Boyd Johnson, the Deputy U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, will join the New York office of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP, the law firm announced today.
Johnson perhaps is best known as the man who was in charge of investigating former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer.
He has been second in command to U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara since August 2009 and has been working for the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s office since 1999.
Johnson is expected to be replaced by Richard B. Zabel, according to The New York Times. Zabel has been leading the criminal division of the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s office since October 2009.
In 2008, Johnson was head of the public corruption unit when it investigated Spitzer for his ties to a prostitution ring. The investigation led to Spitzer’s resignation later that year.
As Deputy U.S. Attorney, Johnson also oversaw civil forfeiture proceedings related to the Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, which resulted in $20 billion in losses to investors. Zabel had recused himself from the Madoff investigation because his father, New York estate lawyer William Zabel, had represented investor Jeffry Picower, who received $7 billion from the Madoff fraud and was at one point under investigation by the SDNY.
Picower died in 2009, leaving the question of how he came to be the biggest beneficiary of the Madoff scheme unresolved. The elder Zabel negotiated a settlement for his widow that returned $7.2 billion to investors in the largest single forfeiture in U.S. history.
Zabel worked in the U.S. Attorney’s office for eight years in the 1990s, prosecuting cases involving securities fraud, obstruction of justice, racketeering, firearms and drug. He was later a partner at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP.
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