In July 2010, Michael Dell made headlines when he agreed to pay more than $100 million in penalties in order to settle charges of accounting fraud that had been filed by the Security and Exchange Commission. According to the charges, Dell Computer inflated its earning statements by counting rebates from the chip maker Intel that were issued to Dell to encourage the company not to use chips from Advanced Micro Devices in its computers and servers. By padding its statements, investigators claimed, Dell Computer had misled investors about its actual earnings