Michael served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney from 2003 to 2010, most recently in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California. Prior to that Michael served in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.

While serving the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles, Michael served in the Violent & Organized Crime Section as Anti-Gang Coordinator and Violence Against Women Coordinator.

Before joining the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Michael was a litigation associate at Simpson Thatcher & Bartlett from 2000 to 2003.

WilmerHale is an international law firm with 1,100 attorneys. It has domestic offices in Boston, Los Angeles, Palo Alto, Calif., Waltham, Mass. Its international offices are located in London, Brussels, Berlin, Beijing, Oxford and Frankfurt.

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After his company was hit with a lawsuit, and lost, to the tune of $2.8 billion in 2006, CEO Jianping “Tony” Qu of PrediWave fled the country.  Mr Qu had allegedly received more than $25 million in annual bonuses from a company which posted no profits and no sales.  His current whereabouts are unknown.

March 22, 2010 brought a new charge that PrediWave’s legal counsel was fully aware of  the shady accounting that brought the company down but did not pass that information on to PrediWave Corporation’s investors.  The lawsuit not only charges that PrediWave’s counsel, Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett, knew about the cover-up, but in fact, were full participants.  The law firm is now undergoing scrutiny for the approximately $100 million fraud.  Among the allegations are charges that Simpson, Thatcher & Bartlett hired private investigators to gauge the likelihood of the fraud becoming public.

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Last year, the US firm finalized its plans to place an office in Brazil so that they could focus on capital markets, project finance and M&A.

The date was set somewhere in September 2008. New York based partners Jaime Mercado and Todd Crider were set to initiate the startup. However, those plans have been delayed because of complications with the lease. The amount of associates they will have on the ground there has also decreased from five to three. The firm resides currently in a temp office space in Sao Paulo. The firm is denying that the economic downturn has anything to do with its change of plans.

Crider said,” Work is much slower everywhere but, to be honest, it has allowed me to find somewhere that is appropriate. We have been actively looking at premises for some months. There were some complications and in many cases the property just wasn’t right for us.”

Crider claims that the official Sao Paulo launch will still happen sometime later this year.

Sao Paulo is home to many US firms including Chadbourne & Parke, Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom and Proskauer Rose.

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