May 21, 2012
Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP is pleased to announce that Avi Weitzman has joined the firm’s New York office as of counsel. Weitzman joins the firm from the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York where he was most recently a member of the Securities and Commodities Fraud Unit.
“We are pleased that Avi is joining the firm,” said Randy Mastro, Co-Chair of Gibson Dunn’s Litigation Practice Group. “His experience investigating and prosecuting complex criminal cases brings added depth to our white collar practice, which includes numerous former federal prosecutors.”
Weitzman served from 2005 through 2012 with the U.S. Attorney’s Office. As a member of the Securities and Commodities Fraud Task Force since 2010, Weitzman investigated and prosecuted a wide range of federal securities fraud offenses, and coordinated parallel civil proceedings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. He has handled white collar investigations and prosecutions related to securities fraud, insider trading, investment advisor fraud, market manipulation, hedge fund improprieties, bank and lender fraud, Ponzi schemes, insurance fraud, commercial bribery and international marketing fraud. Among other prosecutions, Weitzman successfully defended the government’s use of wiretaps in the Galleon Group investigation, which resulted in the conviction of Raj Rajaratnam, the largest insider trading case in history. He was also part of the team of prosecutors leading the government’s investigation and prosecution of “Operation Perfect Hedge,” which resulted in the conviction of nearly 60 individuals for insider trading offenses.
In addition, as a federal prosecutor, Weitzman was a senior member of the Organized Crime Unit where he led numerous large and complex racketeering investigations and prosecutions involving international organized crime, as well as Italian, Albanian and Asian criminal enterprises in the United States. Weitzman’s international investigations resulted in the historic extradition of more than 20 individuals from Israel for their involvement in international telemarketing fraud, the largest-ever extradition from Israel, as well as the extradition and conviction of the Chief Aide to the Albanian Deputy Prime Minister for murder, kidnapping and racketeering offenses in the United States.
During his stint as a federal prosecutor, Weitzman tried 12 federal criminal jury trials to verdict, and briefed and argued numerous appeals before the Second Circuit.
Weitzman graduated from Harvard Law School in 1999. Following law school, Weitzman served as a law clerk for Justice Dalia Dorner of the Israeli Supreme Court, and then for Judge Shira A. Scheindlin of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Weitzman subsequently practiced for more than four years as a litigator at two international law firms in New York.