Eugene Illovsky is a partner in Morrison & Foerster’s Palo Alto office, where he is a member of the Litigation Department and the firm’s Securities Litigation, Enforcement, and White-Collar Defense Group. His practice focuses on white collar criminal defense, including antitrust, securities, and tax crimes. He also works extensively in complex civil litigation. He has had a dozen jury trials, several bench trials, and has argued eleven cases before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Before joining Morrison & Foerster, Mr. Illovsky served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Criminal Division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Sacramento from 1992 until June of 1998. As a prosecutor, Mr. Illovsky worked on cases involving fraud, money laundering, intellectual property and tax crimes. He also served on DOJ’s Campaign Finance Task Force. In 1997, he received the Director’s Award for Superior Performance from the Director of the Executive Office for United States Attorneys in recognition of his work on a series of insurance fraud prosecutions.

Mr. Illovsky received his A.B. degree from Amherst College in 1979, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and his J.D. degree from Yale Law School in 1983, where he was an editor of the Yale Law Journal. Mr. Illovsky served as a law clerk to the Honorable J. Clifford Wallace of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Mr. Illovsky is a member of the State Bar of California, the Pennsylvania Bar, the District of Columbia Bar, and American Bar Association. He currently serves on Criminal Justice Act Panels in the Northern District of California for trials and appeals. He is a Member of the Practitioners’ Advisory Group to the U.S. Sentencing Commission. He is also a Master of the Robert McGrath American Inn of Court and was a Visiting Lecturer at Boalt School of Law at UC Berkeley.

Representative Matters

• Represent subsidiary of a foreign company being victimized by attempted extortion.
• Represent Fortune 100 company in investigation by Drug Enforcement Administration.
• Represented high-technology company victimized by sophisticated inventory-theft ring.
• Represented individuals, companies, audit committees, and special litigation in connection with various stock options back-dating investigations by the SEC and DOJ.
• Represented individuals and foreign company in international cartel grand jury investigations conducted by Main Justice and by the Antitrust Division’s field offices, in polyester polyols, aluminum fluoride, and telecommunications. No charges brought against those individuals or the company.
• Conducted internal investigation of a money center bank’s anti-money laundering compliance.
• Represented leading provider of equipment, chemicals, supplies and services for research, safety, healthcare and science education in investigation of a subsidiary’s employment and termination of a competitor’s former employee.
• Represented a corporation and its former president/CEO in an SEC investigation and enforcement action concerning alleged insufficient disclosures, misleading public statements, inadequate internal controls, and improper recordation of revenue. The matter was resolved in a favorable settlement for the company with no fine. All charges were dropped.
• Acted as Special Counsel to Minority members of the California Assembly Insurance Committee during highly-publicized investigation of state Insurance Commissioner.
• Represented Japanese chemical company in enforcement cases brought by several state attorneys general.

Recent Publications and Speaking Engagements

• “Increased DOJ Intervention to Stay Discovery in Civil Antitrust Litigation,” 2008 A.B.A. Sec. Antitrust Lit. (forthcoming Nov. 2008).
• “Parallel Civil and Criminal Proceedings: The Need to Stay Discovery,” 3 White Collar Crime Rep. No. 6 (BNA) (Mar. 14, 2008) and 94 Antitrust & Trade Reg. Rep. (BNA) 134 (Feb. 8, 2008).
• “Developing Successful Strategies for International Cartel Investigations” –Panelist in Seminar with Kazuhiko Takeshima, Chairman, Japan Fair Trade Commission, Hiroko Yamane, Professor, National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, and Morrison & Foerster attorneys, Tokyo and Osaka (Feb. 2008).
• “Corporate Deferred Prosecution Agreements: The Brewing Debate,” 21 (No. 2) Criminal Justice 36 (Summer 2006).