Terree A. Bowers

Bowers leads the West Coast white collar and investigations practice at Arent Fox after having held posts as U.S. attorney for the Central District in the early 1990s and as chief deputy city attorney in Los Angeles from 2001 to 2005.

He brings to the job more than 40 years of experience in dealing with matters that arise under the False Claims Act; the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act; financial institution, securities and health care fraud statutes; unfair competition law; and Food and Drug Administration and Department of Labor issues. Bowers also has extensive experience in international criminal law, having served as the legal coordinator of the Yugoslavia War Crimes Tribunal, as an advisor for the Rwandan War Crimes Tribunal, as a consultant for attorneys from Sudan, Afghanistan and Haiti and as counsel for a war crimes suspect in Kosovo.

From his ex-prosecutor’s viewpoint, a new Biden administration is likely to bring a shift in emphasis in criminal enforcement, he said. “Civil rights prosecutions traditionally increase in Democratic administrations. And after this election, everything associated with voter rights will get scrutiny. I hope we can get our elections systems in better shape. At the same time, certain priorities always remain: health care fraud, elder fraud, internet and telemarketing fraud, and there’s a potential for antitrust enforcement to get stricter.”

Bowers represented the board of directors of Pacific College, a nursing school, in a criminal investigation by the FBI and the Department of Education over alleged education benefits fraud. The school’s survival was at stake, because the U.S. attorney’s office’s asset forfeiture section was extremely aggressive and placed the college on the verge of bankruptcy, he said. U.S. v. 2,796,029.91 USD, 8:18-cv-00798 (C.D. Cal., filed May 7, 2018).

After the investigation had languished for more than a year, the defendants agreed to have Bowers approach the Central District’s U.S. attorney and the chief of the criminal division to protest the delays and contend that significant evidence to support the allegations was lacking. His letter of argument against the seizure and seeking an end to the litigation worked. Several weeks after he wrote it, the prosecutors closed the investigation with no criminal charges and began returning the seized assets—in time to save the school from closure.

“I was brought in late in the case to represent the board,” Bowers said. “It wasn’t easy to convince the FBI to back off. But I showed the U.S. attorney that the investigators had mistakenly viewed certain test scores as evidence of grade inflation.” He said saving the school was critical to maintaining a supply of trained health care workers just in time for their critical work as Covid-19 arrived.

— John Roemer