Mr. Gerschwer is a partner in the New York office of Morrison & Foerster and a member of the firm’s Securities Litigation, Enforcement, and White-Collar Defense Group. His practice focuses primarily on complex commercial and white-collar criminal matters, including allegations of securities, commodities, and government fraud and public corruption. As a former federal prosecutor, Mr. Gerschwer has tried a wide variety of criminal cases and argued numerous appeals before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

From 1998 to 2007, Mr. Gerschwer served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. He was a member of the Securities and Commodities Fraud Unit, where he investigated and tried cases involving accounting fraud, insider trading, market manipulation and other violations of the federal securities laws; and the Public Corruption Unit, where he investigated and tried cases involving public corruption and government fraud. Mr. Gerschwer handled numerous cases involving parallel proceedings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, and court-appointed receivers, as well as cases requiring coordination with state and local law enforcement officials.

Among his noteworthy prosecutions, Mr. Gerschwer served as trial attorney in U.S. v. Mark Kaiser, a case involving conspiracy, securities fraud, and false SEC filings in connection with an accounting fraud scheme at U.S. Foodservice (“USF”), a U.S.-based subsidiary of the Dutch holding company Royal Ahold, which suffered a $6 billion loss of market capitalization upon discovery of fraud.

Other cases in which Mr. Gerschwer played a key role included U.S. v. Michael Rigas, which involved the accounting fraud that brought down cable operator Adelphia Communications, and U.S. v. Vito Napoletano, et al., a prosecution involving a series of “boiler rooms” that was part of a large-scale investigation into fraud in the foreign exchange markets known as “Operation Wooden Nickel.”

Mr. Gerschwer also participated in the investigation of a massive municipal corruption scheme charged in U.S. v. Albert Schussler, et al. and other cases. Schussler, a RICO, bribery and fraud case involving a long-term scheme to bribe New York City property tax assessors, was described by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg as “the largest and most financially damaging corruption scheme ever conducted within city government.” Prior to joining the U.S. Attorney’s office in 1998, Mr. Gerschwer spent four years as a litigation associate at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. Before that, he served as a law clerk to Judge Wilfred Feinberg on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

Prior to his legal career, Mr. Gerschwer worked in the environmental field. He spent several years with the New York City Department of Environmental Protection where, as a member of the Hazardous Materials Response Unit, he assisted law enforcement and other first responders in incidents involving hazardous materials. He also worked at a private environmental consulting firm, where he investigated potential hazardous waste sites and advised corporate clients on environmental regulations.

Mr. Gerschwer received his B.A. from SUNY Binghamton in 1983 with honors. He received his J.D. from Columbia Law School in 1993 where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone scholar and a senior editor of the Columbia Law Review.