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Dec. 22 (UPI) — The former CEO of a healthcare software company in Arizona was sentenced to 15 years in prison and ordered to pay more than $452 million in restitution for conspiring to defraud Medicare for $1 billion, the U.S. Department of Justice said Monday.

Gary Cox, 79, of Maricopa County, was found guilty in June of healthcare fraud in which he generated false doctors’ orders to support fraudulent claims for various medical items.

He was sentenced Friday in the Southern District of Florida.

“This just sentence is the result of one of the largest telemarketing Medicare fraud cases ever tried to verdict,” Acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew R. Galeotti of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division said in a statement. “Telemedicine scammers who use junk mailers, spam calls and the internet to target senior citizens steal taxpayer money and harm vulnerable populations. The Criminal Division will continue dedicating substantial resources to the fight against telemedicine and medical equipment frauds that drain our health care benefit programs.”

Cox was convicted of conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud and wire fraud, three counts of healthcare fraud, conspiracy to pay and receive healthcare kickbacks, and conspiracy to defraud the United States and make false statements in connection with healthcare matters.

Cox was the CEO of Power Mobility Doctor Rx, LLC.

Prosecutors say Cox and his co-conspirators targeted several hundred thousand Medicare beneficiaries who provided personally identifiable information and agreed to accept medically unnecessary orthotic braces, pain creams and other items through misleading mailers, television advertisements and calls from offshore call centers, the Justice Department said.

Cox connected pharmacies, durable medical equipment suppliers and marketers with telemedicine companies to accept illegal kickbacks and bribes in exchange for signed doctors’ orders transmitted using the DMERx platform.

Prosecutors said DMERx falsely said that a doctor had examined and treated the Medicare beneficiaries when, in fact, purported telemedicine companies paid doctors to sign the orders without regard to medical necessity. It was based on a brief telephone call with the beneficiary or no interaction with the beneficiary, the Justice Department said.

These doctors’ orders billed Medicare and other insurers more than $1 billion with Medicare and the insurers paying more than $360 million based on these claims.

The scheme was concealed through sham contracts and elimination from doctors’ orders in which one co-conspirator described as “dangerous words” that might cause Medicare to audit the scheme’s DME suppliers.

“This sentence sends a clear message: Those who exploit telemedicine to prey on seniors and steal from taxpayer-funded health care programs will be held accountable,” said Christian J. Schrank, deputy inspector general for investigations of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

“This scheme was a massive betrayal of trust, built on deception and greed. Our investigators, working with law enforcement partners, dismantled this billion-dollar fraud operation that targeted vulnerable patients and undermined the integrity of Medicare. We will not relent in our mission to protect the public and safeguard Medicare and other federal health care programs from fraud, waste, and abuse.”

Before his sentencing, friends of the defendant submitted letters to the judge vouching for Cox’s good character.

“It is my belief, based on all my life experiences both good and bad that Gary is not a person that would take advantage of or cheat another,” one letter said.

Since March 2007, the Justice Department’s Fraud Section, operating nine strike forces in 27 federal districts, has charged more than 5,800 defendants, who collectively have billed federal healthcare programs and private insurers more than $30 billion.

“Together with our partners, the FBI will aggressively pursue those who defraud taxpayer-funded health care programs,” Rebecca Day, acting assistant director of the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division, said. “Programs like Medicare are intended to help the most vulnerable among us, and fraud schemes like the one orchestrated by the defendant can jeopardize the delivery of critical care to those who need it the most.”

Approximately 69.4 million Americans are enrolled in the federal health insurance, which is primarily for people aged 65 and older. It also covers younger people with long-term disability, end-stage renal disease or ALS.

Medicare fraud, mistakes and abuse cost the program an estimated $60 billion annually.

“Medicare numbers are more valuable than Social Security numbers because if they have all the right documentation, the Medicare claim has to go through, there are rules and regulations around that,” Nancy Moore, director of Indiana Senior Medicare Patrol, told WRTV-TV in June.

“One of the best ways to look out for fraud is to read your summary notices, your EOB if you’re on Medicare Advantage, or your Medicare summary notice. If you notice a charge for something you never received or didn’t need. That’s when you should call us to report it.”

Consumers can also report suspected medical identity theft to the Health & Human Services fraud hotline at 800-447-8477 (800-HHS-TIPS) or the National Insurance Crime Bureau at 800-835-6422.

BP has tapped Woodside Energy’s Meg O’Neill as its next CEO, its first external hire for the post in more than a century and the first woman to lead a top-five oil major as the firm pivots back to fossil fuels.

O’Neill, an Exxon veteran, will take over in April following the abrupt departure of Murray Auchincloss, the second CEO change in just over two years as the British oil major strives to improve its profitability and share performance, which for years has lagged competitors like Exxon.

The company embarked on a major strategy shift earlier this year, slashing billions in planned renewable energy initiatives and shifting its focus back to traditional oil and gas. BP has pledged to divest $20bn in assets by 2027, including its Castrol lubricants unit, and reduce debt and costs.

“Progress has been made in recent years, but increased rigour and diligence are required to make the necessary transformative changes to maximise value for our shareholders,” new BP Chair Albert Manifold said in a statement.

When Manifold took up his post in October, he emphasised the need for a deeper reshaping of BP’s portfolio to increase profitability and faced pressure from activist investor Elliott Investment Management, one of BP’s largest shareholders, which called for him to urgently address the company’s shortcomings.

Elliott saw the change of CEO as a sign of BP’s willingness to act swiftly to deliver cost cuts and divestments, a person familiar with the situation said.

An external change

O’Neill, a 55-year-old American from Boulder, Colorado, and the first openly gay woman to helm a FTSE 100 company, headed Woodside since 2021, having previously spent 23 years at Exxon.

Under O’Neill’s leadership, Woodside merged with BHP Group’s petroleum arm to create a top 10 global independent oil and gas producer valued at $40bn and doubled Woodside’s oil and gas production.

The acquisition took the company to the US, where it embarked on a major Louisiana liquefied natural gas project, which it is progressing in an LNG market braced for oversupply.

BP spent more than 40 percent of its $16.2bn investment budget in the United States last year and plans to boost its US output to 1 million barrels of oil equivalent per day by the end of the decade.

Markets react

Woodside shares fell as much as 2.9 percent after news of O’Neill’s departure. At BP, shares were up 0.3 percent, compared with a broader index of European energy companies.

Like BP, Woodside shares have underperformed rivals. In absolute terms, though, the stock has risen about 10 percent during O’Neill’s tenure.

BP’s executive vice president, Carol Howle, will serve as interim CEO. Auchincloss, 55, will step down on Thursday and serve in an advisory role until December 2026.

BP said O’Neill’s appointment was part of its long-term succession planning, though it had not publicly announced a search process.

Auchincloss became CEO in 2024, taking over from Bernard Looney, who was fired after lying to the board about personal relationships with colleagues.

After an ill-fated foray into renewables under Looney, BP has promised to increase profitability and cut costs while re-routing spending to focus on oil and gas, launching a review in August of how best to develop and monetise oil and gas production assets.

During BP’s third-quarter earnings call last month, the company did not give an update on the closely watched sale process for its Castrol lubricants unit, the centrepiece of its $20bn asset-sale drive to slash its debt pile.

“We question whether this is set to change BP’s thinking once again on key strategic initiatives – should they defer the sale of Castrol? We think yes. Should they cut the buyback to zero and repair the balance sheet further? We think yes,” said RBC analyst Biraj Borkhataria.

Woodside said in a separate statement that O’Neill was leaving immediately, and it had appointed executive Liz Westcott as acting CEO, while intending to announce a permanent appointment in the first quarter of 2026.

Dec. 16 (Asia Today) — Rebellion Chief Executive Park Sung-hyun said Tuesday the South Korean AI semiconductor startup wants to “compete head-to-head” with Nvidia as the company marked its fifth anniversary and said its valuation has reached about 2 trillion won (about $1.5 billion), meeting the threshold commonly used for “unicorn” status.

“Even if it kills me, I want to step into the same ring as NVIDIA and face them head-on,” Park said at a media day at Rebellion’s headquarters in Seongnam, south of Seoul.

Founded in 2020, Rebellion has positioned itself as an AI chipmaker focused on inference – the computing used to run AI services – rather than large-scale model training. The company said it has built “real-world” usage references by deploying its chips in services with live traffic in telecommunications, the public sector and enterprise markets.

Executives said competition in AI semiconductors is shifting as AI services spread and inference becomes a key battleground, where power efficiency and operating costs can matter as much as raw performance. The company pointed to moves such as Google‘s expansion of its Tensor Processing Unit into large-scale cloud offerings as evidence that specialized AI chips developed for internal use can be adapted for commercial services.

Rebellion said it is seeking to differentiate itself in a market not fully centered on Nvidia by focusing from the outset on inference-optimized designs. Park said the company expects measures such as cost per token and throughput per watt to become increasingly important as AI services scale.

Park also criticized what he described as the practical challenges facing domestic AI chip companies, arguing that government support for AI infrastructure – particularly around graphics processing units – has largely benefited large companies and established cloud providers. “This is disappointing for AI semiconductor companies targeting the inference market,” he said, while adding the company plans to pursue competition through chips and systems rather than policy-driven, software-centric approaches.

Rebellion said its merger with Sapion Korea, finalized last year, strengthened its global expansion efforts. Through the deal, SK Telecom and SK Hynix became major shareholders, providing capital and boosting credibility, Park said. He added that SK Hynix’s brand reduces the burden on Korean startups seeking recognition abroad.

The company said it raised 92 billion won (about$70 million) from KT in a 2022 Series A round and 165 billion won (about $125 million) in a 2024 Series B round from overseas investors including Saudi Aramco and Singapore’s Pavilion Capital. Rebellion said a Series C round this year included investment from Arm, which it described as a milestone for an Asian startup.

Rebellion said it mass-produced its first neural processing unit, ATOM, in 2023 and later introduced a higher-performance inference chip, REBEL-Quad. It said it has established overseas subsidiaries in Japan, Saudi Arabia and the United States as it expands international business.

Rebellion said it has selected Samsung Securities as lead underwriter for an initial public offering and has begun listing preparations. The company plans to pursue a Korean listing first, while also targeting a longer-term U.S. listing, it said.

Park said the company now sees itself as part of South Korea’s “deep tech” push and aims to become a key player in global AI infrastructure.

-Reported by Asia Today; translated by UPI

© Asia Today. Unauthorized reproduction or redistribution prohibited.

Dec. 12 (UPI) — Shares of Lululemon stock surged Friday after CEO Calvin McDonald announced his retirement.

The Canada-based company’s stock value spiked more than 9% in premarket trading following its announcement that McDonald was resigning from his role.

“The timing is right for a change,” McDonald said on a call. “I’ve described being CEO of Lululemon as my dream job. It truly has lived up to every expectation and given me the opportunity of a lifetime.”

McDonald expects a Jan. 31 departure from the athleisure company and will cap more than a year of lackluster performance.

Lululemon’s NYSE shares climbed 9.35% to $204.50 in recent trading, following a roughly 10% surge the day prior.

The company disclosed McDonald’s exit alongside fiscal third-quarter earnings and another batch of disappointing guidance.

According to the company, Lululemon’s board has engaged an unnamed “leading” executive search firm to replace McDonald.

The outgoing CEO will remain as senior adviser until March 31.

Lululemon named CFO Meghan Frank and Chief Commercial Officer Andre Maestrini as interim co-CEOs while it hunts for a permanent leader.

Meanwhile, Board chair Marti Morfitt will assume an expanded role as executive chair.

“As we look to the future, the board is focused on identifying a leader with a track record of driving companies through periods of growth and transformation to guide the company’s next chapter of success,” said Morfitt.

Lululemon reported quarterly revenue of $2.57 billion, up from $2.40 billion the same period last year.

McDonald pointed to a robust Thanksgiving weekend demand that helped the company clear outdated inventory through discounts.

He said early holiday results were “encouraging” as it looked ahead to the current quarter.

“I also want to acknowledge we’ve seen trends slow a bit since Thanksgiving, which we’ve taken into account in our Q4 guidance,” McDonald continued.

But he added it projected revenue of $3.50 billion to $3.59 billion, which was slightly under Wall Street forecasts.

Lululemon has grappled with mounting pressures over the past year, including competition and tariffs imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump.

Over the summer, Lululemon sued Costco for selling a “confusingly similar” clothing line.

“However, despite this, we expect revenue trends in the U.S. and Q4 to be modestly improved relative to Q3,” according to McDonald.

Dec. 12 (UPI) — A federal judge in New York sentenced Do Kwon, the former CEO of blockchain and cryptocurrency company Terraform Labs, to 15 years in prison for a scheme that cost victims billions of dollars.

The 34-year-old South Korean native received a higher sentence than defense lawyers and even prosecutors sought — five years and 12 years, respectively, The New York Times reported. Prosecutors agreed to let Kwon serve the second half of his sentence in South Korea.

U.S. District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer for the Southern District of New York said he went with the 15-year sentence because Kwon’s crimes represented “fraud on an epic, generational scale.” He also ordered Kwon to pay more than $19 million in proceeds from the scheme.

The judgment was handed down in court Thursday, some four months after Kwon pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to commit commodities fraud, securities fraud and wire fraud as well as one count of committing wire fraud. Authorities arrested Kwon in Montenegro after he led them on an 18-month manhunt, The Guardian reported.

“Do Kwon devised elaborate schemes to mislead investors and inflate the value of Terraform’s cryptocurrencies for his own benefit,” U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said Thursday in a news release.

“When his crimes caught up to him, Kwon embarked on a deceptive public relations campaign to cover up his fraud, laundered the proceeds of his illegal schemes and sought to purchase political protection in foreign countries to evade criminal prosecution.”

Federal prosecutors said Terraform, under Kwon, offered a unique blockchain that issued stablecoins under a distinct protocol that it falsely claimed would maintain a fixed value even when market conditions fluctuated. He told investors the company’s stablecoin, UST, could always be exchanged for $1 of its blockchain’s native LUNA token.

Kwon received investments from several firms across the globe to buy or lend Terraform’s cryptocurrencies built on the company’s blockchain. The market value of all UST and LUNA surpassed $50 billion by spring 2022.

Prosecutors said, though, that much of that growth was due to Kwon’s falsifications about Terraform’s technology, causing the two cryptocurrencies to collapse in value and losing investors $40 billion. Kwon hid the losses through a fraudulent audit.

On October 14, the Swedish government announced it was nominating the CEO of IKEA, Jesper Brodin, as its candidate for United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Less than a month later, as the current high commissioner, Filippo Grandi, approached the end of his mandate, Brodin resigned from his position at the Swedish furniture giant, which he had led for eight years. In January 2026, the office of the UN secretary-general is expected to present a preferred candidate to the General Assembly for what former UNHCR head of research Jeff Crisp has called a “pro forma election”. Can the former chief of an iconic multinational company become the world’s highest authority on refugees — and what will it mean if he does?

In interviews, Jesper Brodin often refers to a small pamphlet by IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad, titled The Testament of a Furniture Dealer, as outlining the values that inspire his way of doing business: innovation, sustainability and collective effort over individualism. Does the UNHCR need to learn lessons from a “furniture dealer”? The question matters because Brodin’s appeal is often framed in terms of corporate values, yet it remains unclear how — or whether — these translate into the protection of refugees. Whether Brodin has any chance of making it to the Geneva post or not, the question is worth asking, for the role of IKEA as a donor and operational partner of the UNHCR is significant and is likely to grow.

While humanitarianism and business have historically been companions, particularly since the end of the Cold War, this is the first time a business leader has been proposed to head the UN refugee agency. The nomination comes at a time when the UNHCR faces a dramatic cash crunch, and when political pressures and anti-refugee sentiment are increasing globally. Many scholars and practitioners believe the future of the global refugee regime itself may be at stake. Understanding the implications of Sweden’s choice, then, requires examining how corporate humanitarianism now shapes refugee protection.

Many were taken aback by the nomination. Yet the move by Sweden is anything but surprising. Over the past three decades, corporations have taken on increased responsibility for responding to humanitarian crises, while traditional organisations compete for a rapidly diminishing pool of resources. Research on the commodification of compassion has shown how, increasingly, “doing good” and “doing well” have become one and the same. This kind of “brand aid” involved both promoting commercial brands (from Toms shoes to Starbucks) through their involvement in humanitarian causes, and turning aid itself into a branded activity — something most effectively done through corporate partnerships. It began around two decades ago but has now become the dominant model of humanitarian engagement. As one major humanitarian donor in Kinshasa told us, “It’s now all about collaborations between the private sector, businesses and philanthropists.” Indeed, when the desire to help becomes something you can sell, corporations such as IKEA can profit from involvement in global helping that builds their ethical branding. But can the UNHCR profit from being led by IKEA’s CEO? The question goes to the heart of a growing unease about the direction of the refugee regime.

We see three main problems here. First, UNHCR is caught between contradictory demands from donor states in the Global North and hosting states in the South. Brodin and IKEA’s brand of feel-good capitalism cannot reconcile these fundamental tensions over sovereignty. Jesper Brodin has been lauded as a businessman and touts his credibility as a leader and negotiator. “Trump likes people in the business world,” we are told. However, the challenges to the agency’s protection mandate require a vision that goes well beyond the smiling face of compassionate capitalism. While formally remaining the guardian of the 1951 Refugee Convention, UNHCR has been operating in what scholars such as Bhupinder Chimni have described as an “erosion” of the international refugee regime — a long-term weakening of asylum norms and burden-sharing commitments. Donor governments in the Global North have used their limited support for UNHCR’s humanitarian activities in the Global South as a way to deflect attention from the disregard for refugee rights within their own borders. How will Brodin fare in navigating these competing pressures — from containment agendas in the Global North to protection obligations that lie at the heart of UNHCR’s mandate?

Second, Brodin often mentions his experience as a supply chain manager in a company that has put logistical innovation at the core of its business strategy as an important asset for the job. Indeed, this aligns with UNHCR’s current focus on renewing its own supply chain strategy. He also talks about “bringing the values and the assets of refugees to the business community,” a phrase he uses to refer to refugees’ skills and labour potential. However, this endeavour has proved far more complex than he makes it sound. Almost 10 years after IKEA’s first attempt to integrate refugees into its own supply chains in Jordan, the number of people the programme involves remains small, and refugees in the country still face significant barriers to work and social security.

A study we published in 2021 highlighted that a focus on refugee logistics actually meant working towards integrating displaced people into global supply chains rather than providing them with material support or infrastructure. Whether for business or for disaster relief, logistics depend on networks of infrastructure and rules that only function through ongoing negotiation with governments.

Finally, the contradictions of IKEA’s corporate and foundation ownership structure — what makes it work well as a business — embody the paradox of mixing public needs for refugee protection with private objectives for profit. The IKEA Foundation, the company’s philanthropic arm, has been working with UNHCR since 2010, supporting its operations in 16 countries. The UN agency defines the collaboration as “transformative”, highlighting how it has become a model for all its partnerships with the private sector. Moreover, the nomination comes at a time when major donor states, including the US, the United Kingdom and Germany, are slashing their budgets. In this geopolitical context, Sweden, while facing its own economic challenges, may well be seeking to stake its position as one of the last remaining humanitarian powers in the Western world. Brodin’s bid draws on Sweden’s perceived reputation for frugality and sustainability.

However, there is an unspoken yet fundamental contradiction between Brodin’s promise to address UNHCR’s crisis by “holding the purse strings” and the position of IKEA within global economic structures that have contributed to the humanitarian funding crisis in the first place. In 2017, following calls from EU parliamentary groups, the European Commission opened an in-depth investigation into the Netherlands — where the company is headquartered — for its tax treatment of Inter IKEA, one of the two groups operating the IKEA business. The company’s ownership structure, which benefits its commercial operations, may also reduce its tax burden, thereby reducing contributions to public finances. Here, as in many other cases, big business promises to fix global inequality it has helped create.

In the present global climate of hostility to migrants and refugees, Brodin and IKEA’s brand of feel-good capitalism risks further hollowing out UNHCR’s protection mandate, reducing humanitarianism to a matter of well-managed supply chains. The stakes are high: when humanitarian priorities are shaped by corporate logic, core protections — from asylum access to basic assistance — risk being eroded. What benefits a business organisation does not necessarily serve the rights or needs of refugees.

The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.