Samuel A. Josephs

Los Angeles

Since leaving the federal public defender's office in 2015, Samuel A. Josephs has carved a niche for himself as a leading member of the white-collar defense bar. This past year, he achieved a complete acquittal on all counts in the high-profile FIFA bribery prosecution in the Eastern District of New York.

This case was particularly challenging due to its massive scale, cross-border nature, and the complexity of the charges, which included honest services fraud, Josephs said.

He represented the former President of Fox Sports Latin America, which was a part of the broader FIFA soccer bribery investigation.

"The case involved millions of pages of discovery; witnesses from all over the world (including companies and executives based here in Southern California); a multiyear conspiracy charge that turned on a complicated set of facts due to the numerous entities and shell companies implicated; and it was the culmination of an investigation that lasted over a decade by multiple law enforcement agencies around the world and in which the most culpable defendant eventually cooperated against numerous other less culpable individuals," Josephs said.

Josephs said one challenge was convincing the judge not to be bound by her prior pretrial and trial rulings from an earlier proceeding involving a different set of defendants. A subsequent challenge came in the first week of trial when the lead cooperator tailored his testimony to the arguments we made in his opening statement.

"We filed a motion requesting an evidentiary hearing and seeking a mistrial," Josephs said. "As a result, we learned that the cooperator's lawyer had given him the trial transcripts from the opening and communicated certain key aspects of the opening to him in preparation for his testimony. After subpoenaing the lawyer to testify, we secured a stipulation from the government that highlighted key inconsistencies by the cooperator and that led the jury to discredit his testimony."

He shared his insight on emergent trends within white-collar defense, specifically regarding the DOJ.

"The Department of Justice is threatening securities fraud prosecutions based on novel theories against short sellers who publish reports that contain no false statements," Spertus said. "It will be interesting to see whether the DOJ brings charges against any of these individuals."