Regulatory Investigations
Levin & Associates represents individuals and institutions facing high-stakes regulatory and enforcement scrutiny—where the immediate objective is to control the facts, control the record, and prevent an inquiry from metastasizing into a criminal case, a parallel proceeding, or a business-stopping event (account restrictions, license exposure, investor pressure, or reputational harm).
The firm is led by Duncan Levin, a former federal prosecutor and former Chief of Asset Forfeiture in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. Mr. Levin’s practice is concentrated in modern financial enforcement: money laundering and “follow-the-money” investigations, asset restraint and forfeiture, sanctions and OFAC-related exposure, and the AML/BSA compliance failures that can turn routine questions into existential risk.
Strategic advantage: understanding the government’s leverage
In complex investigations, outcomes are often driven less by the headline allegation than by leverage—what can be frozen, what can be seized, what third parties will produce, and what narrative the regulator can prove with bank records, devices, and intermediaries. Mr. Levin built these cases in government. He now uses that perspective to anticipate investigative steps, pressure points, and escalation paths—so clients are not learning the playbook in real time.
Where Levin & Associates is most often engaged
- Financial institutions and payment channels: inquiries involving banks, custodians, broker-dealers, fintechs, money services businesses, payment processors, and the third-party intermediaries that regulators use to build the record
- Sanctions / OFAC and cross-border risk: screening failures, facilitation theories, blocked-funds issues, licensing posture, and documentation problems involving foreign counterparties
- AML/BSA and “controls” scrutiny: SAR-related issues, KYC/EDD questions, beneficial ownership, correspondent banking risk, and investigations that begin as compliance reviews and end as enforcement actions
- Asset restraint, tracing, and forfeiture: rapid-response strategy when funds, accounts, or property are at risk of restraint or seizure, including third-party ownership and innocent-owner issues
- White-collar and corruption-adjacent inquiries: fraud, misappropriation, bribery/corruption fact patterns, and matters with parallel civil exposure
What Levin & Associates does differently
The firm’s work is built around disciplined, senior-level execution. That starts with fact development under privilege and ends with a record that positions the client for closure, declination, or a narrowly tailored resolution—without creating avoidable admissions or collateral consequences.
- Early-case engineering: structured timelines, document strategy, and witness sequencing designed to surface favorable facts before the government locks into its theory
- Subpoena and production strategy: negotiating scope and sequencing; protecting privileged materials; minimizing business disruption; avoiding inadvertent waiver
- Witness preparation and advocacy: preparing executives and employees for interviews, testimony, and (when strategic) proffer sessions
- Financial narrative control: tracing funds, stress-testing the government’s theory, and addressing “source and use” questions that typically drive enforcement decisions
- Resolution strategy: positioning for closure or a tightly bounded settlement that protects licenses, banking relationships, and the ability to operate
