A federal grand jury in Las Vegas returned an indictment yesterday charging a healthcare staffing executive with conspiring to fix the wages of Las Vegas nurses, in violation of the Sherman Act. According to the one-count felony indictment, Eduardo Lopez, of Las Vegas, held executive positions at three different home health agencies. For each company, Lopez oversaw recruitment, hiring, retention and assignments of nurses and other healthcare staff. Lopez and other unnamed co-conspirators are charged with agreeing to suppress and eliminate competition for the services of nurses between March 2016 and May 2019. Specifically, Lopez and his co-conspirators are charged with participating in a series of meetings and communications to fix wages of nurses. “Wage fixing is a crime that deprives workers of hard-earned wages,” said Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division. “The Antitrust Division will be vigilant in protecting workers.”
