Della Sentilles

Della Grace Sentilles joined the FCPA unit as a trial attorney in August 2016. Previously, she served for nearly three years in the international unit of the Justice Department criminal division’s asset forfeiture and money laundering section (AFMLS). She moved to the Fraud Section's market integrity and major frauds unit in 2020.

At the AFMLS, Sentilles was involved in a Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative case against the former president of the Republic of Korea, Chun Doo-Hwan. The Kleptocracy Initiative, which is a partnership between the DOJ’s criminal division and other law enforcement agencies, seeks to seize the proceeds of foreign corruption and, when possible, repatriate illicit funds to countries harmed by the misconduct.

The Chun case was first launched in 2014, when the Justice Department seized more than US$700,000 in funds from the sale of a house in Newport Beach, California, which was allegedly purchased in 2005 using corrupt proceeds. Chun was convicted in Korea in 1997 for accepting more than US$200 million in bribes during his administration. The Justice Department in March 2015 announced it was returning to the Republic of Korea more than US$1.2 million recovered as a result of the asset forfeiture case.

Sentilles joined the DOJ’s criminal fraud section in September 2013, having previously served as an intern at the Justice Department during law school. She also did stints as a legal intern at the United Nations and the Documentation Center of Cambodia, a leading research centre on the genocide of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge period.

Sentilles hails from Dallas, Texas. She earned her law degree from the University of Texas Law School in Austin. After graduating in 2012, she clerked for Judge Harry Lee Hudspeth in the District Court for the Western District of Texas.

Sentilles received her bachelor of arts from Yale University in 2006, majoring in English language and literature.