WHITNEY Z. BERNSTEIN

SAN CLEMENTE - Whitney Z. Bernstein joined the trial boutique Bienert Katzman Littrell Williams LLP in 2018 and made partner in 2020. Her practice is focused on white collar criminal defense, appeals and business litigation. She formerly worked as a federal public defender in San Diego and as a trial attorney for the Brooklyn, N.Y., Defender Services.

"I always wanted to be a defense lawyer and hold the government accountable," said Bernstein, whose mother is a public defender and whose father and brother are lawyers. "I grew up with a healthy skepticism about government authority."

At the same time she was studying law, Bernstein worked on a master's degree in criminology. "Law school is wildly untethered to the actual practice of law, and I wanted to stay tethered to the realm of criminal law," she said. "That criminology degree helps when we stand back and think about the government's purported goals in imposing sentences: punishment, deterrence, rehabilitation and retribution. I'm very interested in how deeply flawed our penal system is. We put people in a cage and expect them to come out better, and it doesn't work."

In a lengthy prosecution of first impression under the CAN-SPAM Act, a 2003 law limiting unsolicited commercial email, Bernstein represented an employee of a global digital advertising firm, one of four defendants. All were charged with conspiracy, wire fraud and electronic mail fraud for having allegedly taken large blocks of internet protocol addresses registered to others for use in large-scale spam campaigns. U.S. v. Bychak et al., 3:18-cr-04683 (S.D. Cal., filed Oct. 31, 2018).

"The government investigated this case beginning in 2013 and claimed fraud losses worth $70 million," Bernstein said. Also, her client, Mohammed Abdul Qayyum, is a noncitizen. "He faced unbelievable collateral consequences, including removal." Bernstein achieved a global misdemeanor settlement involving no jail time that allows Qayyum to remain in the U.S. and negotiated a loss figure of $9,700 for her client.

"There's a real question whether IP addresses qualify as property," Bernstein said.

Meanwhile, she's preparing for a retrial for client James Larkin, one of the defendants in the Backpage.com prostitution and money laundering prosecution that ended in a mistrial last year. "The government knows that it can't prove its case against our client, so it instead tried to manipulate the jury with heartbreaking and horrendous tales of uncharged child sex trafficking untethered to the case," Bernstein said. U.S. v. Lacey et al., 2:18-cr-0422 (D. Ariz., filed March 28, 2018).

"I have the ability to size up arguments and find pressure points in cases," Bernstein said. "I am a strong advocate."