Verizon Wireless, Sprint to pay state $316,739
WASHINGTON » Verizon Wireless will pay $90 million and Sprint $68 million to settle charges that the mobile giants allowed phony charges on their customers’ monthly bills so they could keep a cut of the profit, federal regulators announced Tuesday. Hawaii received $316,739.24 for its participation in the Sprint and Verizon settlements.
Last year, T-Mobile agreed to pay $90 million for cramming, while AT&T Mobility agreed to a $105 million settlement. The national mobile cramming settlements with the four mobile carriers have netted Hawaii a total of $747,371.18.
The two mobile providers had partnered with third-party vendors that sell premium text messaging services, such as daily horoscopes, trivia and sports scores. But consumers who hadn’t signed up for the services were being billed anyway, typically about $9.99 a month, according to the Federal Communications Commission and several state attorneys general. Regulators said they launched an investigation after receiving numerous complaints that the carriers had refused to refund the charges.
Aqua, Aston form European marketing deals
Aqua Hospitality and Aston Hotels & Resorts have set their sights on gaining more traction in the burgeoning European market by forming new marketing alliances in Europe, specifically in Germany and the United Kingdom.
The company announced Monday that AVIAREPS AG and its subsidiaries will become their official general sales agency alliances in Europe. While the European market to Hawaii has a small footprint, the market is thought to hold potential because typically these visitors have great vacation benefits that allow them to stay longer in Hawaii.
The European market, which includes visitors from the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy and Switzerland, was flat in March, according to the Hawai’i Tourism Authority. For the first quarter, European arrivals were down 4.9 percent to 26,554 visitors from the year-earlier period.
AVIAREPS is an international leader in airline and tourism management.
For-profit ITT college execs accused of fraud
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission accused a major for-profit college company of fraud Tuesday, alleging that ITT Educational Services Inc. and two executives failed to warn investors about what it called the dismal performance of two student lending programs.
The SEC complaint marks the latest in a string of bad news for the for-profit college industry in recent weeks. Corinthian Colleges Inc. filed for bankruptcy last week after closing more than two dozen of its remaining campuses, including Heald College in Honolulu, following a U.S. Department of Education probe into suspected bogus job placement rates. Two other for-profit college chains, Education Management Corp. and Career Education Corp., also announced major school closures last week.
The ITT case centers on two private student lending programs the company set up to comply with federal law. For-profit colleges rely heavily on federal student aid because they tend to enroll many low-income students.
Federal regulations require for-profit schools to earn at least 10 percent of revenue from nonfederal money. ITT struggled to come up with the required 10 percent of private money, according to the SEC’s case, so it set up two private funds in 2009 and 2010 to generate the needed cash for students. Because of the high risk of such loans, ITT guaranteed it would pay the lenders if too many students defaulted, but there were high default rates.
Rather than disclose the problems — which would force the company to make huge payments to outside lenders — ITT "engaged in a series of deceptive acts" to hide the problems, according to the SEC.
U.S. job openings fall amid hiring pickup
WASHINGTON » The number of available jobs in the U.S. fell in March, though companies filled more of their open positions in a sign they are still confident enough to hire.
The Labor Department said Tuesday that job postings dropped 2.9 percent to just under a seasonally adjusted 5 million in March. Meanwhile, total hiring ticked up 1.1 percent to 5.1 million, the most since December.
Despite the drop in job openings in March, there were 18.6 percent more open positions than a year ago.
ON THE MOVE
Coldwell Banker Pacific Properties has announced that the following Realtor associates have joined the firm’s Honolulu office as new independent agents:
» Malia E. Kakos is also a team member of Coldwell Banker Previews International. She was previously an associate at Alston Hunt Floyd & Ing.
» Ada Liu was previously a Realtor associate at Keller Williams Realty Southwest in Las Vegas.
» Socelyn Ramos was previously a luxury property manager for a local vacation rental firm specializing in the Ala Moana, Waikiki, Diamond Head and Kahala areas.
