Meta joins a list of corporations that have settled cases for billions of dollars

Tech giant Meta this week agreed to pay $17 billion as part of a settlement to end a landmark trial related to safeguards for younger users of social media. It is one of the largest such settlements ever, though it represents only a fraction of the $201 billion in revenue that the company booked last year.

Here's a look at some other notable corporate settlements.

Oil giant BP agreed to pay $20 billion for the Deepwater Horizon disaster that became the worst offshore spill in the nation’s history.

The settlement, first announced in 2016, included $5.5 billion in civil Clean Water Act penalties and billions more to cover environmental damage and other claims by the five Gulf states and local governments. The money is to be paid out over roughly 16 years.

Enron, once the nation’s seventh-largest company, filed for bankruptcy protection in 2001, after years of accounting tricks could no longer hide billions of dollars in debt or make failing ventures appear profitable. The energy company’s collapse put more than 5,000 people out of work and wiped out more than $2 billion in employee pensions.

Twenty-four Enron executives, including former CEO Jeffrey Skilling, were convicted for their roles in the fraud.

A class-action lawsuit led to the recovery of more than $7 billion in funds.

WorldCom Inc. collapsed and went into bankruptcy in 2002 following revelations of an $11 billion accounting fraud that included pressure from top executives on subordinates to inflate numbers to make the company seem more profitable. The collapse caused losses to stockholders, including those who had invested through retirement plans.

In 2005, the company agreed to pay shareholders about $750 million in cash and stock, while major banks and accounting firms settled for about $6 billion.

WorldCom's former CEO, Bernie Ebbers was convicted in New York in 2005 on securities fraud and other charges and received a 25-year sentence. He died in 2020, just over a month after his early release from prison.

After its collapse, WorldCom reemerged under a new name, MCI. It was taken over by Verizon and relocated its operations to Ashburn, Virginia.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. agreed to pay $13 billion in a landmark settlement in 2013. The firm acknowledged that it misled investors about the quality of risky mortgage-backed securities ahead of the 2008 financial crisis.

The agreement also included settlements with New York, California and other states.

JPMorgan was among the major banks that sold securities that plunged in value when the housing market collapsed in 2006 and 2007. Those losses triggered a financial crisis that pushed the economy into the worst recession since the 1930s.

A year later, Bank of America reached a $16.65 billion settlement with the government over the same issue. Its deal called for the bank, the second-largest in the U.S., to pay a $5 billion cash penalty, another $4.6 billion in remediation payments and provide about $7 billion in relief to struggling homeowners.

Johnson & Johnson agreed in July to pay $5.5 billion after fighting lawsuits for almost two decades over talc products that plaintiffs claimed had caused ovarian cancer.

The drugmaker, which has been fighting talc-related lawsuits for more than a decade, said that the settlement is conditioned on at least 95% of remaining claimants participating.

A U.S. bankruptcy court judge denied a $9 billion settlement proposed by company subsidiary Red River Talc last year that would have been one of the biggest mass tort settlements in history.

Johnson & Johnson decided not to appeal that ruling and instead fight on in court.

As part of the proposed settlement, Johnson & Johnson will make an initial payment of no more than $3 billion next year. It has no additional payments due until 2028.

FILE - The JPMorgan Chase & Co. logo is displayed at their headquarters Oct. 21, 2013 in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)

FILE - A car passes Facebook's new Meta logo on a sign at the company headquarters on Oct. 28, 2021, in Menlo Park, Calif. (AP Photo/Tony Avelar, File)

FILE - The Deepwater Horizon oil rig burns on April 21, 2010, in the Gulf of Mexico, more than 50 miles southeast of Venice, La. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)

OSLO, Norway (AP) — A pro-Russian hacker group on Wednesday claimed responsibility for a cyberattack that has affected multiple Norwegian government digital services over the past three days.

The cyberattack has been ongoing since Monday, said Are Kvistad, a spokesperson for the Norwegian Digitalization Agency (Digdir), the state body in charge of making Norway's public services more digital and user-friendly, told The Associated Press.

“It's the biggest attack against Digdir solutions that we have ever experienced,” Kvistad said.

The denial-of-service attacks meant that hackers pushed massive traffic toward the agency in order to block services, including one that enables citizens to use one login across multiple public services.

However, the Digdir spokesman said that the agency managed to keep the services running “practically all the time.”

In a Telegram post on Wednesday widely reported by Norwegian media, the pro-Russian hacker group Server Killers claimed responsibility for the attack and said it had declared cyber war on Norway after the country renewed its security cooperation with Ukraine on Aug. 23.

On Sunday, Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre announced during a visit to Kyiv that Norway would provide 85 billion Norwegian crowns (9.2 billion US dollars) to Ukraine from next year’s state budget for a third year in a row.

The two countries also committed to further cooperation when it comes to drone technology and other forms of modern warfare.

Norwegian officials did not comment on the hackers' claim by publication time.

All countries in Europe are on high alert with Russia stepping up its sabotage and malign activity across the continent since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Officials say the attacks are intended to undermine support for Ukraine, spread fear and discord in European societies and drain investigative resources.

In 2025, Norwegian authorities said Russian hackers were likely behind suspected sabotage at a dam in the country. During that incident, hackers gained access to a digital system which remotely controls one of the dam’s valves and opened it to increase the water flow. A three-minute long video showing the dam’s control panel and a mark identifying a pro-Russian cybercriminal group was published on Telegram at the time, the police said.

Last year, Danish authorities blamed Russia for carrying out cyberattacks against infrastructure and websites in Denmark in 2024 and 2025. Danish officials said pro-Russian group Z-Pentest carried out a “destructive attack” on the water utility company in 2024 and that a separate group, NoName057(16), was responsible for a cyberattack on Danish websites ahead of the 2025 local elections. Voth have links to the Russian state, they said.

According to Norwegian media, Server Killers were linked directly or indirectly to previous cyberattacks in Norway and other European countries.

FILE - Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy greets Norway's Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere ahead of the flag-raising ceremony to mark the National Flag Day in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Aug. 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, File)