Douglas W. Sprague

Sprague came to Covington after several years as chief of the white-collar crime section and then the economic crimes section of the U.S. attorney’s office in San Francisco. With his firm since early 2015, he now is the co-chair of its technology industry group.

He enjoys the practice area because of the wide variety of cases. Issues range across corporate governance, accounting, alleged foreign corruption and fraud. “Rarely do you say, ‘Oh yeah, I just did this same type of investigation or just had these same issues.’”

The clients are just as varied, he said. He currently represents the former CEO and co-founder of a company that analyzed consumers’ intestinal microbiomes from their stool samples. The SEC and Department of Justice have accused the client of health care and securities fraud in parallel civil and criminal actions. Sprague is fighting prosecutors’ second attempt at criminal forfeiture. U.S. v. Apte, 3:21-cr-00116 (N.D. Cal., filed March 18, 2021).

Last year, he and his team secured an excellent victory for a company that makes “orphan drugs” to treat rare diseases. The company was charged with violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, but after more than five years of investigation, the Justice Department declined to prosecute. Further, the SEC accepted an administrative settlement under the FCPA’s accounting, not bribery, provisions, Sprague said.

In a high-profile case in Oregon, he represents the CFO of a defunct Portland private equity firm called Aequitas Management, which is accused of defrauding investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars. The SEC case settled last year, but the criminal case is still active. U.S. v. Jesenik, 3:20-cr-00228 (D. Ore., filed July 16, 2020).

Sprague has another source of variety in his practice that is uncommon among big firm partners. He accepts court appointments under the Criminal Justice Act to represent indigent defendants when the federal public defender has a conflict.

He has defended all kinds of cases from low-level drugs charges to felons in possession of guns to bank larceny. “I’m fortunate enough that at Covington we’re able to accept those appointments on a pro bono basis,” he said.

Separately, he also successfully represented two felons seeking compassionate early release from lengthy federal prison sentences. In one of the cases, he convinced a judge to cut his client’s drug sentence down from 360 months to 262 months. He appealed that ruling and won a further reduction to 204 months. U.S. v. Bolden, 19-12810 (11th Cir., April 7, 2021).

“I’m thrilled to say that Mr. Bolden is scheduled to be released” in early December, Sprague said.

- Don DeBenedictis