The lawsuit, filed on Monday in court in Washington state, alleges thatAmazonsecretly altered the way it conducted ad auctions, allowing it to increase the prices paid by advertisers on its platform. Read More Brazil, US Resume Talks on Trump Tariffs According to the regulators, Amazon began manipulating auction results in 2018 without notifying customers and took steps to conceal the changes. The lawsuit claims the alleged scheme involved hidden surcharges that enabled Amazon to extract more than $20 billion from advertisers without their knowledge. “Based on numerous internal documents describing its ‘hidden’ ‘surcharges,’ Amazon’s scheme has likely illegally extracted over 20 billion dollars from its unwitting advertising customers,” the complaint says. California Attorney General Rob Bonta accused Amazon of rigging billions of dollars worth of advertising auctions, describing the case as a bipartisan effort involving the state and federal regulators.