Antitrust Case Filings

In November 2020, EBlock Corporation (“EBlock”) acquired the assets of a California-based auto auction company and retained numerous of its employees. Unbeknownst to EBlock at the time of the asset acquisition, employees at the California-based auto auction company (“Company A”) had been engaged in a long-standing conspiracy with a used auto wholesale company to rig bids for used vehicles and to artificially increase prices paid by legitimate bidders by placing fake (“shill”) bids during online auctions. EBlock learned about the bid rigging and the deceitful bidding activity around January 21, 2021. EBlock rejected this conduct and took concrete steps to stop it, but Company A’s legacy employees continued the problem conduct. Although EBlock did not stop the conduct immediately, the conduct stopped because EBLOCK’s repeated efforts made it stop. More information is available in the Statement of Facts attached to the deferred prosecution agreement. The charged period began no later than November 2020 and continued until around February 2022. EBlock entered into a deferred prosecution agreement on January 22, 2026. A pretrial conference is scheduled on January 8, 2027.

In December 2025, a federal grand jury returned a superseding indictment charging Maryland IT executive Victor Marquez with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, four counts of wire fraud, and major fraud. As alleged in the superseding indictment, from 2018 through 2022, Marquez and his co-conspirators defrauded the federal government through a bid-rigging and kickback scheme affecting large U.S. government IT contracts. Marquez and his co-conspirators used Marquez’s knowledge of sensitive procurement information to rig bids, including by submitting bids and certifications for IT Products contracts that they knew were materially false. Marquez and others concealed Marquez’s role in the procurement process in furtherance of the scheme. Marquez obtained kickbacks—what his co-conspirators called the “Vic tax”— for steering contracts to his co-conspirators. As a result of the scheme, Marquez and one of his companies received over $3.8 million from the U.S. government. The superseding indictment represents the most recent charges in the Justice Department’s investigation into IT manufacturers, distributors, and resellers. Two other individuals pleaded guilty last year in related cases. In August 2025, James Briar, an IT account representative, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to pay illegal kickbacks. In October 2025, Robert Fay, an IT sales executive, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to pay illegal kickbacks and to violating the Anti-Kickback Act.