In 2020, the California Department of Justice sued Vitol, Inc., SK Energy Americas, Inc. and its parent company SK Trading International, alleging that the companies worked together in secret to manipulate prices after an explosion at a Torrance gasoline refinery in 2015.

The companies engaged “in a scheme to drive up gas prices for their own profit,” that limited competition and caused Californians to pay more at the pump, according to the attorney general’s office.

In July 2024, California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced that the state had reached a $50 million settlement with the companies.

Of that, $37.5 million will be distributed as gas rebates to impacted consumers in California.

Peoplewho purchased fuel in select parts of the statecan now apply to get money back, Bonta said in an Oct. 2 news release.

Who is eligible to get gas rebates?

Anyone who filled up their tank in parts of Central or Southern California between Feb. 20, 2015, and Nov. 10, 2015, can submit a claim.

If you bought gas in Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Kern, Ventura, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo or Imperial counties during this time period, you are eligible for a gas rebate.

Call 877-725-7523 or email peoplesinfo@calgaslitigation.com to learn if you were affected by the settlement.

Who is eligible to get gas rebates?

Anyone who filled up their tank in parts of Central or Southern California between Feb. 20, 2015, and Nov. 10, 2015, can submit a claim.

If you bought gas in Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Kern, Ventura, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo or Imperial counties during this time period, you are eligible for a gas rebate.

Call 877-725-7523 or email peoplesinfo@calgaslitigation.com to learn if you were affected by the settlement.

How to submit a claim

Eligible consumers can submit a claim online at CalGasLitigation.com or mail in a claim form.

Applicants are asked to provide their name, address, driver’s license number and answer questions verifying they bought gas in 2015.

You must apply by Jan. 8, 2025, to receive money from the settlement.

How much money will California drivers get?

According to the settlement website, the amount of payment people receive will depend on how many valid claims are submitted..

When will gas rebate be distributed?

There is no set date on when settlement checks will be delivered.

On Feb. 28, 2025, the San Francisco County Superior Court of California will hold a hearing on whether to approve the settlement. The approval and appeals process could take more than a year, the settlement website said.

Gas rebates will be sent to Californians once the case is resolved.

Claimants can receive settlement funds through an electronic payment account, such as PayPal, Venmo or Zelle, or as a paper check.

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Jessica Tapia will receive $360,000 in a settlement with the Jurupa Unified School District in Riverside County, as reported by The Press-Enterprise.

She was placed on administrative leave in 2022 and fired in 2023 after “refusing to abide by state law prohibiting discrimination against transgender and gender-nonconforming students,” as reported by Patch. Tapia said the policies are incompatible with her Christian faith.

“I chose to stand for truth and my religious beliefs by informing my school district that I would not comply with their directives that would require me to lie to my students about their gender, lie to their parents about that information and allow boys into my girls’ locker room,” Tapia said in a social media post announcing the settlement.

In a statement to The Press-Enterprise, district spokesperson Jacqueline Paul said “the district has not admitted any fault or wrongdoing as part of this settlement.”

“The decision to settle this case was made in conjunction with the district’s self-insurance administrators and in the best interest of the students, such that the district would be able to dedicate all of its resources and efforts to its student population regardless of their protected class,” the spokesperson added.

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SAN DIEGO (AP) — The federal government would be barred from immigration policies that separate parents from children for eight years under a proposed court settlement announced Monday that also provides families that were split under the Trump administration with temporary legal status and short-term housing aid.

The settlement between the Biden administration and the American Civil Liberties Union, if approved by a judge, would at least temporarily prohibit the type of “zero-tolerance” policy on illegal immigration under which former President Donald Trump separated thousands of families at the border with Mexico.

“It is our intent to do whatever we can to make sure that the cruelty of the past is not repeated in the future. We set forth procedures through this settlement agreement to advance that effort,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told The Associated Press.

Trump, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, hasn’t ruled out reviving the highly controversial tactic at the southern border if he wins next year’s election.

His administration separated children from their parents or guardians they were traveling with as it moved to criminally prosecute people for illegally crossing the border. The children, who could not be held in criminal custody, were transferred to the Department of Health and Human Services and then typically sent to live with a sponsor, often a relative or someone else with a family connection.

Faulty tracking systems caused many to be apart for an extended time or never reunited with their parents. Facing strong opposition, Trump eventually reversed course in 2018, days before U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw in San Diego halted the practice and ordered immediate reunification in the lawsuit brought by the ACLU.

During a CNN town hall in May, Trump was noncommittal on whether he would again separate families if elected. “When you say to a family that if you come we’re going to break you up, they don’t come,” he said when pressed.

Lee Gelernt, lead counsel for the ACLU, said the ban on any future attempts to separate families as a deterrent to illegal immigration was crucial.

“This settlement means that babies and toddlers will finally get to see their parents after years apart and that these suffering families will have an opportunity to seek lawful status,” he said. “Nothing can make these families whole again but this is at least a start.”

Under the settlement, it would still be possible to separate children from parents or guardians, but under limited scenarios, as has been the case for many years. They include if the child is being abused or the parent committed a much more serious crime than crossing the border illegally.

President Joe Biden issued an executive order on his first day in office to reunite families. According to figures released by the Department of Homeland Security in February, 3,881 children were separated from their families from 2017 to 2021. About 74% of those have been reunited with their families: 2,176 before a Biden administration task force was created and 689 afterward.

Hundreds of families sued the federal government, seeking both monetary damages and policy changes.

In 2021, the government was discussing a possible payment of hundreds of thousands of dollars to each parent and child separated under Trump’s policies but talks stalled on that point.

But the proposed settlement provides key benefits including authorization for parents of separated children to come to the U.S. under humanitarian parole for three years and work in the United States. The families receive housing aid for up to a year and medical and behavioral health benefits designed to address some of the trauma associated with the separations.

Mayorkas described how he’d met with a woman who had been separated from her daughter and how after they had been reunited, her daughter still struggled with the experience.

“We need to help these families heal. And that is an obligation that we carry because of the pain that we inflicted upon them,” he said.

Attorney General Merrick Garland said the practice of separating families was “shameful” and that the proposed settlement will provide those affected with critical support to recover.

They’ll also get access to legal services which will be vital as they may file asylum applications to stay in the United States on a permanent basis. The settlement also waives the usual one-year timeline limiting when someone can apply for asylum, and the parents can apply even if they were previously denied. A special team of supervisors will review their cases.

Some of these benefits were already available to families under a Biden-administration created task force designed to reunite separated families. But Gelernt said the settlement goes beyond the task force’s purview in key ways such as the asylum assistance.

The settlement requires the government to keep detailed documentation when it separates children from parents so as to avoid the chaos that erupted during the Trump-era family separations where parents and children could not be quickly reunited.

Now that the government and the ACLU have agreed on a settlement plan, the judge will hold a hearing to decide whether to accept it. Before that, people opposed to the settlement can raise objections to the judge.

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SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — A judge has agreed to seal from public view the terms of a proposed settlement agreement that benefits the son of slain cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, in a wrongful death lawsuit against actor Alec Baldwin and an array of producers and crew involved linked to Hutchins’ death in a fatal filmset shooting.

The New Mexico judge cited privacy concerns about Halyna’s 10-year-old son, Andros Hutchins.

Baldwin, an actor and film coproducer, was pointing a pistol at cinematographer Halyna Hutchins when the gun went off, killing her and wounding the director, Joel Souza, on the set of the Western movie “Rust” during a movie rehearsal on the outskirts of Santa Fe in 2021.

Widower Matthew Hutchins filed the wrongful death suit last year against “Rust” producers, including Baldwin, as well as members of the film crew with safety responsibilities and an ammunition supplier. Son Andros Hutchins, who was 9 at the time of the shooting, is also named as a plaintiff.

Attorneys for they boy said Monday that secrecy provisions are paramount to protect the boy’s privacy and finalize a settlement with “Rust” producers.

At least five other civil lawsuits related to Halyna Hutchins’ death are pending in courts. Plaintiffs in those cases asked for the hearings to remain open. They worried about unforeseen consequences if the agreement were to collapse, and implications for insurance payments in other lawsuits.

But the judge agreed that the privacy rights of the boy outweighed court obligations for public disclosure, and ordered that the settlement documents and approval hearings be sealed.

“What is driving my decision is really the interests of the minor child. And that is one of the very most powerful reasons to seal a matter,” said District Court Judge Bryan Biedscheid, in a videoconference hearing of the Santa Fe-based court.

The civil lawsuit argues that Baldwin and other film crewmembers ignored industry gun safety rules on the set of “Rust.” Baldwin and other defendants have disputed those accusations.

Knowledge of the settlement terms also will be off limits to people beyond “Rust” producers who were named as defendants in the lawsuit, including weapons supervisor Hannah Gutierrez-Reed. Several of those defendants objected to being left in the dark on details of the settlement, though approval of the agreement should end their involvement in the wrongful death suit.

Gutierrez-Reed and Baldwin are also confronting criminal charges of involuntary manslaughter in separate court proceedings and have pleaded not guilty, with two weeks of evidentiary hearings scheduled in May.

Widower Matthew Hutchins outlined a proposed settlement agreement in October that opened the way for filming to resume in Montana. He’ll serve as a producer.

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NEW YORK (AP) — New York announced a $100 million settlement with Coinbase on Wednesday over what state officials called significant failures in the cryptocurrency trading platform’s systems for spotting potential criminal activity.

According to the state Department of Financial Services, Coinbase’s anti-money-laundering program and its system for monitoring transactions for suspicious activity were inadequate for a company of Coinbase’s size and complexity. The department said that the volume of alerts generated by Coinbase’s transaction monitoring system grew so fast that reports of suspicious activity were sometimes filed months after the suspicious activity was first known to Coinbase.

“It is critical that all financial institutions safeguard their systems from bad actors, and the Department’s expectations with respect to consumer protection, cybersecurity, and anti-money laundering programs are just as stringent for cryptocurrency companies as they are for traditional financial services institutions,” Financial Services Superintendent Adrienne A. Harris said in a news release. “Coinbase failed to build and maintain a functional compliance program that could keep pace with its growth.”

Under the terms of the settlement, Coinbase will pay a $50 million penalty to New York state and will invest another $50 million in its compliance program. An independent monitor installed by the state will work with Coinbase for a year to oversee compliance.

Paul Grewal, Coinbase’s chief legal officer, said in a statement that the company has taken substantial measures to address the shortcomings identified by the New York investigation “and remains committed to being a leader and role model in the crypto space, including partnering with regulators when it comes to compliance.”

Grewal added, “We believe our investment in compliance outpaces every other crypto exchange anywhere in the world, and that our customers can feel safe and protected while using our platforms.”

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SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — The U.S. Virgin Islands announced Wednesday that it reached a settlement of more than $105 million in a sex trafficking case against the estate of financier Jeffrey Epstein.

The settlement ends a nearly three-year legal saga for officials in the U.S. territory, which sought to hold Epstein accountable after he was accused of sexually abusing dozens of underage girls and of causing environmental damage on the two tiny islands he owned in the U.S. Virgin Islands. The islands will be sold as part of the agreement.

“This settlement restores the faith of the people of the Virgin Islands that its laws will be enforced, without fear or favor, against those who break them,” Attorney General Denise George said.

Epstein’s estate agreed to pay the territorial government $105 million in cash and half of the proceeds from the sale of Little St. James island where Epstein owned a home and authorities allege many of his crimes took place.

The estate also will pay $450,000 to repair environmental damage on Great St. James, another island Epstein owned where authorities say he removed the ruins of colonial-era historical structures of slaves.

The money from the sale of Little St. James island will be placed in a government trust to finance projects, organizations, counseling and other activities to help residents who have been sexually abused, officials said.

“We owe it to those who were so profoundly hurt to make changes that will help avoid the next set of victims,” said George, who added that she met with three alleged victims who were trafficked and sexually exploited on Little St. James island.

A real estate company is listing the island for $55 million, noting that its features include three beaches, a helipad, a gas station and more than 70 acres (28 hectares) of land that offer “an array of subdivision possibilities” and “a comprehensive, discreetly located, infrastructure support system.”

The company also is offering Great St. James for $55 million, an island of more than 160 acres (65 hectares) with three beaches.

In addition, the estate will return more than $80 million in economic tax benefits that U.S. Virgin Islands officials say Epstein and his co-defendants “fraudulently obtained to fuel his criminal enterprise.”

The government previously accused an Epstein-owned business known as Southern Trust Co. of making fraudulent misrepresentations to qualify for the benefits.

Daniel Weiner, an Epstein estate attorney, sent a statement to The Associated Press saying that the settlement does not include any admission or concession of liability or fault by the estate or anyone else.

“The co-executors deny any allegations of wrongdoing on their part,” he wrote. “The co-executors ultimately concluded that the settlement is in the best interest of the estate.”

Weiner also noted that the estate has paid more than $121 million to 136 individuals via a victims’ compensation fund.

Epstein killed himself at a federal jail in New York in August 2019 while awaiting trial. He had pleaded not guilty to charges of sexually abusing dozens of girls, some as young as 14 years old.

Several had sued Epstein and accused him and his longtime companion, Ghislaine Maxwell, of pressuring them into sexual trysts with powerful men.

Maxwell, who was convicted on sex trafficking and other charges, was sentenced to 20 years in prison in June.

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