Apple May Face Criminal Charges for Allegedly Lying to a Federal Judge

Apple “I deliberately chose A federal judge wrote on Wednesday, “Not complying with the court’s order to alleviate the restrictions of its application stores – and one of the executives lied to the right of the company’s plans,” a federal judge wrote on Wednesday.

Judge IV Gonzalez Rogers referred the situation to the US Prosecutor’s Office in San Francisco “to investigate whether criminal contempt procedures were appropriate.”

In 2021, Gonzalez Rogers presided over a lawsuit filed Fortnite Epic Developer games on anti -competition practices that allegedly hindered the ability of developers to generate revenues from the application store. This included the Apple policy of taking a 30 percent commission on some of the purchases within the application.

While Gonzales Rogers ultimately ruled Apple on most charges, the company has ordered the start of allowing developers to market ways to make purchases inside the application outside the App Store Ecosystem. By reducing its commission, Apple responded to 27 percent of the purchases that were made elsewhere, but also provided a series of other changes, including showing the so -called frightening screens, to discourage users about making purchases outside its ecosystem.

Last year, Epic challenged in court how Apple was responding to the matter, prompting Gonzalez Rogers to demand a technology giant to deliver documents that contributed to the contempt for Wednesday.

“With an explicit intention to create new anti -competition barriers that, in fact, the flow of valuable revenues, which is the flow of revenues that was already found to be anti -competition,” said Gonzalez Rogers on Wednesday. “This believes that this court will tolerate such a rebellion was a serious miscalculation.”

She also said that Apple executives tried to hide the real motives of changes. “In a blatant contradiction with the initial Apple certificate within the court, contemporary business documents reveal that the Apple knew exactly what she was doing and in every turn she chose more than others FightGonzalez Rogers, a competitive option, went further than Alex Roman’s vice -president of Apple, of lying during a certificate in which he talked about how Apple reached its decision to apply for 27 percent of the purchases that were performed outside the application store.

“We are not very strongly faced,” Apple spokeswoman Olivia Dalton said in a WIRED statement. “We will comply with the court’s order and appeal.” Roman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Quoted from the Apple Documents from 2023, Gonzalez Rogers said that the head of the Apple Apple App Store Philip Schiller “called for compliance with Apple with the gossip”, but CEO Tim Cook “ignored Schiller and instead allowed the financial manager Luka Maestri and his financial team to persuade him otherwise.”

The judge demanded that Apple immediately comply with its previous order. “This is a judicial matter, not negotiations,” she wrote. “There are no implementation operations once the party intentionally ignores the court. Time is the essence. The court will not tolerate more delay. It was previously requested, Apple will not hinder competition.”

The CEO of Epic Games Tim Sweeey has posted on X that the new ruling will put an end to Apple fee of 15-30 %. “

Update 4/30/25 10:00 ET: This story was updated with a statement from Apple.