[P]laid powers some of the most innovative fintech apps.  Plaid's technology allows developers to plug into consumers' various financial accounts, with consumer permission, to aggregate spending data, look up balances, and verify other personal financial data.  Plaid connects to 200 million consumer bank accounts and 11,000 U.S. banks.  Because it accesses data on behalf of so many fintech app customers, Plaid has become the leading financial data aggregation company in the United States.  Plaid is planning to leverage its connections to build a bank-linked payments network that would compete with Visa.  Plaid's money movement platform would allow consumers to pay merchants directly from their bank accounts using bank credentials rather than a debit card.  Plaid's established connections and technology uniquely positions it to enter the payments market and disrupt Visa's monopoly. 

The complaint alleges that Visa's CEO viewed the acquisition as an "insurance policy" to protect against a "threat to our important US debit business."  This acquisition is the second-largest in Visa's history, with an extraordinary price tag of $5.3 billion.  Visa's CEO justified the deal to Visa's Board of Directors as a "strategic, not financial" move, and noted that in part because "our US debit business i[s] critical and we must always do what it takes to protect this business."  Unless acquired, Visa feared that Plaid "on their own or owned by a competitor [was] going to create some threat" with a "potential downside risk of $300-500M in our US debit business" by 2024.  If Plaid remained free to develop its competing payment platform, then "Visa may be forced to accept lower margins or not have a competitive offering."

Millions of American consumers and merchants depend on debit services to transact business online.  The complaint alleges that Visa has dominated online debit for years and has protected its monopoly with exclusionary tactics that have prevented rivals, including Mastercard, from expanding or entering. The lawsuit alleges that Visa's proposed acquisition of Plaid is a violation of both Section 2 of the Sherman Act and Section 7 of the Clayton Act.  The Department filed its lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

Visa Inc. is a Delaware corporation headquartered in Foster City, California.  Visa is a global payments company that operates the largest debit network in the United States.  Visa's 2019 revenues were approximately $23 billion. 

Plaid Inc. is a Delaware corporation headquartered in San Francisco, California.  Plaid is a financial services company that operates the leading financial data aggregation platform in the United States.  In 2019, Plaid earned approximately $100 million in revenues.

[F]rom August 2018 and continuing until October 26, 2020, the defendants conspired with Adewumi Abioye, Hameed Adesokan, Lukman Salam, and another person to defraud victim businesses and victim financial institutions.  Specifically, the indictment alleges that the defendants and their co-conspirators used false, forged, and counterfeited passports and other identification documents that contained the facial images of co-conspirators but not their real names.  They used the forged documents to create limited liability companies, and to open fraudulent bank accounts, often where the only authorized signatory was an alias or stolen identity used by the defendants and their co-conspirators.  The defendants and their co-conspirators used a messaging app to communicate the timing of financial transactions, including directing members of the conspiracy regarding the deposit, withdrawal, transfer, and conversion of fraudulently obtained funds.

For example, as detailed in the indictment, on September 17, 2019, a co-conspirator sent a victim a fraudulent e-mail purporting to be from the victim's attorney, advising the victim to send a $65,000 wire transfer to an account controlled by Salam as part of a real estate purchase.  Lawal used the messaging app to send photographs and messages to Salam to show that the victim was making the wire transfer and listed a reference number.  Once the funds had arrived in the account, Lawal instructed Salam to obtain a cashier's check and make cash withdrawals so Salam could pay some of the cash to Lawal.  Similarly, the indictment alleges that between October 5, 2018 and October 9, 2018, Salam engaged in numerous financial transactions at Raji's direction, after a co-conspirator fraudulently obtained $390,000 from a victim business by sending the victim business e-mails purporting to come from an employee of one of the victim business' service providers and requesting that payment be wired to an account in the name of Salam's alias, Matthew John.  Salam then allegedly purchased checks, made cash withdrawals, and engaged in ATM and point of sale transactions using a debit card, in order to obtain access to the fraudulently obtained funds and to conceal their further use.

According to the indictment, on June 11, 2019, Lawal alerted Abioye that fraud proceeds from another victim business were being sent to a bank account that Abioye had opened using a fraudulent passport in the name of Andrew Ali.  The account was registered to Geotric Global LLC, and listed Andrew Ali as the only signatory.  That same day, the victim business sent a $339,680.63 ACH transfer to the account, believing it was paying a legitimate services vendor after receiving fraudulent e-mails purporting to be from the vendor, and providing payment instructions.  On December 30, 2019, Ojo received a $33,729 cashier's check purchased by a co-conspirator using part of the $66,278.81 fraudulently obtained from a victim business.  Ojo provided the check to Salam for deposit.  Between December 2019 and January 2019, Salam engaged in multiple withdrawals from the account where the fraudulent funds were deposited and provided Ojo with a portion of the proceeds from the fraud of the victim business.

From April 2014 through December 2019, the BitClub Network was a fraudulent scheme that solicited money from investors in exchange for shares of purported cryptocurrency mining pools and rewarded investors for recruiting new investors into the scheme. Weeks operated as a large-scale promoter of the BitClub Network, and sold shares despite knowing that the BitClub Network and its operators did not file a registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Weeks admitted taking money from investors in exchange for shares of the BitClub Network's purported mining pools. He admitted that in order to promote shares, he created and posted videos to the internet and gave presentations and speeches about the BitClub Network throughout the United States and in numerous countries throughout the world. Weeks instructed investors in the United States to use a virtual private network, or "VPN," to hide their U.S.-based IP addresses and evade detection and regulation by U.S. law enforcement.

Weeks also admitted not filing tax returns and failing to report at least $10 million in income, including cryptocurrency income earned from his association with the BitClub Network, for the tax years 2015 through 2018.

(1) Claimant's information was significant in that it alerted Enforcement Staff to the violative conduct, and there is a close nexus between Claimant's tip and the resulting charges; (2) Claimant provided substantial and ongoing assistance to Enforcement Staff, which included traveling to another country at Claimant's own expense to

meet with staff in person and providing an extensive supporting documentation; (3) the law enforcement interests are high where, as here, the whistleblower provided critical information about violative conduct that occurred abroad and that otherwise would have been difficult to detect; and (4) the Claimant suffered hardships due to Claimant's whistleblowing.

While we considered Claimant's ministerial role in the underlying misconduct, the Commission declines to reduce the award for culpability as Claimant took exceptional steps to report the misconduct from abroad and provided extraordinary assistance.

The record demonstrates that Claimant voluntarily provided original information to the Commission that led to the successful enforcement of the Covered Action. Although the investigation that gave rise to the Covered Action was already open at the time Claimant provided original information, Claimant provided information that caused Enforcement staff "to inquire concerning different conduct" that ultimately formed the basis for the Covered Action. 

[(1)] Claimant provided significant information that led the Commission to uncover an ongoing fraud; (2) Claimant provided assistance to Commission staff by meeting with them in person and helping them understand the likely mechanics of the fraudulent scheme; and (3) the law enforcement interest is high, as it is unlikely the fraud would have been detected but for Claimant's information and assistance.