Feds say senior Google execs knew about illicit pharma ads
Federal officials approached Google with evidence of its employees' wrongdoing in mid-2009. After two years of negotiation, Google agreed to pay $500 million to settle the allegations and ward off criminal charges against the company. The settlement was widely reported last year, but few details about the charges were made public at that time. New details emerged this week after the man the feds enlisted to help set up the sting, convicted con artist David Whitaker, revealed details about it to the Wall Street Journal. Whitaker received a nearly 6-year jail sentence for his part in an unrelated fraud case late last year—a sentence that was presumably reduced in recognition of his assistance in the Google case.
This isn't the first time Google has faced accusations of turning a blind eye to illegal activities by advertising customers. Last year, the Copyright Alliance, an advocacy group funded by major content companies,accused Google of turning a blind eye to the use of Google ads to monetize copyright infringement, and speculated that the firm's opposition to the PROTECT IP Act was motivated by a desire to profit from piracy.
Specifically, the post pointed to a 2006 affidavit in which the operator of a "rogue" website said that he had worked directly with a series of Google ad representatives who, he claimed, were aware of the infringing activity on the website but nevertheless helped him optimize his advertisements to increase clickthrough rates.
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