The U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York has appointed Mineola native Jacquelyn Kasulis as chief of the criminal division. She has a history of prosecuting cases involving fraud and racketeering.
Kasulis has served as acting chief of the division since March. She joined the U.S. attorney’s office in January 2008 and was appointed to the business and securities fraud section in March 2013. In September 2014, she was appointed as the deputy chief of the general crimes section and tax coordinator for the office, and in November 2015 she became the deputy chief of the business and securities fraud section. She was appointed chief of the business and securities fraud section in April 2017.
The appointment was announced by Richard P. Donoghue, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District. The Eastern District encompasses Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island along with Nassau and Suffolk counties.
The office said Kasulis was born in Mineola and lived there for a few years before moving to Florida. She received her B.A. from Davidson College in North Carolina.
After graduating from Columbia Law School in 2003, Kasulis worked as a litigation associate for four years at Kirkland & Ellis LLP in New York until she joined the Eastern District office, where she soon prosecuted several white collar crimes.
During her time at the business and securities fraud section, she investigated and prosecuted two Goldman Sachs bankers and Malaysian financier Low Taek Jho for participating in a multibillion-dollar money laundering and bribery conspiracy.
Kasulis also was the lead assistant U.S. attorney in the heavily publicized case against Martin Shkreli, a pharmaceutical executive, in the summer of 2017. Shkreli was charged in four interrelated fraud schemes that resulted in over $20 million in losses to investors.
Donohue said that Shkreli had committed two frauds related to hedge funds he founded and ran, called MSMB Capital and MSMB Healthcare, and then committed two separate frauds with the assistance of his attorney and co-defendant, Evan Greebel, related to Retrophin, a pharmaceutical company Shkreli founded.
In 2018, Shrekeli was sentenced to seven years in prison and ordered to pay $7.4 million in fines.
“I am honored to have been chosen to be Chief of the Criminal Division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, and to continue my predecessors’ efforts to support the excellent work of our prosecutors in their pursuit of justice. I would also like to thank U.S. Attorney Richard P. Donoghue for this opportunity,” Kasulius said in a statement.
Other cases Kasulis prosecuted included one charging 10 defendants and six corporations with laundering approximately $250 million in securities fraud proceeds and being involved in approximately 40 “pump and dump” schemes. Donohue said that this was the first criminal prosecution under the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act.
Kasulis also prosecuted St. James investor James Peister on charges of defrauding approximately 75 people by orchestrating a $17 million Ponzi scheme.
Kasulis also led the investigation and prosecution of the executive chairman of Forcefield Energy, a NASDAQ-listed company, and nine other individuals – including five registered broker-dealers – for their role in a $13 million market manipulation scheme involving a network of corrupt investors, stock promoters and broker-dealers.
On top of various prosecuting various white collar crimes, Kasulis led the prosecution of over 15 Genovese crime family members and associates during her time at the organized crime and gangs division. This case also involved the conviction of three International Longshoremen’s Association union presidents for their involvement in a 30-year extortion scheme in which workers were extorted at Christmas every year at the behest of the Genovese crime family.
