DOJ spoofing cop who led JPMorgan case exits for private firm

Bloomberg News

(Bloomberg) — The Justice Department official who oversaw market-rigging cases against traders from global banks including JPMorgan Chase & Co and Deutsche Bank AG has left to join a private law firm.

Avi Perry, 40, joined Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan as a partner co-chairing securities litigation as well as a new practice group focused on commodities and derivatives. For the past two years, Perry has run the fraud section's market integrity and major frauds unit in Washington. He supervised about 45 prosecutors while also serving as the lead trial lawyer on a case that led to the conviction of JPMorgan's former head of the precious metals desk for manipulating the gold futures market. 

"During my nine years in the department, I tried hard to be an aggressive advocate for the people of the United States, and to expand the boundaries of white-collar criminal enforcement," Perry said.  

Anna Kaminska, principal deputy of the unit, has been named acting chief. Kaminska joined the fraud section in 2013 from the law firm Proskauer Rose.Since 2020, Perry's unit doubled the number of individuals convicted from around 50 to more than 100, according to the fraud section's year-in-review report. In 2022, the unit charged 100 individuals and secured convictions of 107 through either trials or guilty pleas.

Perry joined the fraud section after spending four years as an assistant US attorney in Connecticut. He earned a reputation among white-collar lawyers as one of the bolder prosecutors in the Washington office — willing to push for cases that would likely go to trial and didn't guarantee a victory.

Spoofing Convictions

Using Wall Street informants alongside trading data from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Perry and his team of investigators assembled a massive case against JPMorgan, which in 2020 paid more than $920 million in penalties to resolve allegations of market rigging for precious metals and Treasuries futures. Perry's team alleged that the traders rigged futures through spoofing, which involves planting fake orders to steer others into buying or selling at prices that favor the bank.

Prosecutors secured guilty pleas from two former JPMorgan traders and brought charges against three others, including its head of the global precious metals desk, Michael Nowak, as well as a hedge fund salesman at the bank. After trials in Chicago last year, the three traders were convicted on spoofing, fraud and market manipulation charges. They have filed appeals. The jury acquitted the salesman.  

Perry played a key role in shepherding the use of data analytics for market manipulation cases. Vast government databases previously had been successfully used to prosecute health-care fraud. Perry's team used similar techniques in the spoofing cases and more recently in ongoing investigations into improper stock sales by corporate executives.At Quinn, Perry will join his former Justice Department supervisor, Robert Zink, who now specializes in corporate and white-collar defense.

"Avi's trial experience and his deep knowledge of financial markets are a perfect fit for the high stakes matters we specialize in," William Burck, global co-managing partner of the firm, said in a statement.