schwit1 shares a report from Popular Science: [T]wo women filed a potential class action lawsuit against Apple, alleging the company has ignored critics' and security experts' repeated warnings that the company's AirTag devices are being repeatedly used to stalk and harass people. Both individuals were targets of past abuse from ex-partners and argued in the filing that Apple's subsequent safeguard solutions remain wholly inadequate for consumers. "With a price point of just $29, it has become the weapon of choice of stalkers and abusers," reads a portion of the lawsuit, as The New York Times reported [...].

Apple first debuted AirTags in April 2021. Within the ensuing eight months, at least 150 police reports from just eight precincts reviewed by Motherboard explicitly mentioned abusers utilizing the tracking devices to stalk and harass women. In the new lawsuit, plaintiffs allege that one woman's abuser hid the location devices within her car's wheel well. At the same time, the other woman's abuser placed one in their child's backpack following a contentious divorce, according to the suit. Security experts have since cautioned that hundreds more similar situations likely remain unreported or even undetected.

The lawsuit (PDF), published by Ars Technica, cites them as "one of the products that has revolutionized the scope, breadth, and ease of location-based stalking," arguing that "what separates the AirTag from any competitor product is its unparalleled accuracy, ease of use (it fits seamlessly into Apple's existing suite of products), and affordability." The proposed class action lawsuit seeks unspecified damages for owners of iOS or Android devices which have been tracked with an AirTag or are at risk of being stalked. Since AirTags' introduction last year, at least two murders have occurred directly involving using Apple's surveillance gadget, according to the lawsuit.

People in Europe can get Google to delete search results about them if they prove the information is "manifestly inaccurate," the EU's top court has ruled. From a report: The case kicked off when two investment managers requested Google to dereference results of a search made on the basis of their names, which provided links to certain articles criticising that group's investment model. They say those articles contain inaccurate claims. Google refused to comply, arguing that it was unaware whether the information contained in the articles was accurate or not. But in a ruling Thursday, the Court of Justice of the European Union opened the door to the investment managers being able to successfully trigger the so-called "right to be forgotten" under the EU's General Data Protection Regulation. "The right to freedom of expression and information cannot be taken into account where, at the very least, a part -- which is not of minor importance -- of the information found in the referenced content proves to be inaccurate," the court said in a press release accompanying the ruling.

"The CBC is reporting that a class action lawsuit against Epic Games over Fortnite being addictive to children will go ahead," writes Slashdot reader lowvisioncomputing. From the report: The suit was first brought to the courts in 2019 by three Quebec parents who claimed that Fortnite was designed to addict its users, many of them children, to the game. According to the original filing, the plaintiffs say their children exhibited troubling behaviors, including not sleeping, not eating, not showering and no longer socializing with their peers. According to the filing, one of the children was diagnosed with an addiction by an on-call doctor at a Quebec clinic, or CLSC, in the Lower St. Lawrence region. It also notes that the World Health Organization (WHO) recognized addictive gaming disorder as a disease in 2018.

Jean-Philippe Caron, one of the CaLex Legal lawyers working on the suit, said the case isn't unlike a 2015 Quebec Superior Court ruling that found tobacco companies didn't warn their customers about the dangers of smoking. "[The game] has design patterns that make sure to always encourage player engagement. You have to understand that children's prefrontal cortices are still developing so that could be part of the explanation for why this game is particularly harmful," he said. The class action will also discuss in-game purchases, namely cosmetic items -- known as skins -- and the game's Battle Pass system, which offers expanded rewards as players level up.

The children allegedly spent excessive amounts of money on V-Bucks -- an in-game currency users buy with real money -- which can be exchanged for skins or used to unlock the Battle Pass. One of the children reportedly spent over $6,000 on skins, while another spent $600 on V-Bucks -- items Superior Court Judge Sylvain Lussier described as "without any tangible value." That may run afoul of Article 1406 of Quebec's civil code, where "serious disproportion between the prestations of the parties" -- meaning, the obligation to provide something in turn -- "creates a presumption of exploitation."

The Federal Trade Commission on Thursday sued to block Microsoft's $69 billion acquisition of the video game publisher Activision Blizzard, charging that the massive deal would allow the Washington tech giant to suppress its competitors in gaming. Washington Post: The lawsuit represents the FTC's most significant effort to rein in consolidation in the tech industry since prominent tech critic Lina Khan (D) became the commission's chair and was expected to usher in a new era of antitrust enforcement characterized by a willingness to bring cases in court rather than pursue settlements with companies.

The FTC lawsuit against Microsoft could foil the company's ambitions to become a heavier hitter in gaming frontiers. Activision is the owner of massively popular titles like "Candy Crush" and "Call of Duty," and its acquisition could bolster Microsoft in its competition with Japanese console makers Nintendo and Sony. The commission voted on Thursday on a party-line vote to issue the lawsuit in administrative court, with the three Democrats in favor of the complaint and one Republican against it.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Former Theranos chief operating officer and president Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani was sentenced to nearly 13 years in prison Wednesday for fraud, after the unraveling of the blood-testing juggernaut prompted criminal charges in California federal court against both Balwani and Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, who on Nov. 18 was sentenced to more than 11 years in prison.

During the sentencing hearing, attorneys for Balwani attempted to pin the blame on Holmes, telling U.S. District Court Judge Edward J. Davila that "decisions were made by Elizabeth Holmes." Davila had set a sentencing range of 11 years plus 3 months to 14 years, but prosecutors today sought a 15-year sentence given his "significant" oversight role at Theranos' lab business. The final guideline sentence was 155 months, plus three years of probation. Davila set a Mar. 15, 2023, surrender date. [...] Balwani's sentencing in federal court marks the end of the Theranos saga, which enthralled the public and prompted documentary films and novel treatments.

Washington DC's attorney general is suing Amazon, seeking civil penalties for allegedly misleading consumers who thought they were tipping delivery drivers but had the money diverted to cover the couriers' base pay. From a report: The case, filed in Washington DC Superior Court, cites a 2021 settlement between the company and the Federal Trade Commission, in which the agency found that Amazon withheld tips meant for its gig-economy drivers for more than two years.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from KrebsOnSecurity: In December 2021, Google filed a civil lawsuit against two Russian men thought to be responsible for operating Glupteba, one of the Internet's largest and oldest botnets. The defendants, who initially pursued a strategy of counter suing Google for tortious interference in their sprawling cybercrime business, later brazenly offered to dismantle the botnet in exchange for payment from Google. The judge in the case was not amused, found for the plaintiff, and ordered the defendants and their U.S. attorney to pay Google's legal fees. The lawyer for the defendants, New York-based cybercrime defense attorney Igor Litvak, filed a motion to reconsider (PDF), asking the court to vacate the sanctions against him. He said his goal is to get the case back into court. "The judge was completely wrong to issue sanctions," Litvak told KrebsOnSecurity. "From the beginning of the case, she acted as if she needed to protect Google from something. If the court does not decide to vacate the sanctions, we will have to go to the Second Circuit (Court of Appeals) and get justice there."

Meanwhile, Google said the court's decision will have significant ramifications for online crime, adding that it's observed a 78 percent reduction in the number of hosts infected by Glupteba since its technical and legal attacks on the botnet last year.

"While Glupteba operators have resumed activity on some non-Google platforms and IoT devices, shining a legal spotlight on the group makes it less appealing for other criminal operations to work with them," reads a blog post from Google's General Counsel Halimah DeLaine Prado and vice president of engineering Royal Hansen. "And the steps [Google] took last year to disrupt their operations have already had significant impact."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Last month, a Texas-based company announced that it had successfully deployed the largest-ever commercial communications satellite in low-Earth orbit. This BlueWalker 3 demonstration satellite measures nearly 65 square meters, or about one-third the size of a tennis court. Designed and developed by AST SpaceMobile, the expansive BlueWalker 3 satellite is intended to demonstrate the ability of standard mobile phones to directly connect to the Internet via satellite. Large satellites are necessary to connect to mobile devices without a ground-based antenna. [...] Since BlueWalker3's launch in September, astronomers have been tracking the satellite, and their alarm was heightened following its antenna deployment last month. According to the International Astronomical Union, post-deployment measurements showed that BlueWalker 3 had an apparent visual magnitude of around 1 at its brightest, which is nearly as bright as Antares and Spica, the 15th and 16th brightest stars in the night sky.

For a few years, astronomers have been expressing concerns about megaconstellations, such as SpaceX's Starlink satellites. While these are more numerous -- there are more than 3,000 Starlink satellites in orbit -- they are much smaller and far less bright than the kinds of satellites AST plans to launch. Eventually, AST plans to launch a constellation of 168 large satellites to provide "substantial" global coverage, a company spokesperson said. Even one is enough for astronomers, however. "BlueWalker 3 is a big shift in the constellation satellite issue and should give us all reason to pause," said Piero Benvenuti, a director at the International Astronomical Union.

The organization of astronomers is also concerned about the potential for radio interference from these "cell phone towers in space." They will transmit strong radio waves at frequencies currently reserved for terrestrial cell phone communications but are not subject to the same radio quiet zone restrictions that ground-based cellular networks are. This could severely impact radio astronomy research -- which was used to discover cosmic microwave background radiation, for example -- as well as work in related fields. Astronomers currently build their radio astronomy observatories in remote areas, far from cell tower interference. They are worried that these large, radio-wave transmitting satellites will interfere in unpopulated areas. "We are eager to use the newest technologies and strategies to mitigate possible impacts to astronomy," AST said in a statement to Ars. "We are actively working with industry experts on the latest innovations, including next-generation anti-reflective materials. We are also engaged with NASA and certain working groups within the astronomy community to participate in advanced industry solutions, including potential operational interventions."

AST is "committed to avoiding broadcasts inside or adjacent to the National Radio Quiet Zone in the United States [...] as well as additional radioastronomy locations," adds Ars.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Forbes: Lawyers representing Norwegian World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen and online chess platform Chess.com asked a federal judge Friday to toss a $100 million lawsuit filed by chess grandmaster Hans Niemann in October, which marked a dramatic escalation of tensions over cheating allegations levied against the 19-year-old American. The motion to dismiss argued the teenager spent years "trying to curate a reputation as the bad boy of chess" and "now wants to cash in by blaming others" after the allegations derailed his chess career.

Niemann acknowledged he cheated during a handful of matches as a young teen but an October report from Chess.com determined he "likely cheated" more than 100 times in online chess matches, after Carlsen released a statement in September saying Niemann "has cheated more -- and more recently -- than he has publicly admitted." Niemann stated in his defamation lawsuit the claims are a conspiracy from the chess community's establishment to smear him after he defeated Carlsen -- the five-time defending world champion -- during a tournament in St. Louis on September 4. The teen claimed the alleged conspiracy was an attempt to save Carlsen, 32, from reputational damage after Chess.com agreed to purchase his "Play Magnus" app for $83 million in August.

Friday's motion stated all of Niemann's claims are without merit, arguing he has not disproved the cheating allegations or offered evidence to back up his conspiracy assertion. The lawsuit, filed in the Eastern District of Missouri, also named Chess.com executive Daniel Rensch and a website streaming partner, Hikaru Nakamura, as defendants. "Niemann now seeks to shift blame to reigning World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen and others, claiming a wholly implausible conspiracy to defame and boycott Niemann that somehow damaged his already dubious reputation to the tune of $100 million," the motion to dismiss states.

Google will take its appeal of the record $4.5 billion European Union antitrust fine over its dominance in the Android mobile market to the bloc's top court. From a report: The penalty hits at the heart of the US tech giant's power over the Android mobile-phone ecosystem, and in September judges at a lower court mostly sided with the European Commission's arguments but reduced the overall fine to $4.3 billion.

A California federal judge has given preliminary approval to Apple's plan to pay $50 million to settle a long-running class-action lawsuit over the faulty MacBook butterfly keyboard. MacTrast reports: Law360 says the payment will include $13.6 million in attorney fees, up to $2 million in litigation costs, and $1.4 million in settlement administration costs, with the rest distributed to class members. The lawsuit covers customers in California, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, and Washington, who complained that Apple knew of and concealed the fact that its 2015 and later MacBook, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro machines were equipped with "butterfly" keyboards that were prone to failure, and that its repair program for the keyboard was insufficient, as the replacement keyboards could also fail. [...]

Apple initially agreed to the settlement in July 2022. Customers in the above-mentioned states are expected to receive maximum payouts of $395 to customers who replaced multiple keyboards, $125 to people who replaced one keyboard, and $50 to people who replaced keycaps. Mac owners who received butterfly keyboard replacements will begin receiving class notices later in December.

Telegram has disclosed names of administrators, their phone numbers and IP addresses of channels accused of copyright infringement in compliance with a court order in India in a remarkable illustration of the data the instant messaging platform stores on its users and can be made to disclose by authorities. From a report: The app operator was forced by a Delhi High Court order to shared the data after a teacher sued the firm for not doing enough to prevent unauthorised distribution of her course material on the platform. Neetu Singh, the plaintiff teacher, said a number of Telegram channels were re-selling her study materials without permission at discounted prices.

An Indian court earlier had ordered Telegram to adhere to the Indian law and disclose details about those operating such channels. Telegram unsuccessfully argued that disclosing user information would violate the privacy policy and the laws of Singapore, where it has located its physical servers for storing users data. In response, the Indian court said the copyright owners couldn't be left "completely remediless against the actual infringers" because Telegram has chosen to locate its servers outside the country. In an order last week, Justice Prathiba Singh said Telegram had complied with the earlier order and shared the data.

A torrent site user accused of downloading and uploading at least 120TB of movies, TV shows, eBooks, music and software, has avoided an immediate prison term. The 28-year-old was arrested as part of a police operation against DanishBytes. A member of the same site was sentenced earlier this month after he uploaded Netflix content obtained using hacked credentials. TorrentFreak reports: Early November 2021, Denmark's Public Prosecutor for Special Economic and International Crime (SOIK) announced that six people had been arrested following criminal referrals by Rights Alliance. All were members and/or operators of ShareUniversity and DanishBytes. Prosecution of site operators is not uncommon but when it's deemed in the public interest, pirate site users can also face charges. Every case is unique so criteria differ, especially across national borders, but when evidence shows large volumes of infringement, successful prosecutions become more likely. That was the case when a former DanishBytes user was sentenced last week. According to Danish anti-piracy group Rights Alliance, the 28-year-old man was a regular site member and wasn't involved in running the site. That being said, evidence showed that for the period January 2021 to November 2021, he downloaded and/or uploaded no less than 3,000 copyrighted works, including movies, TV shows, music, books, audiobooks and comics.

Information released by the National Unit for Special Crimes (NSK), a Danish police unit focused on cybercrime, organized crime, and related financial crime, reveals that the user's traffic statistics interested prosecutors. "During the period, the man downloaded no less than 100 TB and uploaded no less than 20 TB of copyrighted material," NSK says. BitTorrent trackers operating a ratio model usually insist on a better ratio of downloads to uploads but DanishBytes' situation was out of the ordinary.

The site launched in January 2021 in the wake of other sites being shut down, so had to get going from a standing start with no users. Even when arrests were being made, the site still had a relatively small userbase, which can limit opportunities to upload more. That may have been a blessing in disguise. Faced with the evidence, the man decided to plead guilty and was sentenced last week at the Court in Vibourg. In common with similar prosecutions recently, he received a suspended conditional sentence of 60 days' probation, 80 hours of community service, and confiscation of his computer equipment. The case against the DanishBytes user began with a Rights Alliance investigation and a referral to the police. As part of his sentence, the man must pay the anti-piracy group DKK 5,000 (US$600) in compensation but Rights Alliance director Maria Fredenslund is focused on the deterrent effect of another successful prosecution.

Newly-bankrupt crypto lending platform BlockFi has filed a lawsuit against Sam Bankman-Fried's holding company Emergent Fidelity Technologies seeking his shares in Robinhood that were pledged as collateral earlier in November. CoinTelegraph reports: The suit was filed on Nov. 28 in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of New Jersey just hours after BlockFi filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the same court. As per the filing, BlockFi is demanding Emergent turnover collateral as part of a Nov. 9 pledge agreement that saw Emergent agree to a payment schedule with BlockFi that it has allegedly failed to pay.

BlockFi names the collateral as "including certain shares of common stock." In May, Bankman-Fried acquired a 7.6% stake in the online brokerage firm Robinhood, buying a total of $648 million in Robinhood shares through his Emergent investment company.

The anti-trust division of America's Department of Justice "has reportedly opened up an investigation into RealPage, the real estate technology company accused of contributing to higher-than-normal rent prices," reports the Verge.

ProPublica writes that the investigation explores "whether rent-setting software made by a Texas-based real estate tech company is facilitating collusion among landlords, according to a source with knowledge of the matter." *The inquiry is being launched as questions have arisen about a 2017 merger between RealPage and its largest pricing competitor.... Congressional leaders have pushed for an investigation into RealPage in three letters to the DOJ and the Federal Trade Commission, which were sent after a ProPublica report on the software's use in mid-October.

The letters raised concerns that RealPage's pricing software could be pushing rents above competitive levels and allowing big landlords to coordinate their pricing in violation of federal antitrust laws. "We are concerned that the use of this rate setting software essentially amounts to a cartel to artificially inflate rental rates in multifamily residential buildings," three senators said in a letter in early November. They included Sen. Amy Klobuchar, the Minnesota Democrat who chairs the Senate Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust and Consumer Rights....

In addition to the letters from congressional lawmakers, renters have filed three lawsuits in federal court in Seattle and San Diego since mid-October, alleging RealPage and a slew of large landlords are engaging in anticompetitive behavior through the company's software.
They note Capital Forum's report with additional details — but the Verge nicely summarizes the issue: ProPublica's report states that the algorithm's design has "raised questions among real estate and legal experts about whether RealPage has birthed a new kind of cartel that allows the nation's largest landlords to indirectly coordinate pricing, potentially in violation of federal law." These experts have also raised concerns with the RealPage user group, an online forum that lets apartment managers who use the service communicate — and potentially coordinate — with one another.

Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan won interim protection of his personality and celebrity rights from the Delhi High Court Friday. From a report: The court barred not just identified entities from using Bachchan's persona, without his consent, but also passed a John Doe order, or an order against world-at-large, from infringing his personality rights. The lawsuit before the court flagged Bachchan's name, voice, images, pictures, likeness and his "unique style of dialogue delivery" among the traits which fall under legal protection. Counsel for the actor told the court that mobile applications, telephone numbers and websites had mushroomed that monetized his images or likeness without permission. "Personality right is a strong right to enforce for persons with high level of identifiability and strength of association," said Eashan Ghosh, a lawyer specializing in intellectual property rights. "Both these factors hold true for Amitabh Bachchan."

An international police operation has dismantled an online spoofing service that allowed cybercriminals to impersonate trusted corporations to steal more than $120 million from victims. From a report: iSpoof, which now displays a message stating that it has been seized by the FBI and the U.S. Secret Service, offered "spoofing" services that enabled paying users to mask their phone numbers with one belonging to a trusted organization, such as banks and tax offices, to carry out social engineering attacks. "The services of the website allowed those who sign up and pay for the service to anonymously make spoofed calls, send recorded messages, and intercept one-time passwords," Europol said in a statement on Thursday. "The users were able to impersonate an infinite number of entities for financial gain and substantial losses to victims."

London's Metropolitan Police, which began investigating iSpoof in June 2021 along with international law enforcement agencies, in the U.S., the Netherlands, and Ukraine, said it had arrested the website's suspected administrator, named as Teejai Fletcher, 34, charged with fraud and offenses related to organized crime. Fletcher was remanded to custody and will appear at Southwark Crown Court in London on December 6. iSpoof had around 59,000 users, which caused $58.2 million of losses to 200,000 identified victims in the U.K., according to the Met Police. One victim was scammed out of $3.64 million, while the average amount stolen was $12,100.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Politico: The Federal Trade Commission is likely to file an antitrust lawsuit to block Microsoft's $69 billion takeover of video game giant Activision Blizzard, maker of the hit games Call of Duty and Candy Crush, according to three people with knowledge of the matter. A lawsuit would be the FTC's biggest move yet under Chair Lina Khan to rein in the power of the world's largest technology companies. It would also be a major black mark for Microsoft, which has positioned itself as a white knight of sorts on antitrust issues in the tech sector after going through its own grueling regulatory antitrust battles around the world more than two decades ago.

A lawsuit challenging the deal is not guaranteed, and the FTC's four commissioners have yet to vote out a complaint or meet with lawyers for the companies, two of the people said. However, the FTC staff reviewing the deal are skeptical of the companies' arguments, those people said. The investigation remains ongoing, but much of the heavy lifting is completed, including depositions of Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella and Activision head Bobby Kotick, the people with knowledge of the investigation said. If the agency does move ahead with a case, it could come as soon as next month, said the people, all of whom were granted anonymity to discuss a confidential matter.

Central to the FTC's concerns is whether acquiring Activision would give Microsoft an unfair boost in the video game market. Microsoft's Xbox is number three to the industry-leading Sony Interactive Entertainment and its PlayStation console. Sony, however, has emerged as the deal's primary opponent, telling the FTC and regulators in other countries that if Microsoft made hit games like Call of Duty exclusive to its platforms Sony would be significantly disadvantaged. [...] To a lesser extent, Google is also an opponent of the deal, according to two of the people with knowledge of the matter. The company has argued that Microsoft has purposely degraded the quality of its Game Pass subscription service when used with Google's Chrome operating system, and owning Activision would further its incentive to do so, ultimately steering hardware sales towards Microsoft and away from Google, the people said. Last month, Microsoft Xbox chief Phil Spencer said he intends to continue to ship Call of Duty games on PlayStation "as long as there's a PlayStation out there to ship to."

Microsoft spokesperson David Cuddy said the company "is prepared to address the concerns of regulators, including the FTC, and Sony to ensure the deal closes with confidence. We'll still trail Sony and Tencent in the market after the deal closes, and together Activision and Xbox will benefit gamers and developers and make the industry more competitive."

"Any suggestion that the transaction could lead to anticomp effects is completely absurd. This merger will benefit gamers and the US gaming industry, especially as we face increasingly stiff competition from abroad," added Activision spokesperson Joe Christinat. "We are committed to continuing to work cooperatively with regulators around the globe to allow the transaction to proceed, but will not hesitate to fight to defend the transaction if required."

The U.S. Navy was found guilty of piracy and is ordered to pay a software company $154,400 for a lawsuit filed back in 2016. Gizmodo reports: The company, Bitmanagement Software GmbH, filed a complaint against the Navy, accusing the military branch of copyright infringement. GmbH claimed they had issued 38 copies of their 3D virtual reality software, BS Contact Geo, but while they were still in negotiations for additional licenses, the Navy installed the software onto at least 558,466 machines between 2013 and 2015. In the court filing (PDF), GmbH claimed, "Without Bitmanagement's advance knowledge or consent, the Navy installed BS Contact Go onto hundreds of thousands of computers. Bitmanagement did not license or otherwise authorize these uses of its software, and the Navy has never compensated Bitmanagement for these uses of Bitmanagement's software."

The company sued the Navy for nearly $600 million for "willful copyright infringement" of the software which, according to the vendor's website, is a 3D viewer that "enables you to visualize and interact with state of the art 2D/3D content," and is based on digital data captured from "various sources (land surveys, CAD, satellite imagery, airborne laser scanning, etc)." The court filings stated that after GmbH filed the lawsuit in July 2016, the Navy uninstalled the BS Contact Geo software from all of its computers and "subsequently reinstalled the software on 34 seats, for inventory purposes." GmbH wrote in the court filing, "The government knew or should have known that it was required to obtain a license for copying Bitmanagement software onto each of the devices that had Bitmanagement software installed. The government nonetheless failed to obtain such licenses."

Lawyers for collapsed crypto exchange FTX said on Tuesday, in the company's first bankruptcy hearing, that regulators from the Bahamas, where FTX was headquartered, have agreed to consolidate proceedings in Delaware. From a report: FTX's lawyers, who were brought in by new leadership to handle restructuring, filed an emergency motion last week to secure the move to the U.S. The hearing on Tuesday was the initial step in the resolution of the largest cryptocurrency bankruptcy on record.

"What we are dealing with is a different sort of animal," said FTX counsel James Bromley. "Unfortunately, the FTX debtors were not particularly well run, and that is an understatement." Regarding FTX's founder, this was an organization that was "effectively run as a personal fiefdom of Sam Bankman-Fried," an FTX attorney told the court. [...] Bankman-Fried exercised a level of control over the business that "none of us have ever seen," Bromley said, referring to the bankruptcy experts and attorneys the company has employed as part of the restucturing process. "The FTX situation is the latest and the largest failure in this space," Bromley said. "There was effectively a run on the bank, both with respect to the international exchange [...] as well as the U.S. exchange. At the same time that the run on the bank was occurring, there was a leadership crisis [...] The FTX companies were controlled by a very small group of people, led by Mr. Sam-Bankman-Fried. During the run on the bank, Mr. Fried's leadership frayed, and that led to resignations."