Amazon has agreed to pay $309 million and provide additional remedies in a class-action settlement over claims that customers were wrongly denied refunds after returning items. Plaintiffs say (PDF) the deal delivers over $1 billion in total value, including more than $600 million in refunds and operational changes. Reuters reports: Amazon denied any wrongdoing in agreeing to the settlement. "Following an internal review in 2025, we identified a small subset of returns where we issued a refund without the payment completing, or where we could not verify that the correct item had been sent back to us, so no refund had been issued," an Amazon spokesperson said, adding that the company had taken steps to resolve the issue. The lawsuit, filed in 2023, said Amazon caused "substantial unjustified monetary losses" for consumers who in some instances properly returned an item but were still charged for it. In a court filing, Amazon said customers accepted the terms of the company's return policies, including the possibility they would be recharged for failing to return the product within a specified time frame. The proposed settlement class covers U.S. purchasers of goods on Amazon from September 2017 who allegedly did not receive timely or correct refunds, or who were later charged despite returning items. Class members are expected to recover the full amount of any incorrectly denied refund or retrocharge, plus interest, the plaintiffs told the court.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: This week, the first high-profile lawsuit -- considered a "bellwether" case that could set meaningful precedent in the hundreds of other complaints -- goes to trial. That lawsuit documents the case of a 19-year-old, K.G.M, who hopes the jury will agree that Meta and YouTube caused psychological harm by designing features like infinite scroll and autoplay to push her down a path that she alleged triggered depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicidality. TikTok and Snapchat were also targeted by the lawsuit, but both have settled. The Snapchat settlement came last week, while TikTok settled on Tuesday just hours before the trial started, Bloomberg reported. For now, YouTube and Meta remain in the fight. K.G.M. allegedly started watching YouTube when she was 6 years old and joined Instagram by age 11. She's fighting to claim untold damages -- including potentially punitive damages -- to help her family recoup losses from her pain and suffering and to punish social media companies and deter them from promoting harmful features to kids. She also wants the court to require prominent safety warnings on platforms to help parents be aware of the risks. [...] To win, K.G.M.'s lawyers will need to "parcel out" how much harm is attributed to each platform, due to design features, not the content that was targeted to K.G.M., Clay Calvert, a technology policy expert and senior fellow at a think tank called the American Enterprise Institute, wrote. Internet law expert Eric Goldman told The Washington Post that detailing those harms will likely be K.G.M.'s biggest struggle, since social media addiction has yet to be legally recognized, and tracing who caused what harms may not be straightforward. However, Matthew Bergman, founder of the Social Media Victims Law Center and one of K.G.M.'s lawyers, told the Post that K.G.M. is prepared to put up this fight. "She is going to be able to explain in a very real sense what social media did to her over the course of her life and how in so many ways it robbed her of her childhood and her adolescence," Bergman said. The research is unclear on whether social media is harmful for kids or whether social media addiction exists, Tamar Mendelson, a professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told the Post. And so far, research only shows a correlation between Internet use and mental health, Mendelson noted, which could doom K.G.M.'s case and others.' However, social media companies' internal research might concern a jury, Bergman told the Post. On Monday, the Tech Oversight Project, a nonprofit working to rein in Big Tech, published a report analyzing recently unsealed documents in K.G.M.'s case that supposedly provide "smoking-gun evidence" that platforms "purposefully designed their social media products to addict children and teens with no regard for known harms to their wellbeing" -- while putting increased engagement from young users at the center of their business models. Most of the unsealed documents came from Meta. An internal email shows Mark Zuckerberg decided Meta's top strategic priority was getting teens "locked in" to Meta's family of apps. Another damning document discusses allowing "tweens" to use a private mode inspired by fake Instagram accounts ("finstas"). The same document includes an admission that internal data showed Facebook use correlated with lower well-being. Internal communications showed Meta seemingly bragging that "teens can't switch off from Instagram even if they want to" and an employee declaring, "oh my gosh yall IG is a drug," likening all social media platforms to "pushers."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Thurrott: Microsoft is testing a refresh of the Xbox Cloud Gaming web experience in public preview. "This preview is a first look at our new web interface on your browser and lets you try the updated design and product flow before it is rolled out broadly," Microsoft's Patrick Siu explains. "Players who opt in to this preview will see some changes to their experience including updated navigation features and a refreshed look and feel. As this is a preview, some functions may not yet be available or may behave differently than the current web experience. We will continue iterating during the preview period and changes may be made over time." [...] There's no real info about what's in the new experience, oddly. Microsoft notes only that it "lays the foundation for accelerating [their] ability to build new experiences for players," and that it "helps [them] validate the new web platform and refine the experience for everyone." The public preview can be found at xbox.com/play.

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jeditobe writes: ReactOS, the open-source operating system aimed at binary compatibility with Windows, recently marked its 30th anniversary. Launched in 1996, ReactOS has focused on providing a free alternative to Windows, with compatibility for Windows applications and drivers. Though still in development, it has made significant progress in recent years, including improvements to USB support, better hardware compatibility, and enhanced performance with the release of version 0.4.15. The upcoming 0.4.16 release is set to introduce UEFI support, KMDF and WDDM graphics driver support, marking a major step forward in ReactOS's development.

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Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from PCMag: A lawsuit claims that WhatsApp's end-to-end encryption is a sham, and is demanding damages, but the app's parent company, Meta, calls the claims "false and absurd." The lawsuit was filed in a San Francisco US district court on Friday and comes from a group of users based in countries such as Australia, Mexico, and South Africa, according to Bloomberg. As evidence, the lawsuit cites unnamed "courageous whistleblowers" who allege that WhatsApp and Meta employees can request to view a user's messages through a simple process, thus bypassing the app's end-to-end encryption. "A worker need only send a 'task' (i.e., request via Meta's internal system) to a Meta engineer with an explanation that they need access to WhatsApp messages for their job," the lawsuit claims. "The Meta engineering team will then grant access -- often without any scrutiny at all -- and the worker's workstation will then have a new window or widget available that can pull up any WhatsApp user's messages based on the user's User ID number, which is unique to a user but identical across all Meta products." "Once the Meta worker has this access, they can read users' messages by opening the widget; no separate decryption step is required," the 51-page complaint adds. "The WhatsApp messages appear in widgets commingled with widgets containing messages from unencrypted sources. Messages appear almost as soon as they are communicated -- essentially, in real-time. Moreover, access is unlimited in temporal scope, with Meta workers able to access messages from the time users first activated their accounts, including those messages users believe they have deleted." The lawsuit does not provide any technical details to back up the rather sensational claims.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Telegraph: China hacked the mobile phones of senior officials in Downing Street for several years, The Telegraph can disclose. The spying operation is understood to have compromised senior members of the government, exposing their private communications to Beijing. State-sponsored hackers are known to have targeted the phones of some of the closest aides to Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak between 2021 and 2024. It is unclear whether the hack included the mobile phones of the prime ministers themselves, but one source with knowledge of the breach said it went "right into the heart of Downing Street." Intelligence sources in the US indicated that the Chinese espionage operation, known as Salt Typhoon, was ongoing, raising the possibility that Sir Keir Starmer and his senior staff may also have been exposed. MI5 issued an "espionage alert" to Parliament in November about the threat of spying from the Chinese state. [...] The attack raises the possibility that Chinese spies could have read text messages or listened to calls involving senior members of the Government. Even if they were unable to eavesdrop on calls, hackers may have gained access to metadata, revealing who officials were in contact with and how frequently, as well as geolocation data showing their approximate whereabouts.

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Reddit has forced Jaime Rogozinski, the founder of infamous r/WallStreetBets, to strip the WallStreetBets name from an upcoming Miami conference after legal threats citing trademark rights. According to a press release, it's the "first known case of a social media company enforcing trademark control over a user-created community." From the report: After years of litigation, courts ultimately sided with Reddit in a decision now referred to as the "Rogozinski Ruling," a precedent that grants platforms broad authority to assert trademark ownership over user-created communities. That ruling now forms the basis for Reddit's demand that the words "WallStreetBets" be physically removed from the event. "They aren't afraid of the name being used," said Rogozinski. "If they were, they'd have to sue the internet. What they're afraid of is the creator hanging out with his creation. They're afraid of the community's independence. And they're afraid it's evolved into something bigger than a subreddit." The irony is difficult to ignore. The original subreddit counts around three million subscribers, while conservative estimates place more than seven million WallStreetBets participants spread across other platforms. For a movement that built its reputation confronting corporate overreach, Reddit's decision to extend its authority beyond the confines of its web-based platform, reaching into real-world gatherings to police culture it did not create, risks stirring a hornet's nest with a long memory and a track record of collective action. The event formerly known as WallStreetBets Live, will proceed as scheduled on January 28-30 in Miami. In compliance with Reddit's demands, all references to the name will be physically redacted on-site. "Reddit's lawyers did one thing right," Rogozinski continued. "They proved exactly why we need a decentralized future. This event has become a live case study in what's broken about modern social media. Platforms can deplatform creators, and now, with courts backing them, they can appropriate what users build."

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Apple has launched a new AirTag 2 that features improved range, a speaker that's 50% louder, and expanded Apple Watch-based tracking. Pricing stays the same at $29 (or $99 for four). 9to5Mac reports: The new AirTag comes with an upgraded second-generation Ultra Wideband chip for improved range, including when using Precision Finding. From Apple Newsroom: "Apple's second-generation Ultra Wideband chip -- the same chip found in the iPhone 17 lineup, iPhone Air, Apple Watch Ultra 3, and Apple Watch Series 11 -- powers the new AirTag, making it easier to locate than ever before. Using haptic, visual, and audio feedback, Precision Finding guides users to their lost items from up to 50 percent farther away than the previous generation. And an upgraded Bluetooth chip expands the range at which items can be located. For the first time, users can use Precision Finding on Apple Watch Series 9 or later, or Apple Watch Ultra 2 or later, to find their AirTag, bringing a powerful experience to the wrist." Another key upgrade with the new AirTag is an improved speaker, which should also make the accessory easier to find. Apple says: "With its updated internal design, the new AirTag is 50 percent louder than the previous generation, enabling users to hear their AirTag from up to 2x farther than before." Apple also touts privacy and security improvements with the new AirTag: "Designed exclusively for tracking objects, and not people or pets, the new AirTag incorporates a suite of industry-first protections against unwanted tracking, including cross-platform alerts and unique Bluetooth identifiers that change frequently."

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Skylight, an open-source, TikTok-style video app built on the AT Protocol, surged past 380,000 users after last week's shake-up around TikTok's U.S. ownership and privacy concerns. TechCrunch reports: Launched last year and backed by Mark Cuban and other investors, Skylight's mobile app is built on the AT Protocol, the technology that also powers the decentralized X rival Bluesky, which now has north of 42 million users. Skylight, co-founded by CEO Tori White and CTO Reed Harmeyer, offers a built-in video editor; user profiles; support for likes, commenting, and sharing; and the ability for community curators to create custom feeds for others to follow. The app now has over 150,000 videos uploaded directly to the platform. It can also stream videos from Bluesky because of its AT Protocol integration. Harmeyer said Saturday that 1.4 million videos were played on the app the day before, up 3x over the past 24 hours. The app had also seen sign-ups increase more than 150%. Other noteworthy stats include over a 50% increase in returning users, over 40% rise in video played on average, and over 100% increase in posts created. This surge was likely triggered by concerns over TikTok's change in ownership and its unfortunately timed technical glitches. [...] Over the weekend, Skylight's CEO, Tori White, said the app added around 20,000 new users and is continuing to grow. So far this January, the app has seen around 95,000 monthly active users. "We've seen what happens when one person dictates what's pushed into people's feeds," White told TechCrunch. "Not only does it harm a creator's connection with their followers, but the entire health of the platform. That's why we built Skylight Social on open standards. We wanted creator and user power to be guaranteed by the technology. Not an empty promise, but an irrevocable right."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from GeekWire: Microsoft on Monday announced Maia 200, the second generation of its custom AI chip, claiming it's the most powerful first-party silicon from any major cloud provider. The company says Maia 200 delivers three times the performance of Amazon's latest Trainium chip on certain benchmarks, and exceeds Google's most recent tensor processing unit (TPU) on others. The chip is already running workloads at Microsoft's data center near Des Moines, Iowa. Microsoft says Maia 200 is powering OpenAI's GPT-5.2 models, Microsoft 365 Copilot, and internal projects from its Superintelligence team. A second deployment at a data center near Phoenix is planned next. It's part of the larger trend among cloud giants to build their own custom silicon for AI rather than rely solely on Nvidia. [...] The company says Maia 200 offers 30% better performance-per-dollar than its current hardware. Maia 200 also builds on the first-generation chip with a more specific focus on inference, the process of running AI models after they've been trained. [...] Microsoft is also opening the door to outside developers. The company announced a software development kit that will let AI startups and researchers optimize their models for Maia 200. Developers and academics can sign up for an early preview starting today.

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California tech executive Gordon Abas Goodarzi has been arrested and charged with murder in the death of his estranged wife, Aryan Papoli, whose body was found last November down an embankment off Highway 138 in San Bernardino County. Authorities initially believed the injuries were consistent with a fall, but the case was later ruled a homicide following a months-long investigation by the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department. "Arrest records show that Goodarzi is currently in custody without bail and faces a murder charge and that he is set to appear in court Monday," reports SFGATE. From the report: Goodarzi, a California tech executive with ties to BattleBots, is publicly listed as the president and CEO of Magmotor, which describes itself as a "proud" supporter of the combat robot community and claims to support several teams each year. According to his LinkedIn, Goodarzi also previously worked as a research affiliate at UCLA's B. John Garrick Institute for the Risk Sciences since 2023. Originally from Iran, Papoli and Goodarzi settled in Los Angeles County's verdant Rolling Hills community because of its tranquility and natural beauty, Papoli previously wrote. [...] She described her husband, Goodarzi, as a pioneer in the world of renewable energy, developing both electric and hybrid vehicles since the 1980s. According to Papoli, he also worked as the technical director at Hughes Electronics, which developed and manufactured the EV1, an early iteration of the electric car, in the 1990s.

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Google is adding Gemini-powered "Suggested times" to Google Calendar, automatically scanning attendees' calendars to surface the best meeting slots based on availability, work hours, and conflicts. The feature also streamlines rescheduling with one-click alternatives when invitees decline. Digital Trends reports: According to a recent post on the Workspace Updates blog, Gemini in Google Calendar can now help you quickly identify optimal meeting times when creating an event, as long as you have access to the attendees' calendars. The new "Suggested times" feature scans everyone's calendars and highlights the best time slots based on availability, working hours, and potential conflicts, eliminating the need to manually check schedules. Google has also made rescheduling simpler. The company explains that if multiple attendees decline your invite, you'll see a banner in the event showing a time when everyone is available, letting you update the invite with a single click. The feature is being rolled out starting today to eligible Workspace tiers. It will be enabled by default and is expected to reach all eligible users over the next few weeks.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Google has agreed to pay $68 million to settle a lawsuit claiming it secretly listened to people's private conversations through their phones. [...] the lawsuit claimed Google Assistant would sometimes turn on by mistake -- the phone thinking someone had said its activation phrase when they had not -- and recorded conversations intended to be private. They alleged the recordings were then sent to advertisers for the purpose of creating targeted advertising. The proposed settlement was filed on Friday in a California federal court, and requires approval by US District Judge Beth Labson Freeman. The claim has been brought as a class action lawsuit rather than an individual case -- meaning if it is approved, the money will be paid out across many different claimants. Those eligible for a payout will have owned Google devices dating back to May 2016. But lawyers for the plaintiffs may ask for up to one-third of the settlement -- amounting to about $22 million in legal fees. The tech firm also denied any wrongdoing, as well as claims that it "recorded, disclosed to third parties, or failed to delete, conversations recorded as the result of a Siri activation" without consent.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: The High Court in New Delhi, India, has granted another pirate site blocking order in favor of American movie industry giants, including Apple, Warner., Netflix, Disney and Crunchyroll. The injunction targets notorious pirate sites, requesting blockades at Indian ISPs. More crucially, however, globally operating domain registrars, including U.S. companies, are also compelled to take action. However, despite earlier cooperation, most don't seem eager to comply. [...] As reported by Verdictum a few days ago, the High Court in New Delhi issued a new blocking injunction on December 18, targeting more than 150 pirate site domains, including yflix.to, animesuge.bz, bs.to, and many others. The complaint (PDF) is filed by Warner Bros., Apple, Crunchyroll, Disney, and Netflix, which are all connected to the MPA's anti-piracy arm, ACE. The referenced works include some of the most pirated titles, such as Stranger Things, Squid Game, and Silo. In addition to targeting Indian ISPs, the order also lists various domain name registries and related organizations as defendants. This includes American registrars such as Namecheap and GoDaddy, but also the government of the Kingdom of Tonga, which is linked to .to domains. By requiring domain name registrars to take action, the Indian court orders have a global impact. In addition to suspending the domain names within three days days, the domain name registrars are given four weeks to disclose the relevant subscriber information connected to these domains. "[The registrars] shall lock and suspend Defendant Nos. 1 to 47 websites within 72 hours of being communicated with a copy of this Order and shall file all the Basic Subscriber Information, including the name, address, contact information, email addresses, bank details, IP logs, and any other relevant information [...] within four weeks of being communicated with a copy of this Order," the High Court wrote. While the "Dynamic+" injunction is designed to be a global kill switch, its effectiveness depends entirely on the cooperation of the domain name registrars. Since most of these are based outside of India, their compliance is not guaranteed.

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A clinical trial found that seniors at high stroke risk who wore an Apple Watch were four times more likely to have hidden heart rhythm disorders detected than those receiving standard care. The researchers noted that over half the time, these smartwatch wearers with heart rhythm problems hadn't shown any symptoms prior to diagnosis. From U.S. News & World Report: Later editions of Apple Watches are equipped with two functions that can help monitor heart health -- photoplethysmography (PPG), which tracks heart rate, and a single-lead electrocardiogram (ECG) that monitors heart rhythm. "Using smartwatches with PPG and ECG functions aids doctors in diagnosing individuals unaware of their arrhythmia, thereby expediting the diagnostic process," said senior researcher Dr. Michiel Winter, a cardiologist at Amsterdam University Medical Center in The Netherlands. "Our findings suggest a potential reduction in the risk of stroke, benefiting both patients and the health care system by reducing costs," Winter said in a news release. [...] Smartwatches are much easier than other wearable devices for detecting irregular heart rhythms [...]. These other means require people to wear sticky leads, carry around bulky monitors or even receive short-term implants. Lead researcher Nicole van Steijn, a doctoral candidate at Amsterdam UMC, noted that wearables that track both the pulse and electrical activity have been around for a while. "However, how well this technology works for the screening of patients at elevated risk for atrial fibrillation had not yet been investigated in a real-world setting,"she said in a news release. The findings have been published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

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A new study shows that earthquake monitoring networks can track falling space debris by detecting the sonic booms produced during atmospheric reentry, sometimes more accurately than radar. The Associated Press reports: Scientists reported Thursday that seismic readings from sonic booms that were generated when a discarded module from a Chinese crew capsule reentered over Southern California in 2024 allowed them to place the object's path nearly 20 miles (30 kilometers) farther south than radar had predicted from orbit. Using this method to track uncontrolled objects plummeting at supersonic speeds, they said, could help recovery teams reach any surviving pieces more quickly -- crucial if the debris is dangerous. "The problem at the moment is we can track stuff very well in space," said Johns Hopkins University's Benjamin Fernando, the lead researcher. "But once it gets to the point that it's actually breaking up in the atmosphere, it becomes very difficult to track." His team's findings, published in the journal Science, focus on just one debris event. But the researchers already have used publicly available data from seismic networks to track a few dozen other reentries, including debris from three failed SpaceX Starship test flights in Texas. [...] Fernando is looking to eventually publish a catalog of seismically tracked, entering space objects, while improving future calculations by factoring in the wind's effect on falling debris. In a companion article in Science, Los Alamos National Laboratory's Chris Carr, who was not involved in the study, said further research is needed to reduce the time between an object's final plunge and the determination of its course. For now, Carr said this new method "unlocks the rapid identification of debris fall-out zones, which is key information as Earth's orbit is anticipated to become increasingly crowded with satellites, leading to a greater influx of space debris."

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Bruce66423 shares a report from the Guardian: New filtration technology developed by Rice University may absorb some Pfas "forever chemicals" at 100 times the rate than previously possible, which could dramatically improve pollution control and speed remediations. Researchers also say they have also found a way to destroy Pfas, though both technologies face a steep challenge in being deployed on an industrial scale. A new peer-reviewed paper details a layered double hydroxide (LDH) material made from copper and aluminum that absorbs long-chain Pfas up to 100 times faster than commonly used filtration systems. [...] [Michael Wong, director of Rice's Water Institute, a Pfas research center] said Rice's non-thermal process works by soaking up and concentrating Pfas at high levels, which makes it possible to destroy them without high temperatures. The LDH material Rice developed is a variation of similar materials previously used, but researchers replaced some aluminum atoms with copper atoms. The LDH material is positively charged and the long-chain Pfas are negatively charged, which causes the material to attract and absorb the chemicals, Wong said. [...] Pfas are virtually indestructible because their carbon atoms are bonded with fluoride, but Rice found that the bonds could be broken if the chemicals in the material were heated to 400-500C -- a relatively low temperature. The fluoride gets trapped in the LDH material and is bonded to calcium. The leftover calcium-fluoride material is safe and can be disposed of in a landfill, Wong said. The process works with some long-chain Pfas that are among the most common water pollutants, and it also absorbed some smaller Pfas that are commonplace. Wong said he is confident the material can be used to absorb a broad array of Pfas, especially if they are negatively charged. Most new Pfas elimination systems fail to work at an industrial scale. Wong said the new material has an advantage because its absorption rate is so strong, it can be used repeatedly and it is in a "drop in material," meaning it can be used with existing filtration infrastructure. That eliminates one of the major cost barriers.

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California became the first U.S. state to join the World Health Organization's Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN), one day after the U.S. formally exited the WHO. The Hill reports: This announcement comes just one day after the U.S.'s withdrawal from the WHO became official after nearly 80 years of membership, having been a founding member of the organization. "The Trump administration's withdrawal from WHO is a reckless decision that will hurt all Californians and Americans," [California Governor Gavin Newsom] said in a statement. "California will not bear witness to the chaos this decision will bring. We will continue to foster partnerships across the globe and remain at the forefront of public health preparedness, including through our membership as the only state in WHO's Global Outbreak Alert & Response Network."

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Longtime Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shares a report from the Guardian: The financial campaigner James Daley has launched a 1.5 billion pound (approximately $1.5 billion) class action lawsuit against Apple over its mobile phone wallet, claiming the U.S. tech company blocked competition and charged hidden fees that ultimately harmed 50 million UK consumers. The lawsuit takes aim at Apple Pay, which they say has been the only contactless payment service available for iPhone users in Britain over the past decade. Daley, who is the founder of the advocacy group Fairer Finance, claims this situation amounted to anti-competitive behavior and allowed Apple to charge hidden fees, ultimately pushing up costs for banks that passed charges on to consumers, regardless of whether they owned an iPhone. It is the first UK legal challenge to the company's conduct in relation to Apple Pay, and takes place months after regulators like the Competition and Markets Authority and the Payments Systems Regulator began scrutinising the tech industry's digital wallet services. The case has been filed with the Competition Appeal Tribunal, which will now decide whether the class action case can move forward. [...] Daley's lawsuit alleges that Apple refused to give other app developers and outside businesses access to the contactless payment technology on its iPhones, which meant it could charge banks and card issuers fees on Apple Pay transactions that his lawyers say "are not in line with industry practice." The lawsuit notes that similar fees are not charged on equivalent payments on Android devices, which are built by Google. It says that the additional costs were borne by UK consumers, having been passed on through charges on a range of personal banking products ranging from current accounts, credit cards, to savings and mortgages. The lawsuit says that about 98% of consumers are exposed to banks that listed cards on Apple Pay, meaning the vast majority of the UK population may have been affected.

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The U.S. Department of Justice has opened a criminal investigation into Deel over allegations that it recruited a spy inside rival Rippling, according to documents seen by The Wall Street Journal. From the report: An Ireland-based Rippling employee, Keith O'Brien, alleged in an affidavit filed in April that Deel Chief Executive Alex Bouaziz recruited him and gave him instructions for what information to take from Rippling. O'Brien alleged that other executives were involved in the spying plot, including Bouaziz's father, who is Deel's executive chairman and chief strategy officer. A spokeswoman for Deel said the company isn't aware of a criminal investigation but is willing to cooperate with authorities. The company has previously said: "We deny all legal wrongdoing and look forward to asserting our counterclaims." Unsealed court documents allege that an entity tied to Deel transferred $6,000 to an account owned by the wife of Chief Operating Officer Dan Westgarth, and that the same amount was forwarded from the account to O'Brien seconds later.

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