Managing Partner Duncan Levin

Duncan Levin: A Storied Career as a Federal Prosecutor

Mr. Levin served as a federal prosecutor with the U.S. Department of Justice specializing in money laundering and asset forfeiture and on the senior staff of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, where he was Chief of Asset Forfeiture. As the forfeiture chief for Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr., Mr. Levin oversaw all criminal and civil asset forfeiture and money laundering on a wide variety of cases, including international corruption, white-collar fraud, identity theft, organized crime, terrorist financing, and narcotics cases. He was the primary liaison with U.S. Department of Justice on the forfeiture of $1.9 billion in the HSBC OFAC sanctions case and $350 million in Standard Chartered OFAC sanctions case, as well as the OFAC/AML cases against BNP Paribas and ING.

Mr. Levin managed a full-time staff of dedicated prosecutors and support personnel and supervised forfeiture and monetary recoveries on cases involving more than 500 Manhattan assistant district attorneys. Mr. Levin was the original drafter of a criminal forfeiture and criminal monetary recovery statute that was included in Gov. Cuomo’s 2012 budget proposal. Mr. Levin also ran all aspects of the District Attorney’s restoration of forfeited funds to crime victims and worked with the Suspicious Activity Report (“SAR”) Team with respect to federal money laundering cases, Title 31 and other Bank Secrecy Act (“BSA”) cases. He served as counsel to the procedure committee of the White Collar Crimes Task Force of the District Attorney’s Association of the State of New York, and he was a member of the New York State Forfeiture Law Advisory Group.

A Pedigree To Ensure Successful Results

Prior to joining the District Attorney’s Office, Mr. Levin served as an Assistant United States Attorney at the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, where he handled financial investigations, money laundering, and asset forfeiture for a variety of complex federal crimes. He reported in that position to U.S. Attorneys Ben Campbell and then Loretta Lynch, who later served as the United States Attorney General.

Mr. Levin is a graduate of Yale College, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and Yale Law School. He started his legal career as a line prosecutor at the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office under the legendary District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, focusing on financial crime. He clerked for Hon. Nicholas G. Garaufis on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York and has worked in private practice. Mr. Levin has lectured extensively on money laundering, suspicious activity reporting, AML/OFAC, and asset forfeiture for the U.S. Department of Justice and the District Attorney’s Office.