The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government, created in the aftermath of the Wall Street Crash of 1929. The primary purpose of the SEC is to enforce the law against market manipulation.
The United States Secret Service is a federal law enforcement agency under the Department of Homeland Security charged with conducting criminal investigations and protecting U.S. political leaders, their families, and visiting heads of state or government. Until 2003, the Secret Service was part of the Department of the Treasury, as the agency was founded in 1865 to combat the then-widespread counterfeiting of U.S. currency.
Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP is a white-shoe, international law firm headquartered in New York City with 980 attorneys worldwide and offices in Washington, D.C., Northern California, London, Paris, Madrid, Hong Kong, Beijing, Tokyo, and São Paulo. The firm has consistently been recognized as a global leader in banking & financial services as well as in capital markets.
Peter Francis Tufo was the US Ambassador to Hungary from 1997 to 2001 and helped found the law firm Tufo, Johnston & Zuccotti in 1970.
Harris myCFO is the American wealth management unit of BMO Harris Bank serving high-net-worth individuals and families. In 2002, Harris acquired certain assets of myCFO, Inc., founded by James H. Clark, in a $30 million deal. Harris myCFO provides a variety of services including investment advisory and family office services. Harris myCFO managed over $18 billion in assets in 2011 and Forbes ranked the company seventh on a list of top fee-only investment advisors.
Orlando Joseph Jett is an American former securities trader, known for his role in the Kidder Peabody trading loss in 1994. At the time of the loss it was the largest trading fraud in history.
Linda Chatman Thomsen was the director of the Division of Enforcement for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission from 2005 until early 2009. Since arriving at the SEC in 1995, she worked under four SEC Chairmen: Arthur Levitt, Harvey Pitt, William H. Donaldson, and Christopher Cox. William Donaldson named her director of the Division of Enforcement on May 12, 2005. She is the first woman to serve as director of the Division of Enforcement. Thomsen is known for her role in the suits by the SEC against Enron and Martha Stewart, and for not having investigated Bernard Madoff. She succeeded Stephen M. Cutler. She is now a senior counsel at Davis Polk & Wardwell.
Paul S. Atkins is CEO of Patomak Global Partners LLC, which provides consulting services regarding financial services industry matters, including regulatory compliance, risk and crisis management, public affairs, independent reviews, litigation support, and strategy. He also serves as an independent director and non-executive chairman of the board of BATS Global Markets, Inc., a leading operator of electronic U.S. and European securities markets trading listed cash equity securities and equity options.
Charles E. F. Millard is the former Director of the United States Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. Currently a senior advisor for Amundi Pioneer, Millard is also a consultant/advisor for multiple companies through Cardinal Advisors LLC, and serves on the Board of Directors of Ross Corporate Services, a UK-based pension services firm. Previously Millard was Managing Director in charge of Pension Relations with Citigroup. He has also been an advisor for McKinsey, AQR Capital, and the Kiski Group.
Marc Stuart Dreier is a former American lawyer who was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison in 2009 for committing investment fraud using a Ponzi scheme. He is scheduled to be released from FCI Sandstone on October 26, 2026. On May 11, 2009, he pleaded guilty in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York to eight charges of fraud, which included one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud and wire fraud, one count of money laundering, one count of securities fraud, and five counts of wire fraud in a scheme to sell more than $950 million in fictitious promissory notes. Civil charges, filed in December 2008 by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, are pending. The 2011 documentary Unraveled states that "Drier stole over $740 million from 4 clients, 4 individuals, and 13 hedge funds".
The Madoff investment scandal was a major case of stock and securities fraud discovered in late 2008. In December of that year, Bernie Madoff, the former NASDAQ chairman and founder of the Wall Street firm Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, admitted that the wealth management arm of his business was an elaborate multi-billion-dollar Ponzi scheme.
Cyrus Roberts Vance Jr. is an American attorney and politician who served as the District Attorney of New York County, New York, also known as the Manhattan District Attorney. He was previously a principal partner at the law firm of Morvillo, Abramowitz, Grand, Iason, Anello, & Bohrer, P.C. He is the son of Cyrus Vance Sr., former Secretary of State under President Jimmy Carter. Vance did not seek reelection as District Attorney in the 2021 election with Alvin Bragg succeeding him.
Robert S. Khuzami was the Deputy U.S. Attorney for the United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York until March 22, 2019. He previously was a United States federal prosecutor and Assistant United States Attorney for the office, and a former director of the Division of Enforcement of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. He was previously a partner at law firm Kirkland & Ellis. and general counsel of Deutsche Bank AG.
Gary J. Aguirre is an American lawyer, former investigator with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and whistleblower.
David Paul Weber is an American criminalist, and the former Assistant Inspector General for Investigations at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Weber was a whistleblower who reported allegations about foreign espionage against the stock exchanges, and misconduct in the Bernard L. Madoff and R. Allen Stanford Ponzi scheme investigations. In June 2013, the SEC settled with Weber his whistleblower protection and U.S. District Court lawsuits, paying him one of the largest federal employee whistleblower settlements ever. In 2014, In Bed with Wall Street author Larry Doyle named Weber as one of his "top 5 whistleblowers". On July 30, 2015, Weber was recognized by six United States Senators and one member of the House of Representatives at the First Congressional Celebration of National Whistleblower Appreciation Day. On August 5, 2021, Weber met with the President, Speaker of the House, and Senators at the signing of H.R. 3325, the awarding of the Congressional Gold Medal for those officers who lost their lives at the Capitol Insurrection, as he represents one of the deceased police officers and his widow. Weber is now a forensic accounting professor at the Perdue School, Salisbury University. As part of his teaching duties, he is a special investigator for the Maryland State's Attorneys Offices in two adjoining counties, and a Virginia financial crimes state prosecutor in the neighboring Virginia county. He supervises his students who act as intern investigators on financial crime cases.
Robert "Bob" J. Giuffra Jr. is an American attorney. He is Co-Chair and a partner of Sullivan & Cromwell in New York. He has served on Sullivan & Cromwell’s Management Committee since 2007.
T&M Protection Resources is an American private security, intelligence and investigations company headquartered in New York City, New York. The company has a subsidiary, T&M Israel, which maintains offices in Jerusalem, Beer-sheva, Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Ramat Gan, Israel.
Kai Falkenberg is an American lawyer, law professor and media executive, currently the general counsel at G/O Media. Previously, she served as Acting Commissioner and First Deputy Commissioner of the Mayor's Office of Media & Entertainment in New York City and was the editorial counsel at Forbes and a media and entertainment lawyer in private practice. She is a lecturer in law at Columbia Law School where she created and teaches the nation's first class on the Law and Regulation of Social Media.
Visium Asset Management LP was an American multi-strategy hedge fund. It began as a healthcare-focused hedge fund, founded in 2005 by Jacob Gottlieb. Visium controlled investment funds with about $8 billion of assets under management and had 170 employees at its peak in 2016. That year, three of the company's traders were indicted by United States federal authorities for securities fraud. One of the accused employees killed himself days after he was indicted. Visium subsequently liquidated several of its funds and wound down operations.
Mark Floyd Pomerantz is an American attorney. He is a member of the New York law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, generally referred to as Paul, Weiss. In February 2021, he left that firm to assist with the Manhattan District Attorney's investigation into the finances of former president Donald Trump until his resignation from the case in February 2022.
