New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman formed a new unit focused on fighting financial wrongdoing, expanding an existing criminal bureau two years after Gov. Andrew Cuomo created a financial regulator with a similar mandate.
Gary Fishman, a former state prosecutor in the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, will serve as chief of the Criminal Enforcement and Financial Crimes Bureau, an expansion of the existing Criminal Prosecutions Bureau, the attorney general's office said Friday in a statement.
The new bureau will focus on fighting complex financial crimes in banks and financial institutions, as well as securities and investment fraud, money laundering, mortgage fraud, investment schemes and insurance fraud. It will probe “illicit financial activities” and track the flow of suspicious funds to identify trends and help investigators, according to the statement.
“Financial industry leaders who play by the rules deserve a level playing field, and those bad actors who seek to take advantage of their competitors and their neighbors must be stopped and punished,” Mr. Schneiderman said in the statement.
New York has intensified market enforcement since the financial crisis. In 2010, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. formed a major economic crimes unit, where Mr. Fishman was principal deputy chief. This was followed by Mr. Cuomo's 2011 merger of state insurance and banking regulators into a Department of Financial Services under Benjamin Lawsky, a top prosecutor when Mr. Cuomo was attorney general.
