The Department of Justice got a win this Tuesday when two tech-savvy companies agreed to pay up after a price-fixing mess with Army computers
In a high-stakes settlement Dell and Iron Bow Technologies will each hand over $2-million to the government; this comes after they got caught playing games with computer hardware prices (which lasted from early-2020 till now)
The lawsuit shows how these companies worked the system: Iron Bow – a govt tech re-seller got sweet deals from Dell on products‚ but heres the twist – Dell charged the Army way more for the same stuff. This created what looked like competition but wasnt real at all
The scheme worked like this:
* Iron Bow got special discounts from Dell
* Dell sold same products to Army at higher costs
* Both companies competed for same contracts
* Price differences were hidden from military
The whole setup made the Army pay extra cash for basic computer gear‚ while these tech-giants pretended to compete against each other in a not-so-honest way