Expert Witness Services
Levin & Associates provides expert witness services in matters involving financial crime, asset forfeiture, money laundering, sanctions/OFAC, and AML/BSA compliance. The firm’s expert work is led by Duncan Levin, a former federal prosecutor and former Chief of Asset Forfeiture in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, and a Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School, where he teaches in the areas of criminal law and financial enforcement.
Mr. Levin has served repeatedly as an expert witness and has been retained to provide expert reports, deposition testimony, and trial testimony in civil and criminal matters where the factfinder needs a clear, reliable explanation of how financial enforcement systems actually operate—how “follow-the-money” investigations are built, how restraint and forfeiture tools function in practice, how banks and intermediaries respond to risk, and what constitutes reasonable controls in modern compliance environments.
Areas of expertise
- Asset forfeiture and restraint: tracing concepts; restraint mechanics; substitute-asset and proceeds theories; third-party property issues and innocent-owner concepts; the practical effect of seizure/restraint posture on litigation and negotiation dynamics.
- Money laundering and financial crime investigations: how investigators use bank records, subpoenas, payment rails, correspondent banking data, intermediaries, and communications to build or test laundering theories, intent, and source-and-use narratives.
- AML/BSA (Title 31) compliance and suspicious activity: KYC/EDD expectations; escalation and documentation practices; SAR-related concepts; examination realities; how financial institutions design and defend controls in practice.
- Sanctions & OFAC compliance: IEEPA-based sanctions frameworks; SDN-related screening concepts (including ownership/control analysis and blocking); licensing posture and compliance controls; sanctions screening architectures and escalation practices.
- Watchlist screening and identity-matching systems: name-only matching and accuracy risks; false positives/false negatives; use of additional identifiers; reasonable procedures and the interaction between data availability, algorithm design, and human review.
- Cross-border enforcement dynamics: the practical realities of international counterparties, banking relationships, and documentary constraints; how cross-border facts change risk analysis and enforcement posture.
What the testimony delivers
Mr. Levin’s expert work is designed to be rigorous, accessible, and useful to the factfinder. The objective is clarity—translating technical compliance and enforcement concepts into plain, defensible explanations tied to the record and to reliable principles.
- Expert reports grounded in enforcement experience, industry practice, and documentary record analysis
- Deposition and trial testimony that teaches the factfinder and holds up under cross-examination
- Rule 702 / Daubert readiness, with methodology articulated clearly and opinions anchored to facts
- Consulting and testifying roles, structured to fit the needs of the case
Matters suited for expert engagement
Levin & Associates is typically engaged in cases involving forfeiture and tracing disputes, allegations of money laundering or illicit finance, sanctions-screening and blocked-funds issues, compliance program adequacy questions, and investigations driven by financial records and third-party intermediaries. The firm works with counsel to define the assignment precisely, build a clean expert record, and present opinions that are both technically sound and understandable.
