Steven Peikin is an American lawyer, who began his career as a prosecutor and later transitioned to

white collar White collar may refer to: * White-collar worker, a salaried professional or an educated worker who performs semi-professional office, administrative, and sales-coordination tasks, as opposed to a blue-collar worker, whose job requires manual labor ...

criminal defense for the law firm

Sullivan & Cromwell Sullivan & Cromwell LLP is an American multinational law firm headquartered in New York City. Known as a white-shoe firm, Sullivan & Cromwell is recognized as a leader in business law, and is known for its impact on international affairs, such a ...

, where he was Managing Partner. On June 8, 2017 he was appointed as co-director of the

Securities and Exchange Commission The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government, created in the aftermath of the Wall Street Crash of 1929. The primary purpose of the SEC is to enforce the law against mark ...

(SEC) Enforcement Division, a title he shares with Stephanie Avakian. The division is responsible for overseeing investigations into misconduct in the financial markets and brings civil suits against those who have committed

fraud In law, fraud is intentional deception to secure unfair or unlawful gain, or to deprive a victim of a legal right. Fraud can violate civil law (e.g., a fraud victim may sue the fraud perpetrator to avoid the fraud or recover monetary compen ...

or other financial crimes.

Education

Peikin majored in history while an undergraduate at

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Sta ...

(class of 1988) and earned a J.D. degree from

Harvard Law School Harvard Law School (Harvard Law or HLS) is the law school of Harvard University, a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest continuously operating law school in the United States. Each class ...

(class of 1991), both ''

magna cum laude Latin honors are a system of Latin phrases used in some colleges and universities to indicate the level of distinction with which an academic degree has been earned. The system is primarily used in the United States. It is also used in some So ...

''.

Career

From 1996 to 2004, Peikin served as an assistant U.S. attorney, overseeing the securities and commodities task force for the

Southern District of New York The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (in case citations, S.D.N.Y.) is a federal trial court whose geographic jurisdiction encompasses eight counties of New York State. Two of these are in New York City: New ...

. The group pursues crimes including accounting fraud, insider trading and

market manipulation In economics and finance, market manipulation is a type of market abuse where there is a deliberate attempt to interfere with the free and fair operation of the market; the most blatant of cases involve creating false or misleading appearan ...

. Among his cases that gathered the most media attention was his conviction of Frank Quattrone, although an appeals court later overturned that judgement. He also helped prosecute WorldCom Inc. Chief Executive

Bernard Ebbers Bernard John Ebbers (August 27, 1941 – February 2, 2020) was a Canadian businessman, the co-founder and CEO of WorldCom and a convicted fraudster. Under his management, WorldCom grew rapidly but collapsed in 2002 amid revelations of accounting ...

, who was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison for accounting fraud. Among his clients in private practice at Sullivan & Cromwell, Mr. Peikin has helped represent

Barclays Barclays () is a British multinational universal bank, headquartered in London, England. Barclays operates as two divisions, Barclays UK and Barclays International, supported by a service company, Barclays Execution Services. Barclays traces ...

against accusations of sanctions violations,

LIBOR The London Inter-Bank Offered Rate is an interest-rate average calculated from estimates submitted by the leading banks in London. Each bank estimates what it would be charged were it to borrow from other banks. The resulting average rate is u ...

manipulation and

insider trading Insider trading is the trading of a public company's stock or other securities (such as bonds or stock options) based on material, nonpublic information about the company. In various countries, some kinds of trading based on insider informati ...

and

Goldman Sachs Group Goldman Sachs () is an American multinational investment bank and financial services company. Founded in 1869, Goldman Sachs is headquartered at 200 West Street in Lower Manhattan, with regional headquarters in London, Warsaw, Bangalore, Hong ...

, during a

U.S. Senate The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States. The composition and powe ...

investigation of its trading and warehousing of

aluminum Aluminium (aluminum in American and Canadian English) is a chemical element with the symbol Al and atomic number 13. Aluminium has a density lower than those of other common metals, at approximately one third that of steel. It h ...

and other commodities. In 2015, he represented Michael Coscia, a high-frequency trader convicted of " spoofing," in the first-of-its-kind prosecution by the government. Spoofing had been made illegal by the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act. The SEC's ethics rules bar Peikin from supervising any cases that affect Goldman or other clients of Sullivan & Cromwell for one year. As co-chair of the division, he has cited

cybercrime A cybercrime is a crime that involves a computer or a computer network.Moore, R. (2005) "Cyber crime: Investigating High-Technology Computer Crime," Cleveland, Mississippi: Anderson Publishing. The computer may have been used in committing t ...

as one of the biggest threats to the financial markets and an enforcement priority of the agency. As co-head of enforcement, Peikin has some latitude in setting enforcement and prosecution direction for the agency.

References

American lawyers Living people Sullivan & Cromwell partners Yale University alumni Harvard Law School alumni Year of birth missing (living people) U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission personnel {{US-law-bio-stub