On August 11, 2016, the DOJ announced that Trod Ltd., a UK company doing business as Buy 4 Less, Buy For Less, and Buy-For-Less-Online, pleaded guilty to fixing the prices of wall posters sold through Amazon Marketplace. The DOJ alleged that Trod and its co-conspirators agreed to fix the prices of certain posters from approximately September 2013 to January 2014.

Trod was indicted in the US District Court for the Northern District of California in August 2015. The DOJ alleged that in furtherance of the conspiracy, Trod and its co-conspirators used agreed-upon pricing algorithms to set prices and coordinate price changes for certain posters.

Acting Assistant Attorney General Renata Hesse stated that the DOJ will continue to investigate and prosecute anticompetitive schemes that harm online shoppers to ensure that online consumers receive the same competitive benefits as those at brick-and-mortar stores.

For more information on antitrust pricing issues, see Practice Note, Pricing Strategies and Antitrust.