White Collar Crime News

NJ US Attorney Paul Fishman discusses his office’s priorities March 17, 2010

Last night, I had the pleasure of attending the New Jersey State Bar Association Criminal Practice meeting with special guest, Paul Fishman who is the US Attorney for the District of New Jersey. I found him to be a real nice guy who seems to have a practical and realistic approach to his job. It was no surprise that the focus of his office will be on frauds involving mortgages, finances, and securities. He also wants to reorganize his office to focus on health care fraud; which is likely in anticipation of a wave of health care fraud in the next few years due to the current state of politics.

 Since the new State Attorney General of New Jersey, Paula Dow, is a friend and former co-worker, he expects to have a good working relationship between the two offices. He also demonstrated that he is clearly up on the latest trends as he mentioned that our country must also focus protecting our cyber infrastructure instead of just focusing on physical infrastructure.

I also was happy to hear that he would be forming an ad hoc group of defense attorneys and others to discuss the “system”, i.e. how his office is doing and how it can serve the defense bar better, vice versa and how they can both work together to attempt to improve the court system.

Another attorney asked his opinion about whether or not a civil attorney should seek assistance from a criminal defense attorney with experience in white collar crime if they are representing a company that receives a subpoena from his office. He said that it was a mistake for that civil attorney to not seek guidance from someone with experience. In fact, he suggested that this be done sooner rather than later. Took the words right out of my mouth!

I certainly enjoy working with his office. In fact, I just had a meeting with one of his assistant US attorneys a few minutes ago. So, I look forward to watching his progress in his office and I hope that he continues to do new things like that ad hoc group that will benefit everyone.