U.S. In 2009, an investigation by the US Department of Labor (DoL) found Cognizant in violation of the H-1B provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Administrative Act. The DoL discovered that the company had stolen wages and benefits from 67 of its workers, for which they demanded they repay $509,607 in back wages. Joseph Petrecca, the director of the Wage and Hour Division's Northern New Jersey District Office noted that the company took immediate steps to correct the violations, saying the "level of cooperation sets a standard for others in the industry." In 2016, the company was the subject of a lawsuit by workers for Walt Disney World who said workers from India were brought into the United States on H-1B visas in order to replace them. However, in October 2016, federal Judge Gregory A. Presnel of the United States District Court in Orlando dismissed the lawsuits, stating "none of the allegedly false statements put at issue in the complaint are adequate." Cognizant was also required to pay $5.7 million in back pay and fines in a U.S. District Court ruling for a class action lawsuit. The lawsuit claimed that Cognizant did not provide quality assurance analysts the full value of their overtime pay. Working conditions and mental health issues In February 2019, an investigative report by The Verge described poor working conditions in Cognizant's Phoenix, Arizona, office. Cognizant employees tasked with content moderation for Facebook developed mental health issues, including posttraumatic stress disorder, as a result of exposure to graphic violence, hate speech, and conspiracy theories in the videos they were instructed to evaluate. Moderators at the Phoenix office reported drug abuse, alcohol abuse, and sexual intercourse in the workplace, and feared retaliation from terminated workers who threatened to harm them. In response, a Cognizant representative stated the company would examine the issues in the report. The Verge published a follow-up investigation of Cognizant's Tampa, Florida, office in June 2019. Employees in the Tampa location described working conditions that were worse than the conditions in the Phoenix office. Content moderator Keith Utley suffered a heart attack while working for Cognizant in March 2018 and died in a hospital; the Tampa office lacked an on-site defibrillator. Moderators were required to sign non-disclosure agreements with Cognizant to obtain the job, although three former workers broke the agreements to provide information to The Verge. In the Tampa office, workers reported bed bugs,