According to a Press Release dated July 11, 2001, the complaint alleges that, in exchange for the excessive commissions, members of the underwriting group Bear, Stearns & Co. Inc. and Hambrecht & Quist LLC allocated Drkoop.com shares to customers at the IPO price of $9.00 per share.Rather than allowing their customers to keep their profits from the IPO, the complaint alleges, the underwriters required their customers to "kick back" some of their profits in the form of secret commissions. These secret commission payments were sometimes calculated after the fact based on how much profit each investor had made from his or her IPO stock allocation.

The complaint further alleges that defendants violated the Securities Act of 1933 because the Prospectus distributed to investors and the Registration Statement filed with the SEC in order to gain regulatory approval for the Drkoop.com offering contained material misstatements regarding the commissions that the underwriters would derive from the IPO transaction and failed to disclose the additional commissions and "laddering" scheme discussed above.