Legal News

His Middle Name is O; The Man Behind the Madoff Prosecution

By Amir Efrati

At a federal-court hearing last Thursday, U.S. District Judge Denny Chin told Bernard Madoff that if he pleaded guilty, the government "could" seek restitution from him to compensate thousands of victims.

Marc O Litt, the federal prosecutor overseeing the case, quickly chimed in: "Restitution is mandatory, not discretionary." The judge acknowledged the error, and Madoff pleaded guilty moments later.

A big weight must be sitting on Litt, 46 years old, who is tasked with investigating whether anyone else knowingly helped Madoff carry out the biggest fraud in U.S. history. He's making some progress in understanding how Madoff carried out the scheme (click here, for example), but he has many more months of work ahead of him. Among the territories to cover: other Madoff family members, Madoff's employees, so-called feeder funds who brought money to Madoff's firm from thousands of investors, and many more. “The investigation is continuing,” Litt said last week.

So who is Marc O Litt? (That's right: O, with no period, is his middle name.) He declined to comment to the Law Blog. But former colleagues from the 20-person securities fraud unit at the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan, where Litt works, all use the same adjectives to describe him: “mild-mannered,” “unassuming,” “quiet.”

Before taking on Madoff, he spent much of the prior three years on another high-profile white-collar fraud case, involving former investment advisors Alberto Vilar and George Tanaka. A jury convicted the men last fall (click here for the LB post), but not before Litt was twice cross-examined during a years-long dispute over an unconstitutional search of the defendants’ office by federal agents and a subpoena issued by Litt that the judge ruled was too broad. Most of the evidence seized during the search eventually became admissible at trial after the judge narrowed the scope of Litt’s subpoena. Friends recall this as the most trying period of his career.

Litt (Harvard ‘84, Columbia Law ‘92) isn’t exactly the wacky guy in the office. Unlike most other AUSAs, whose office walls are adorned by posters of boxer Muhammad Ali or Al Pacino from "Scarface," Litt's walls are blank, matching his unassuming character, says David Siegal, a former colleague who is now at Haynes and Boone.

Before doing securities fraud work, Litt spent time at the asset forfeiture section of the Office, which is already coming in handy in the Madoff case (see here). Before joining the Southern District, Litt handled street crime and public corruption cases as an AUSA in the District of Columbia, where he prosecuted special assistant to the secretary of DC for trying to steal city funds.

Prior to that, Litt, who was born in the Boston area, represented the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), among others, as an associate at Paul Weiss in Manhattan. While there, he worked under partner Martin Flumenbaum, who, incidentally, now represents Madoff’s sons, Mark and Andrew.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 17, 2009 (boomark / email).