Judge Approves $100 Million Dell Settlement

crimeandpunishment writes "It's official. Dell will pay the US government $100 million to settle fraud charges. CEO Michael Dell will personally pay a $4 million fine. A federal judge approved the settlement after Michael Dell assured him the company will deliver on the reforms it promised. Dell was accused of pumping up its profits over five years by improperly using payments from Intel, in order to meet Wall Street targets."

Re:Why the government?

[Anonymous Coward]

They were charged with fraud for improperly making their company look like it was in better health than it really was. The people "harmed" were the investors. If you want to give it to the people impacted almost all of it will go to large institutional investors who held on to their stocks thinking that the company was hitting its targets. Very few consumers would see a nickel of that money. Besides this is a slap on the wrist for Dell. Their bigger impact has been on their "reputation," but this little episode will be completely forgotten the next time the hit their targets and greed takes over. Business as usual....

Still plagued by bad capacitors

[suso]

I wouldn't say the time of bad capacitors is over. I've still run into and heard about recent cases.

I think more people should know about the whole story and you can read it at http://www.badcaps.net [badcaps.net]

Re:Payments from Intel?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I'm fairly sure that MS has actually indulged in functionally identical practices, at least back when BeOS was regarded as a potential player.

With Intel, the deal was "Use our chips, and ours only, and there will be large 'marketing assistance' in it for you".

With Microsoft, the deal was "Use our OS, and ours only, and your per-unit OEM price will be competitive. Otherwise, you might find that your competitors are paying less for our product, or even end up buying licences at retail..."

The structuring was a bit different; but the net effect is pretty much identical. In both cases, though, my understanding is that these deals were tempered by a certain degree of realism. Back when Intel was joking around with P4s, and AMD was rocking the Opterons, you could get an Opteron server from Dell(particularly in 4 sockets and above, FSB vs. hypertransport was just a joke), just not a desktop or laptop. Similarly, while they would certainly hold your hand toward Windows Server whatever, you could get your servers bare or with Redhat licences. Even in the present day, though, the desktop/laptop linux offerings are pretty perfunctory.