ATLANTA – A former health-care executive in Gwinnett County has been sentenced to one year and a day in federal prison for delaying the shipment of personal protective equipment (PPE) during the coronavirus pandemic.
Christopher Dobbins, 41, of Duluth pleaded guilty in July to hacking his former employer, the medical device packing company Stradis Healthcare, and sabotaging their electronic shipping records, causing more than $200,000 in damage.
“As businesses worked to get PPE into the hands of those most in need of it, Dobbins chose to hack his former employer and maliciously interrupt that process,” said Byung J. “BJay” Pak, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Georgia. “His actions caused delays in the delivery of desperately needed equipment in the midst of a worldwide pandemic.”
Before being fired last March, Dobbins had administrator access to the computer systems containing the company’s shipping information, Pak said.
Three days after receiving his final paycheck, Dobbins used a fake user account that he had previously created to log into the company’s computer systems. He then conducted a computer intrusion that disrupted and delayed the medical device packaging company’s shipments of PPEs.
While logged in through the fake user account, Dobbins created a second fake user account and then used that second account to edit 115,581 records and delete approximately 2,371 records. The edits and deletions disrupted the company’s shipping processes, causing delays in the delivery of much-needed PPEs to health-care providers.
Besides the prison sentence, Dobbins also was ordered to pay $221,200 in restitution.
The case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as part of Georgia’s Coronavirus Fraud Task Force, formed by state and federal prosecutors to protect Georgians from criminal fraud arising from the pandemic.
ATLANTA – Georgia and 10 other states joined the Justice Department Tuesday in filing a lawsuit aimed at preventing Google from unlawfully maintaining monopolies through anticompetitive and exclusionary practices.
The suit accuses the tech giant of entering into a series of exclusionary agreements to lock up the primary avenues through which users access internet search engines.
“On behalf of Georgians, our office joined this lawsuit to address Google’s potential anticompetitive conduct in order to maintain a fair and free market for consumers, advertisers and all companies now reliant on the internet economy,” state Attorney General Chris Carr said.
The suit alleges that Google’s anticompetitive practices have had harmful effects on competition and consumers by preventing any meaningful search competitor from gaining vital distribution. Restricting competition has reduced the quality of internet searches, offering less choice and innovation, the plaintiffs claim.
The suit also complains that restricting competition allows Google to charge advertisers higher rates than it could in a competitive market.
In response, Google called the lawsuit “deeply flawed” but made no other statement.
There’s a history of legal challenges to Big Tech. In 2001, the Justice Department working with a coalition of states filed suit against Microsoft and won a decision declaring federal antitrust laws forbid anticompetitive agreements by high-tech monopolies. The suit against Google claims it is using similar agreements to maintain and extend its dominance.
Congress also has been involved in efforts to rein in Google and other huge tech companies. Tech CEOs representing Google, Apple, Amazon and Facebook were called a U.S. House committee during the summer.
Earlier this month, the House antitrust subcommittee released a lengthy report following a yearlong investigation concluding there is substantial evidence the tech giants’ market power has reduced consumer choice by hampering competition.
States participating in the lawsuit against Google besides Georgia include Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, South Carolina and Texas.
ATLANTA – A supplier of steak, beef, pork and chicken products will bring its eastern U.S. headquarters to Americus, Gov. Brian Kemp announced Monday.
Idaho-based BandD Foods also will build a food processing and packaging facility in Sumter County, a $15 million investment expected to create more than 100 jobs.
“During the first quarter of this fiscal year, food processing was one of our biggest job-creating industries,” Kemp said. “Just days into the second quarter, that trend remains strong thanks to our top-notch logistics network and highly skilled workforce.”
BandD Foods was originally founded in 1972 to supply fast-food restaurants with finger steaks. Today, the company produces a variety of frozen food products ranging from finger steaks to tempura to Asian cuisine-inspired meal kits.
Working with several leading frozen Asian food brands during the last decade, BandD has tripled its workforce to keep up with the demand. The Americus plant primarily will process and package ready-to-eat frozen chicken products.
“As our company has grown steadily over the last several years, we realized it was time to expand,” said Tim Andersen, president of BandD Foods. “We searched the country for the perfect location, and we feel confident we have found it in Sumter County.”
When BandD Foods opens its Americus location next year, the company will initially need to hire 100 workers, with more positions being added in the future. The jobs will range from maintenance technicians to production operators to food safety specialists.
“BandD Foods is a perfect fit for our Americus, Georgia, facility and community,” said Rusty Warner, executive director of the Sumter County Development Authority. “We have an experienced workforce to fill the positions and will follow the company’s growth as they move forward.”
Project Manager Sandra Yang represented the Georgia Department of Economic Development’s Global Commerce division on the project in partnership with the Sumter County Development Authority and Georgia Power.
Americus will become BandD Foods’ only location outside of Idaho.
ATLANTA – The number of Georgia Power customers who have had their service disconnected for nonpayment is rising steadily since the state Public Service Commission (PSC) lifted a pandemic-driven temporary moratorium on disconnections in July.
In a document filed with the PSC this week, Georgia Power reported pulling the plug on 26,504 customers last month, up from 24,929 in August and 15,223 in July.
The company also reported that in September, 364 customers failed to comply with a pay-by-installment plan Georgia Power has been offering ratepayers. That represented a significant increase from the 40 failed installment plans the previous month, while only one installment plan failed in July.
Service disconnection was among the issues that came up earlier this week when two Republican members of the PSC seeking reelection debated their Democratic challengers.
Democrat Robert Bryant of Savannah, who is opposing GOP incumbent Commissioner Jason Shaw, criticized the PSC for lifting the moratorium while the pandemic was still raging.
Shaw pointed out that it was he who made the motion in March that led the commission to impose the temporary moratorium.
“We have the tough balance of protecting those who are most vulnerable but protecting all ratepayers,” he said. “When we lifted the moratorium in July, we put in delayed payment plans.”
Under Georgia Power’s delayed-payment plan, customers who sign up for the program will be able to pay past-due balances through March with no late fees.
ATLANTA – Rural Georgians from business owners to teachers to elected officials know one of the region’s biggest challenges is inadequate internet connectivity, particularly amid a pandemic that is forcing people to stay home.
But the lack of population density in rural areas and high rates of poverty are combining to make extending high-speed broadband service into rural communities a daunting task.
The General Assembly passed legislation in June aiming to use Georgia’s 41 electric membership corporations (EMCs) as the vehicle for addressing the problem.
House Bill 244 is a follow-up to a bill lawmakers enacted last year that authorized EMCs to enter the broadband business for the first time. Under this year’s legislation, the state Public Service Commission (PSC) will decide how much EMCs can charge telecom providers for broadband attachments to their utility poles.
A dispute between the EMCs and providers over pole attachment fees has been a key obstacle in the way of delivering broadband to rural communities. It’s a standoff policy makers say rural Georgia can no longer afford.
“COVID has shown the vulnerability of these folks who have to stay home from school and the businesses that can’t expand,” said state Rep. Ron Stephens, R-Savannah, chief sponsor of House Bill 244. “If they don’t have broadband, they might as well not have power.”
Some progress is being made on the rural broadband front. Comcast announced a $9 million investment in June to expand its internet services to nearly 8,000 homes and businesses in Haralson and Carroll counties in West Georgia.
Carroll EMC launched broadband after a feasibility study showed that two-thirds of its members didn’t have it, said Tim Martin, CEO of Carroll EMC.
“We started looking for partners,” he said. “We found a local broadband provider, Global Telecom, that committed to us because they live here and know the need.”
Martin said the local schools are particularly anxious to get broadband service because of the pandemic.
“They couldn’t even do virtual school,” he said. “They had to send packets of work home.”
Martin said the project wouldn’t have been possible without a $12.5 million federal grant, and that’s been the rub.
Dennis Chastain, president and CEO of Georgia EMC, the trade association representing the local EMCs, said the sparse populations of rural communities in Georgia make broadband deployment into those areas difficult.
“Our density per mile is around 10 customers on average,” he said.
On top of that, many of the people who live in rural areas are poor, Chastain said.
“No matter how bad they might like to have [broadband], they can’t afford it,” he said.
Another barrier to rural broadband deployment is that the Georgia EMCs are charging telecom providers $20 per pole per year on average for broadband attachments, well above the average of about $7 per pole set by the Federal Communications Commission.
While the EMCs say they can’t afford to extend broadband into many rural communities even at the $20 rate, providers say such a high rate makes it hard for telecom companies to justify investing in broadband service to rural areas.
Michael Power, CEO of the Georgia Cable Association, said the list of states that have adopted the FCC rate for pole attachments includes regional neighbors Louisiana, North Carolina and Virginia.
“We believe if the PSC adopts a true cost-based formula, the EMCs will receive a pole rate that fairly compensates them,” he said. “We think this is the right approach.”
Power said the EMCs could lower the pole attachment rates to $7 per pole and make up the difference from what they’re charging now by adding only 50 cents to their average customer’s monthly bill.
But Chastain said it’s not that simple. He said the amount EMCs would have to raise customer bills would vary widely among the 41 individual companies, which face different economic circumstances.
For example, In the area served by Reidsville-based Canoochee EMC, the population density is only eight customers per mile, making extending broadband more expensive than in more densely populated communities.
Annual per-capita income in the area is only $19,000, said Lou Ann Phillips, CEO of Canoochee EMC.
“Our schools and medical services are suffering because we don’t have [broadband],” she said. “[But] our [feasibility] study says it’s going to cost $53 million. Where’s it going to come from?”
The EMCs and telecom companies will get a chance to argue their cases on pole attachment rates before the PSC in hearings set for next month.
“We’re going to bring a lot of facts and history to the table and evidence to show that a majority of states … did in fact adopt the FCC formula or something close to it,” Power said.
“We’re going to show what the cost is to put the pole in the ground and the cost to maintain the pole,” Chastain said. “All we want to do is recover the fair cost of [the providers] using our facilities.”
The PSC is scheduled to decide pole attachment rates in mid-December. The new rates then would take effect next July 1.
