Class Action Lawsuits Under Development Against PG&E and Peninsula Clean Energy for Scamming Consumers

By David Brock

PG&E has sent out a series of “buried notices” to consumers over the last number of years. The notices look like boilerplate PG&E bills or marketing forms, which science has proven are not identifiable to consumers.

The scam works like this:

A. - An insider group of politicians and their financiers agree to buy stock in solar panel and other “Clean-yet-corrupt” companies.

B. - PG&E switches consumers to “clean energy electric generation charges” without the consumers actual knowledge.

C. - PG&E then begins charging hundreds of thousands of consumers 30% extra for electricity because PG&E covertly “opted-them” into the clean kickback program.

D. - When caught, PG&E refuses to credit the years of over-billings back to consumers and the insider group of politicians refuse to make laws to help the consumers.

E. ..and the dirtiest part of the “clean energy electric generation charges” scam? The insider group of politicians own the very companies that PG&E is giving the 30% over-charge money to.

F. If consumer’s try to cancel thus scam charge then PG&E bills them extra for canceling the thing that most consumers would never sign up for if they knew the truth about it.

In other words: Your local utility company forces you to pay cash, covertly routed through PG&E, to corrupt politicians and you can never get a refund for the corrupt thing you never knowingly opted into.

The liars at PG&E (The guys who regularly blow up and burn down cities, pay bribes, shoot tons of toxic methane into the air and run scams) say “Oh, we sent everybody a letter telling them we were going to put them on this scam”, but 90% of all consumers say they never saw a letter and that nobody ever asked, offered or indicated that such a program was an “opt-in” option.

In the San Francisco Bay Area a charge has been appearing on PG&E bills as: “PENINSULA CLEAN ENERGY Electric Generation Charges”. This add-on can add 30 to 40% to consumer's bills.

PG&E hopes that the tree-hugging Californians won’t question a mysterious charge that has the facade phrase “CLEAN ENERGY” in it. They believe that nobody would dare question such a benevolent and altruistic sounding thing.

The scam worked for awhile, until it didn’t.

The companies that are providing this so called “Clean Energy” are dirty crony payola kick-back companies owned by PG&E executives, corrupt California Senators and their toxic campaign financiers. Let;s take a look at one of over 30 corrupt companies involved in this scam. These are companies you have heard of like Solar City, First Solar, Solyndra, etc. In one of hundreds of examples, First Solar makes solar panels with a horrific unsuitability for for Hot Climates. After this reply by their PR Director, more heartache was in store for the company.

A class action lawsuit was filed against First Solar by Pomerantz Haudek Grossman & Gross in the US District Court for the District of Arizona. The complaint states that First Solar violated the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 by not disclosing the full extent of certain manufacturing flaws on its earnings, that it improperly recognized revenue for certain products in its systems business, that it lacked sufficient internal and financial controls and, finally, that as a result, First Solar’s statement were materially false and misleading at all relevant times.

The complaint claims that First Solar reported a decrease of US$345 million in net sales for the quarter that ended December 31, 2011, and a US$164 million charge for warranty payments to replace equipment that cause premature power loss in certain panels. The plaintiff is looking to recover damages on behalf of all First Solar shareholders who purchased common stock during the Class Period detailed above.

As is the nature of class action cases other law firms have come forward, citing similar claims, including a national securities law firm, Faruqi & Faruqi, law firm, Howard G. Smith and Rigrodsky & Long, P.A.

First Solar Shareholders are being given the opportunity to seek legal counsel from several firms after a class action lawsuit was filed in the US District Court for the District of Arizona last week. Case No. 12-cv-00555, alleges that between April 30, 2008 and February 28, 2012, potential securities fraud and an over-concentration of shares in First Solar stock led to investment losses.

Securities arbitration law firm, Klayman & Toskes, noted that trading was at over US$300 per share in July 2008 and is now only trading at around US$30 per share, an almost 90% decline. Harwood Feffer, LLP, further pointed out that on February 29, First Solar revealed its financial results for Q4 and the full year 2011, reporting a quarter-over-quarter drop of US$345 million in net sales, “primarily due to the timing of revenue recognition in our systems business and lower for module-only sales.”

First Solar also advised that it had incurred a charge of US$164 million for warranty payments to replace defective equipment, including a reserve of US$37.5 million to cover future claims.

This is the typical kind of scam that PG&E promotes and forces consumers to get caught up in. Every consumer should be speaking to a class-action law firm to sue PG&E for fraud and to demand that the U.S. Government sue PG&E for fraud and for refunds to consumers for these criminal utility bill surcharge scams.