The sheriff of Wall Street continues to lose his posse.
Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara — whose fearless team of prosecutors nailed more than 80 inside traders over the past nine years — lost his No. 1 deputy on Thursday, the latest member of his Murderers’ Row of crime fighters to exit for private practice.
Deputy US Attorney Richard Zabel announced that he was leaving the prosecutor’s office to join Elliott Management, the hedge fund run by billionaire investor Paul Singer.
(Although Bharara’s team took aim at the hedge fund industry, Elliott was never a target.)
To be sure, for generations young lawyers have made their mark in prosecutors’ office and then moved on to more lucrative private practices.
“It’s a great job for a young lawyer, but after a while they leave,” said Richard Holwell, who was a federal judge in the insider trading trial of Raj Rajaratnam. He is also now in private practice.
Still, the prosecutors have been leaving at a time when Bharara’s record has become tarnished by an appeals court decision overturning two of the cases they prosecuted — and narrowing the legal standard by which they took down some others.
Prosecutors who have left recently include:
- Antonia Apps, who tried Todd Newman and Anthony Chiasson (whose convictions were overturned on appeal) and Michael Steinberg.
- Reed Brodsky, who tried Rajat Gupta and Rajaratnam.
- Eugene Ingoglia, who tried Mathew Martoma.
- Jonathan Streeter and Andrew Michaelson, both of whom also tried Rajaratnam.
Zabel’s departure was first reported by the New York Times.