U.S. Attorney in Bear Case Promoted
By AMIR EFRATI
July 18, 2008
John Nathanson, one of the federal prosecutors handling the securities-fraud case against two former Bear Stearns Cos. hedge-fund managers, is being promoted to a supervisory position in the U.S. attorney's office in Brooklyn, N.Y.
Mr. Nathanson, who is currently in the office's business and securities-fraud unit, will help oversee about 30 assistant U.S. attorneys in the general-crimes unit, where new prosecutors begin their career, effective Monday. The 41-year-old Baltimore native also is handling the appeal of stock trader Anthony Elgindy and former FBI agent Jeffrey Royer, who were convicted in 2005 on insider-trading charges.
Before becoming an assistant U.S. attorney, Mr. Nathanson spent three years as a prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney's office, where he was part of a team that handled a securities-fraud case against the brokerage arm of D.H. Blair & Co. and some of its executives, who pleaded guilty.
Before joining the government, he spent seven years at Manhattan law firm Rogers & Wells, which is now part of Clifford Chance LLP, where in the late 1990s he helped defend Merrill Lynch & Co. in civil and regulatory matters for the bank's role in a copper-market-manipulation scandal. The bank was fined by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission after being accused by the agency of financing and profiting from illegal trades by a rogue trader at Sumitomo Corp. |
