White Collar Crime

Increased government scrutiny and severe criminal and civil penalties are the realities facing today’s corporations and their officers, directors and employees.  Few areas of the law require more skills across a broad spectrum of disciplines than the representation of clients in federal and state criminal and regulatory enforcement matters.  Led by nationally recognized trial lawyers and former federal prosecutors, Farella Braun + Martel’s White Collar Crime Group has the civil, criminal and regulatory expertise required to achieve successful outcomes at trial, but often more importantly, before charges are filed and investigations become public.   

Our White Collar Crime attorneys litigate indicted cases and provide representation in grand jury proceedings and before regulatory agencies, such as the SEC and EPA, throughout the country.  We combine well-honed courtroom skills and expertise in defense of corporations and individuals with sophisticated knowledge in many areas of substantive law, including:

• securities, revenue-recognition and public-accounting fraud
• insider-trading, Title 15 and CFR securities non-compliance, and Sarbanes-Oxley issues
• mail, wire, tax-related and computer fraud
• trade-secret theft
• environmental and health and safety violations
• antitrust violations
• import-export and money-laundering violations

Our White Collar Crime attorneys regularly draw on the expertise of other practice areas in the firm.  Our Environmental Law Department, for example, is among the largest and most experienced in the nation with more than twenty attorneys specializing in environmental compliance counseling, regulatory representation and litigation, including defense of civil and criminal environmental enforcement actions.  In securities and SEC-related matters, our practitioners regularly consult with attorneys in our Securities Compliance Group.  Likewise, attorneys from the firm’s Insurance and Employment Groups also frequently advise our White Collar Crime attorneys on D&O insurance, indemnity, and employment issues facing our clients.

Our White Collar Crime practitioners have counseled and represented corporations and individuals in a full spectrum of services and in a broad range of industries and professions, including internal corporation investigations, and in defense of criminal and regulatory enforcement actions.  We regularly counsel corporate clients concerning compliance programs mandated by state and federal law, and help clients navigate the always murky waters created by parallel civil and criminal proceedings.

Our seasoned White Collar Crime practitioners also recognize the importance of negotiations during the investigation, before decisions are made on whether to file criminal or civil-enforcement charges.  Their familiarity with the corridors of the prosecutors’ offices is critical to exploring every avenue possible to avoid such charges.  For most of our clients, the mere filing of highly publicized charges can be devastating.  If charges are unavoidable, our attorneys have the experience it takes to either negotiate an appropriate resolution or take the case to trial.

The complexities involved in developing a strategy or achieving a resolution in criminal matters increases exponentially when clients are faced with parallel civil or administrative proceedings.  For example, clients in securities fraud cases are often faced with a three-tiered threat:  the filing of civil class actions, SEC investigations leading to civil enforcement cases, and grand jury investigations leading to criminal charges.  Our attorneys have extensive expertise in early assessment of a client’s civil, administrative and criminal exposure, and in developing a coordinated defense to all three of these proceedings.  We know from experience that the early strategies developed in response to one proceeding can have serious and unalterable repercussions on the direction and ultimate outcome of the parallel investigations and filings.  We handle these cases every day, advising clients on how to best navigate through the myriad of high-stakes decisions they face.