New York Office

Past investigations include:

• LIBOR: NYO worked jointly with the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Connecticut, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority and Serious Fraud Office to uncover and prosecute  the manipulation of the world’s most important interest rate by some of the largest banks in the world and their traders. LIBOR—also known as the London interbank offered rate—was calculated through the submissions of major banks, with LIBOR being a key component in trillions of dollars of loans and credit derivatives. Banks and their traders manipulated that rate by submitting intentionally high or low rates in order to benefit trading positions held by those banks. Seven banks paid over $3 billion in fines, a number of bank subsidiaries pled guilty, and sixteen individuals were convicted.

  Press Release: Two Former Deutsche Bank Traders Convicted for Role in Scheme to Manipulate a Critical Global Benchmark Interest Rate

• FX: NYO worked jointly with the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the New York Department of Financial Services, and the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority to prosecute major banks and their traders who colluded to fix prices and rig bids in the foreign exchange—or FX—markets. FX involved the buying and selling of one currency in exchange for another currency, and the volume of those markets was trillions of dollars a day. Instead of competing with one another in the FX markets, traders at different banks worked together to move price up or down, both in the interbank market—the market where banks traded with each other—and in customer facing trades. Five banks pled guilty at the parent level (with a sixth pleading guilty at the subsidiary level) and paid over $2.5 billion in fines. Three traders were convicted of criminal antitrust violations.

  Press Release: Five Major Banks Agree to Parent-Level Guilty Pleas

• Municipal Bonds:  Municipal Bonds, a/k/a “munibonds’ was the Division’s first modern-day criminal enforcement effort in a financial market.  The prosecutions, including four separate but related indictments charging both antitrust and fraud violations, focused mainly on contracts for the investment of money raised through the issuance of municipal bonds.  Due to relevant IRS regulations, these contracts were almost universally put out for competitive bidding in order to determine a fair market value, usually expressed at the interest rate, for the investment of those funds.  Working with the FBI, the IRS, the SEC, and eventually the Federal Reserve Bank, and the OCC, the Division ultimately successfully convicted 17 individuals and one company for rigging or manipulating the bidding for the investment contracts.  In addition, together with the SEC and a working group of state Attorneys General, the Division was instrumental in the recovery from five major financial entities of approximately $750 million in restitution for the state and local governments and quasi-governmental entities which had been victimized by a series of long-running schemes. 

  Press Release: Former Bank of America Executive Sentenced to Serve 26 Months in Prison for Role in Conspiracy and Fraud Involving Investment Contracts for Municipal Bond Proceeds

• Environmental Services:  The Environmental Services investigation, also known as the Federal Creosote or Superfund investigation, was a criminal probe into kickbacks and major fraud on subcontracts for the remediation of toxic waste sites in New Jersey.  The investigation resulted in charges against ten individuals and three companies, including for anti-kickback act, money laundering, major fraud, obstruction and tax charges.  The case resulted in significant incarceratory sentences for each of the co-conspirators, including a 168-month sentence that was the longest jail term ever imposed involving an antitrust crime in a multi-count indictment, as well as over $6 million in criminal fines and restitution. It also resulted in the first extradition of a foreign national from Canada on antitrust-related charges, and second ever extradited to the US on antitrust-related charges.

  Press Release: Former CEO of Canadian Hazardous Waste Treatment Company Sentenced to Serve 63 Months in Prison for Role in Kickback and Fraud Schemes Against the United States

• Insulation:  NYO worked jointly with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Connecticut to uncover and prosecute a long-running bid-rigging conspiracy among several Connecticut-based insulation contracting firms and their executives. By exploiting covert opportunities, executing multiple search warrants on businesses, online accounts, and phones, and by flipping multiple co-conspirators, the team developed overwhelming evidence of collusion and fraud.  The team secured the guilty pleas of six individuals and three insulation companies. All six individual defendants received incarceratory sentences. In addition, by tracing the defendants’ financial and property ownership records, the team recovered over $7 million in seizures, $4 million of which was forfeited and ultimately used to pay restitution to the victim project owners.

  Press Release: Insulation Contracting Firm Co-Owner Sentenced to Fifteen Months in Prison and Ordered to Pay more than $1 Million to Victims of Bid Rigging and Fraud

• United States v. Marshak: NYO worked jointly with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Connecticut to prosecute Yuval Marshak, an Israel-based defense contractor, for his role in a scheme to defraud the Department of Defense’s Foreign Military Funding program.  Marshak defrauded the multi-billion dollar program through a complex scheme designed to obscure that he had rigged bids and paid unlawful commissions in connection with several FMF-funded projects.  The team collected evidence from all over the world and coordinated simultaneous premises searches in both the United States and Israel with partners from the Israeli Ministry of Justice.  After waiving extradition and pleading guilty to multiple fraud counts, Marshak was sentenced to 30 months’ imprisonment.

  Press Release: Israeli Executive Sentenced to Prison for Defrauding the Foreign Military Financing Program