The Sam Bankman-Fried (#SBF) Trial: Corruption, Deception, Scandal!

Michele Layne is one of the nation’s most experienced securities enforcement lawyers. Michele joined O’Melveny following a distinguished career at the SEC spanning nearly three decades, where she served in senior leadership positions for more than seventeen years, including as the SEC’s Los Angeles Regional Director for eleven years. Michele leverages this experience to represent and advise corporate clients and their boards, committees, officers, and directors on securities-related enforcement matters, internal and regulatory investigations, and governance and compliance issues.

During her tenure at the SEC, Michele conducted and supervised matters involving financial reporting and accounting, disclosure, auditor misconduct, insider trading, investment advisers, investment companies, broker-dealers, market manipulation, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), offering frauds, and anti-money laundering. She was also one of the founding members of the SEC Enforcement Division’s Climate and ESG Task Force and worked closely with other SEC leaders on related guidance and examinations priorities.

James Park is Professor of Law at UCLA School of Law. He is a leading expert on securities regulation and corporate law. He studies public companies and their regulation, particularly with respect to the problem of securities fraud. He is the author of a history of securities fraud and its regulation, The Valuation Treadmill: How Securities Fraud Threatens the Integrity of Public Companies (Cambridge University Press 2022).

Professor Park has authored more than twenty-five articles on various aspects of securities regulation and corporate governance that have been published in the California Law Review, Duke Law Journal, Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, Michigan Law Review, and UCLA Law Review.

Professor Park teaches Business Associations, Civil Procedure, Securities Regulation, and a seminar on Advanced Topics in Corporate and Securities Law.

After graduating from Yale Law School, Professor Park clerked for federal judges in the Southern District of New York and U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He practiced law in New York City at a law firm and then as an Assistant Attorney General in the Investor Protection Bureau of the New York State Attorney General’s Office.

Criminal defense attorney Richard D. Kaplan manages serious criminal charges that threaten the livelihood and reputations of white collar clients, including high net worth individuals, entrepreneurs, entertainers, corporations and their officers and executives. Richard’s creative and novel strategies during negotiations with authorities have led to numerous acquittals, no-charges-filed, probation and record expungement outcomes for clients.