, Kellogg has the opportunity to profitably deepen and improve loyalty in its customer relationships – which is the epitome of the Ethisphere Council’s slogan: “Good. Smart. Business. Profit.”

The survey, Fraud Risk Mitigation in Europe, interviewed 1300 employees of multinational companies in eight Western European and five Central and Eastern European countries (100 respondents in each country), and invited their views on how anti-fraud measures were implemented within their employer organizations.

The report shows that employees in France (39%) feel the least at ease about blowing the whistle in the work place because they fear reprisals. The Czech Republic (42%) and Austria (44%) also scored very low on confidence.

At the other end of the spectrum, Brits were happy to report wrongdoing. Within the UK, a full 86% of employees said that they would feel comfortable blowing the whistle at work if they suspected fraud or other wrongdoing. This was by far the highest percentage across the 13 European countries covered in the survey.

John Smart, Fraud Investigation & Dispute Services Partner at Ernst & Young, says that the huge differences are down to culture, legislation and regulation in each country. “The UK has developed a very strong reporting culture, based on an anonymous route to inform wrongdoing, which is supported by law, such as the 1998 Public Interest Disclosure Act, that forbids employees from sacking whistle-blowers who act in good faith,” he says.

“But it was only after the Sarbanes Oxley Act 2002 (SOX) was introduced that other European countries, such as France, were forced to review guidelines on anonymous corporate whistle-blowing mechanisms – including the introduction of anonymous whistleblower hotlines.”

Commentary: This is actually a very interesting and useful study. Many global companies do not understand the local cultural complexities that interfere with the utilization of a whistleblowing system. This analysis helps elucidate the differences and expectations that will be encountered by companies operating in a multi-national environment – and show them where more communication and training may be necessary if they want the reporting systems to be used more frequently.

It’s never fun to have a state AG using the term “classic bait and switch” in its formal compliant, an excerpt of which you can read below or click here to view the more extended version.

According to papers the Attorney General filed in court, Dell deprived consumers of the technical support to which they were entitled under their warranty or service contract by:

+ repeatedly failing to provide consumers who purchased service contracts promising “onsite” and expedited service with timely onsite repair;

+ pressuring consumers, including those who purchased service contracts promising “next day onsite” repair, to remove the external cover of their computer and remove, reinstall, and manipulate hardware components;

+ discouraging consumers from seeking technical support; those who called Dell’s toll free number were subjected to long wait times, repeated transfers, and frequent disconnections; and

+ using defective “refurbished” parts or computers to repair or replace consumers’ equipment.

The lawsuit accuses Dell of luring consumers to purchase its products with advertisements that offered attractive “no interest” and/or “no payment” financing promotions. In practice, however, the vast majority of consumers, even those with very good credit scores, were denied these deals. In a classic “bait and switch” scheme, Dell Financial Services (DFS) instead offered consumers financing at high interest rates, which often exceed 20 percent.

The lawsuit also alleges that DFS incorrectly billed consumers on cancelled orders, returned merchandise, or accounts they did not authorize Dell to open, and then continually harassed these consumers with illegal billing and collection activity. Although many consumers repeatedly contacted Dell and/or DFS to advise them of the errors, DFS did not suspend collection activities and Dell failed to expeditiously credit consumers’ accounts, even after assuring consumers it would do so. As a result, many consumers have been subjected to harassing collection calls for months on end and have had their credit ratings harmed.

Commentary: Mr. Cuomo is new to the office, and he is the latest in the Cuomo political dynasty in the state of New York. Seeing how predecessor Elliot Spitzer parlayed the position into a seat as Governor, Mr. Cuomo seems determined to try and follow in Spitzer’s footsteps. This includes taking the lead on filing lawsuits against corporations over their business practices.

Rumors have been circulating for weeks that NY State was about to file a lawsuit against Dell. Want a testament to the power of the NY State Attorney General? Dell’s stock actually ROSE after the lawsuit was filed as investors were RELIEVED that it was not something even worse.

Telemarketing fraud, once limited to small-time thieves, has become a global criminal enterprise preying upon millions of elderly and other Americans every year, authorities say. Vast databases of names and personal information, sold to thieves by large publicly traded companies, have put almost anyone within reach of fraudulent telemarketers. And major banks have made it possible for criminals to dip into victims’ accounts without their authorization, according to court records.

The banks and companies that sell such services often confront evidence that they are used for fraud, according to thousands of banking documents, court filings and e-mail messages reviewed by The New York Times.

Although some companies, including Wachovia, have made refunds to victims who have complained, neither that bank nor infoUSA stopped working with criminals even after executives were warned that they were aiding continuing crimes, according to government investigators. Instead, those companies collected millions of dollars in fees from scam artists…

In a lawsuit filed last year, the United States attorney in Philadelphia said Wachovia received thousands of warnings that it was processing fraudulent checks, but ignored them. That suit, against the company that printed those unsigned checks, Payment Processing Center, or P.P.C., did not name Wachovia as a defendant, though at least one victim has filed a pending lawsuit against the bank.

During 2005, according to the United States attorney’s lawsuit, 59 percent of the unsigned checks that Wachovia accepted from P.P.C. and forwarded to other banks were ultimately refused by other financial institutions. Wachovia was informed each time a check was returned.

“When between 50 and 60 percent of transactions are returned, that tells you at gut level that something’s not right,” said the United States attorney in Philadelphia, Patrick L. Meehan.

Other banks, when confronted with similar evidence, have closed questionable accounts. But Wachovia continued accepting unsigned checks printed by P.P.C. until the government filed suit in 2006.

Commentary: It isn’t news that people are defrauding the elderly. The elderly has long been obvious and easy targets. Is it easier in the age of the Internet and identity theft? Maybe, maybe not. What is interesting about this case is Wachovia’s apparent willful blind eye to the activities. As readers of Ethisphere know, the Q2 Edition of Ethisphere Magazine publicized the 2007 Rankings (by industry) of the World’s Most Ethical Companies. Neither of the two banks featured in this article (Wells Fargo and Wachovia) made their financial service industry’s ethical leadership list. However, Wells Fargo was relatively close – and Wachovia missed out by a long shot. This is an interesting fact considering if you read this article closely, the business practices being spelled out by the NY Times closely and accurately affirm what the rankings have found.

As PC World reported, the popular technology blog, Engadget, posted a story claiming the expected June launch of the iPhone would be delayed until October – and the Leopard October debut would be postponed until January. Engadget’s credited its source as coming from an internal Apple e-mail.

The e-mail tip turned out to be false. But before anyone figured this out Apple’s stock tumbled 3 percent losing US$4 billion in value by the end of the trading day. Apple reacted quickly and issued a statement saying that the iPhone and Leopard are both still on track – the iPhone will ship at the end of June, and Leopard will ship in October. Engadget quickly posted a correction.

Commentary: What PC World did not report, and which makes the case even stranger, is that the email that Engadget got sent, was reportedly indeed an internal Apple email that went out to thousands of Apple employees. What supposedly really confuses Apple is how someone might have spoofed their internal system in order to send out such a mass email.

It could have been a mistake. Perhaps not though. It could have been a concerted effort by a stockholder (or “put” holder more likely) to disseminate false information to move the stock. Penny stock promoters do it all the time. Many hedge fund managers do as well. This case will only bring further intrigue and interest to the practice as volatility and leverage together can produce great gains with the right bet. And a blog, regardless of its popularity, cannot independently verify the facts of a submission. That was traditionally the role of big media – and with the slimmer staffing of a blog, and the pressure to produce “scoops” in the age of Internet before someone else beats you to it, don’t except ‘fact checkers’ to be showing up at blogs anytime soon.

To recap for anyone who has been living under a rock and missed the story, earlier this year TJX Companies, owners of the retail chains Marshalls, TJ Maxx and Bob’s Stores, had 45.4 million credit numbers of customers stolen.

The original breach probably took place around July 2005 and subsequent investigations by IBM and General Dynamics found that there are several additional intrusions later in 2005, 2006 and even in mid-January of 2007 (incredibly this last one occurred after the company had discovered on December 18, 2006 that its records had been breached).

Commentary: The damage figures are based upon the well-recognized ‘rules of thumb’ which apply to the cost of a credit card record stolen, which is between $100 and $182 per record, depending on who you speak with. Either way, the TJX breach is the biggest even discovered to date, even eclipsing the 40 million records compromised in the mid-2005 breach at CardSystems Solutions. Incredibly, however, the company has found that shoppers are forgiving and there has not been a dramatic fall-off in sales.

Investigators with the office of the attorney general found the documents in a dumpster behind a CVS store in Liberty, Texas, near Houston, Abbott’s office said.

Medical prescription forms with name, address, date of birth, issuing physician and the types of medication prescribed were found, along with hundreds of active debit and credit card numbers with expiration dates…

According to the attorney general, CVS violated a 2005 law that requires businesses to protect customer records with sensitive information, including credit and debit card numbers.

In fears that the images in the video could be used by inmates to try and replicate and build their own, the prison was required to change 11,000 locks and 3,200 keys, which cost more than £300,000.

The government sent the bill to ITN, which refused to pay it. Now, according to The Sun, the news channel, reporter and camerawomen on the story are being jointly sued.

Commentary: This is just another amusing gaffe by the media in revealing information that they shouldn’t have. Some of our other favorite recent ones include: The Maine Daily Sentinel Newspaper which excitingly published a front page photo of a local handsome lottery winner ($300,000 – which is big big moola in the backwoods of Maine) holding up his winning check, in which you can also brilliantly see his Social Security #, address and date of birth. The image (with vital details now blurred out) can be seen here. And, as we covered last year, fellow New Englanders from the Boston Globe pulled an even greater stunner when they wrapped 240,000 customers home delivered newspapers in discarded customer credit reports, including both bank account information along with entire credit card numbers.

Commentary: We like this case. We are tired of the old excuse “products might have settled during shipping” that the cereal folks use.