The United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida is the United States Attorney responsible for representing the federal government in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida.
United States attorneys represent the United States federal government in United States district courts and United States courts of appeals.
The federal government of the United States is the national government of the United States, a federal republic in North America, composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, and several island possessions. The federal government is composed of three distinct branches: legislative, executive, and judicial, whose powers are vested by the U.S. Constitution in the Congress, the president, and the federal courts, respectively. The powers and duties of these branches are further defined by acts of congress, including the creation of executive departments and courts inferior to the Supreme Court.
The United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida is the federal United States district court with territorial jurisdiction over the southern part of the state of Florida.
The Southern District of Florida encompasses a geographical area of about 15,197 square miles (39,360 km2) extending south to Key West, north to Sebastian and west to Sebring. The Southern District includes the counties of Miami-Dade, Broward, Monroe, Palm Beach, Martin, St. Lucie, Indian River, Okeechobee and Highlands.
Sebastian is a city in Indian River County, Florida, United States. In 2010, the population recorded by the U.S. Census Bureau was 21,929.
Sebring is a city in Highlands County, Florida, United States, nicknamed "The City on the Circle", in reference to Circle Drive, the center of the Sebring Downtown Historic District. As of the 2010 census the population was 10,491. It is the county seat of Highlands County, and is the principal city of the Sebring Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Miami-Dade County is a county in the southeastern part of the U.S. state of Florida. It is the southeasternmost county on the U.S. mainland. According to a 2017 census report, the county had a population of 2,751,796, making it the most populous county in Florida and the seventh-most populous county in the United States. It is also Florida's third largest county in terms of land area, with 1,946 square miles (5,040 km2). The county seat is Miami, the principal city in South Florida.
The United States Attorney's Office has a staff of approximately 233 Assistant United States Attorneys and 227 support personnel. The main office is located in Miami, Florida, with three staffed branch offices located in Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach and Fort Pierce and one unstaffed branch office located in Key West. There is also a High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) office in West Miami-Dade and a Health Care Fraud Facility in Miramar.
Fort Lauderdale is a city in the U.S. state of Florida, 28 miles (45 km) north of Miami. It is the county seat of Broward County. As of the 2017 census, the city has an estimated population of 180,072. Fort Lauderdale is a principal city of the Miami metropolitan area, which was home to an estimated 6,158,824 people in 2017.
West Palm Beach is a city in and the county seat of Palm Beach County, Florida, United States. It is located immediately to the west of the adjacent Palm Beach, which is situated on a barrier island across the Lake Worth Lagoon. The population was 99,919 at the 2010 census. West Palm Beach is a principal city of the Miami metropolitan area, which was home to an estimated 6,158,824 people in 2017.
Fort Pierce is a city in and the county seat of St. Lucie County, Florida, United States. The city is part of the Treasure Coast region of Atlantic Coast Florida. It is also known as the Sunrise City, sister to San Francisco, California, the Sunset City. The population was 41,590 at the 2010 census. As of 2012, the population recorded by the U.S. Census Bureau was 42,645. It was named after the Fort Pierce Army post which was built nearby in 1838 during the Second Seminole War. The military post had been named for Benjamin Kendrick Pierce, a career United States Army officer and the brother of President Franklin Pierce.
The United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida is the United States Attorney responsible for representing the federal government in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida. The current United States Attorney is Ariana Fajardo Orshan. [1]
Ariana Fajardo Orshan is an American lawyer who currently serves as the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida. She was previously a Judge of the Eleventh Judicial Circuit Court of Florida.
Organizational structure
The United States Attorney for Southern District of Florida is the chief law enforcement officer in the district and is organized as follows: Executive Division, Administrative Division, Appellate Division, Civil Division, Asset Forfeiture Division, Criminal Division (consisting of the Economic & Environmental Crimes Section, Major Crimes Section, Narcotics Section, Public Integrity and National Security Section. In addition to the Miami office, there are staffed branch offices in Ft. Lauderdale, West Palm Beach and Ft. Pierce, and an unstaffed office in Key West. A general description of the office departments are as follows:
Administrative Division
The Administrative Division provides administrative services and logistical support relating to financial management, personnel management, procurement, management information systems, telecommunications, space and security.
Appellate Division
The Appellate Division provides advice and assistance to the litigation sections in appellate matters, prepares and reviews memoranda and briefs for the entire District, and argues cases before the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals.
Asset Forfeiture Division
The Asset Forfeiture Division was established in 1993 as an independent Division, overseeing all criminal and civil forfeiture related litigation in the Southern District of Florida. The mission of the Asset Forfeiture Division is to promote, facilitate and enforce compliance with the laws of the United States using criminal and civil forfeiture to disrupt and deter criminal activity, to dismantle criminal enterprises and to separate criminals and their associates from the profits of their illegal activities.
Assistant United States Attorneys assigned to the Asset Forfeiture Division handle all civil forfeiture matters in the District; handle and assist Criminal Division Assistant United States Attorneys with forfeiture related issues in criminal prosecutions and have overall responsibility for all issues involving all asset forfeiture including investigations, seizures and final disposition of assets. The District emphasizes criminal forfeiture and is consistently among the top districts nationwide in judicial forfeiture recoveries and Asset Forfeiture Fund deposits. Forfeited funds are used, as permitted by federal law, to support federal, state and local law enforcement activities and, in appropriate cases, to provide full or partial restoration to victims of criminal activity.
Civil Division
The Civil Division defends the interests of the United States from suits alleging statutory torts, constitutional torts, employment discrimination, and a myriad of other claims. The Civil Division also prosecutes cases for fraud and other violations of federal laws, and is responsible for collecting monies owed to the government as a result of criminal fines, defaulted student loans, mortgage foreclosures, bond forfeitures and civil judgments. The division's civil rights enforcement program investigates and litigates cases involving discrimination in the areas of housing, public employment, disability, voting and education.
Economic & Environmental Crimes Section
The Economic & Environmental Crimes Section investigates and prosecutes violations of Federal statutes dealing with white collar offenses, such as violations of mail and wire fraud statutes; securities laws; the Federal Corrupt Practices Act; false statement and claim statutes; provisions designed to protect banking institutions from fraud and misapplications; criminal statutes relating to the administration of the National Bankruptcy Act; tax cases; and a host of other anti fraud statutes. The section also investigates and prosecutes criminal violations of the environmental and wildlife protection laws throughout the District, including the prosecution of traditional polluters who violate standards with respect to the air, lands and waters, as well as non-traditional offenses such as the dumping of solid and plastic wastes by the maritime industry and providing law enforcement support in the extensive National Parklands and Wildlife Refuges within the District. A significant portion of resources is directed to enforcement of wildlife protection measures such as the Endangered Species Act, Lacey Act and Marine Mammal Protection Act, for violations ranging from habitat destruction to the illicit international trade in threatened and endangered species.
Executive Division
The Executive Division directs the litigation, operations and administration of the entire district.
Major Crimes Section
The Major Crimes Section is responsible for prosecuting reactive federal crimes that occur in Dade and Monroe counties, as well as conducting short-term investigations. The majority of the cases involve violations of the following categories: (1) government operations and property (attacks on Federal officers, theft of government property, counterfeiting, postal offenses, social security fraud, forged Treasury checks); (2) channels of interstate commerce (aircraft hijacking, interference with flight crew, transportation of stolen property, failure to file currency reporting forms when traveling in or out of the United States, and trafficking in stolen and counterfeit securities and credit cards); (3) legal process (bond jumps, obstruction of justice, false statements to federal agents); (4) violent crimes (kidnapping, extortion and armed robbery under the Hobbs Act; bank robbery; carjacking; and illegal possession of firearms); (5) crimes against women, children and families, (including stalking cases under the Violence Against Women Act, enforcement of the Child Support Recovery Act, child pornography, and rape occurring on the high seas); (6) immigration offenses; (7) narcotics violations (importation of narcotics via Miami International Airport, the Port of Miami, and air drops at sea, and marijuana grow houses); and (8) crimes that take place in a location where the United States has exclusive jurisdiction.
Narcotics Section
The Narcotics Section investigates and prosecutes violations of Federal statutes relating to high-level drug traffickers and other major representatives of drug trafficking organizations. The Section is also responsible for the supervision of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF) and the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) programs.
Public Integrity & National Security Section
The Public Integrity and National Security Section investigates and prosecutes crimes relating to the safety and integrity of the public. From a security standpoint, all international and domestic terrorism related matters are handled in the section including material support and financing cases as well as matters involving the illegal export of military and regulated mixed use technology items. The section also works to enhance public integrity by investigating and prosecuting Federal, state and local officials for violations of federal statutes covering bribery, graft, conflict of interest, embezzlement, and extortion. Civil Rights statutes are also vigorously enforced by the section as well as other federal laws protecting the public from incidents of racial or other animus-based violence, involuntary servitude and other misconduct done under the color of law.
The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, commonly referred to as the RICO Act or simply RICO, is a United States federal law that provides for extended criminal penalties and a civil cause of action for acts performed as part of an ongoing criminal organization. The RICO Act focuses specifically on racketeering and allows the leaders of a syndicate to be tried for the crimes they ordered others to do or assisted them in doing, closing a perceived loophole that allowed a person who instructed someone else to, for example, murder, to be exempt from the trial because they did not actually commit the crime personally.
The United States Attorney for the Northern District of California is the United States Attorney responsible for representing the federal government in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.
The State of New Hampshire Department of Justice (NHDOJ) is a government agency of the U.S. state of New Hampshire. The NHDOJ is under the executive direction of Attorney General Gordon MacDonald. The State of New Hampshire Department of Justice Building is located at 33 Capitol Street in Concord.
The United States Department of Justice Criminal Division is a federal agency of the United States Department of Justice that develops, enforces, and supervises the application of all federal criminal laws in the United States, except those specifically assigned to other divisions. Criminal Division attorneys prosecute many nationally significant cases and formulate and implement criminal enforcement policy. Division attorneys also provide advice and guidance to the Attorney General of the United States, the United States Congress, and the White House on matters of criminal law.
Asset forfeiture or asset seizure is a form of confiscation of assets by the state. In the United States, it is a type of criminal justice financial obligation. It typically applies to the alleged proceeds or instruments of crime. This applies, but is not limited, to terrorist activities, drug related crimes, and other criminal and even civil offenses. Some jurisdictions specifically use the term "confiscation" instead of forfeiture. The alleged purpose of asset forfeiture is to disrupt criminal activity by confiscating assets that potentially could have been beneficial to the individual or organization.
The Office of the Missouri Attorney General was created in 1806 when Missouri was part of the Louisiana Territory. Missouri's first Constitution in 1820 provided for an appointed Attorney General, but since the 1865 Constitution, the Attorney General has been elected. As of January 2019, there have been 43 attorneys general in Missouri. Eric Schmitt was appointed to become the 43rd Attorney General in January 2019 filling the mid-term vacancy created by Josh Hawley's election to the United States Senate.
Internal Revenue Service, Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) investigates potential criminal violations of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code and related financial crimes in a manner intended to foster confidence in the tax system and deter violations of tax law. While other federal agencies also have investigative jurisdiction for money laundering and some bank secrecy act violations, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is the only federal agency that can investigate potential criminal violations of the Internal Revenue Code.
In the United States, a federal crime or federal offense is an act that is made illegal by U.S. federal legislation. Prosecution happens at both the federal and the state levels and so a "federal crime" is one that is prosecuted under federal criminal law and not under state criminal law under which most of the crimes committed in the United States are prosecuted.
The California Department of Justice is both a statewide investigative law enforcement agency and state legal department in the California executive branch under the elected leadership of the California Attorney General (AG) which carries out complex criminal & civil investigations, prosecutions, and other legal services throughout the state.
The Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009, or FERA, Pub.L. 111–21, S. 386, 123 Stat. 1617, enacted May 20, 2009, is a public law in the United States enacted in 2009. The law enhanced criminal enforcement of federal fraud laws, especially regarding financial institutions, mortgage fraud, and securities fraud or commodities fraud.
The Continuing Criminal Enterprise Statute is a United States federal law that targets large-scale drug traffickers who are responsible for long-term and elaborate drug conspiracies. Unlike the RICO Act, which covers a wide range of organized crime enterprises, the CCE statute covers only major narcotics organizations. CCE is codified as Chapter 13 of Title 21 of the United States Code, 21 U.S.C. § 848. The statute makes it a federal crime to commit or conspire to commit a continuing series of felony violations of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970 when such acts are taken in concert with five or more other persons. For conviction under this statute, the offender must have been an organizer, manager, or supervisor of the continuing operation and have obtained substantial income or resources from the drug violations.
The Cook County State's Attorney functions as the State of Illinois's district attorney for Cook County, Illinois, and heads the second largest prosecutor's office in the United States. The office has nearly 900 attorneys and 1,600 employees, and has an annual operating budget of approximately $131 million for fiscal year 2010. In addition to direct criminal prosecution, the State’s Attorney’s Office files legal actions to enforce child support orders, protect consumers and the elderly from exploitation, and assist thousands of victims of domestic violence every year.
Kathleen Mary Williams is United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida. She previously served as the Federal Public Defender for the Southern District of Florida.
Wifredo A. "Willy" Ferrer is the former United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida. He was nominated on February 24, 2010 by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the Senate on April 22, 2010. He was sworn in on July 16, 2010 in Miami, Florida. As United States Attorney, he was the chief federal law enforcement officer for the District. Ferrer is currently the Chair of Holland & Knight's Global Compliance and Investigations Team.
The Office of the Attorney General (OAG) is an agency of the Oklahoma state government that is headed by the Attorney General of Oklahoma. The OAG is responsible for supervising the administration of justice across the State, providing legal assistance to the State government, and prosecuting violators of State law.
The San Diego County District Attorney is the elected district attorney for San Diego County, California. This office is responsible for the prosecution of both felony and misdemeanor violations of California state law that occur within the jurisdiction of San Diego County, California. Courts within their jurisdiction includes the San Diego Superior Court, the California Court of Appeal for the Fourth District, and the California Supreme Court. Federal law violations are prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of California. The current District Attorney is Summer Stephan, who replaced Bonnie Dumanis on an interim basis after the latter resigned in July 2017.
The Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984 was the first comprehensive revision of the U.S. criminal code since the early 1900s. It was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan. Among its constituent parts and provisions were:
Alejandro N. Mayorkas is a Cuban-American lawyer who served as the Deputy Secretary of the United States Department of Homeland Security from Dec. 23, 2013 to Oct. 31, 2016. He is a partner in the law firm of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr ("WilmerHale"), joining the firm on Nov. 1, 2016. Mayorkas practices in the areas of civil and criminal litigation, internal investigations, cybersecurity, crisis management and strategic counseling. Mayorkas has received numerous awards and recognition from law enforcement, community and media organizations. In 2008, the National Law Journal named Mayorkas one of the "50 Most Influential Minority Lawyers in America." In 2011, Latino Leaders Magazine named him one of the 101 most influential leaders in the nation's Latino community.
The Criminal Investigations Division conducts investigations in support of the department's civil, criminal, and administrative cases. These investigations involve such areas as homeland security; Internet crimes against children; high technology computer crimes; drug nuisance abatement; environmental crimes; tobacco tax enforcement; airport, harbors, and highways; cold homicide cases; and other criminal and civil matters.
Civil forfeiture in the United States, also called civil asset forfeiture or civil judicial forfeiture or occasionally civil seizure, is a criminal justice financial obligation. It is a legal process in which law enforcement officers take assets from persons suspected of involvement with crime or illegal activity without necessarily charging the owners with wrongdoing. While civil procedure, as opposed to criminal procedure, generally involves a dispute between two private citizens, civil forfeiture involves a dispute between law enforcement and property such as a pile of cash or a house or a boat, such that the thing is suspected of being involved in a crime. To get back the seized property, owners must prove it was not involved in criminal activity. Sometimes it can mean a threat to seize property as well as the act of seizure itself.
