Jeremy Sanders

Jeremy R Sanders was a trial attorney at the Justice Department criminal division fraud section's Foreign Corrupt Practices Act unit.

An Orlando native, Sanders received his undergraduate degree from the University of Florida in 2002. He obtained his law degree from Georgetown University Law Center in 2005, where he worked on the staff of the American Criminal Law Review.

Sanders has donated as much as US$1,900 to the campaigns of President Barack Obama, former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. He also gave US$350 in opposition to California's Proposition 8, a 2008 state ballot measure banning same-sex marriage that an appellate court later deemed unconstitutional.

Before joining the Department of Justice, Sanders worked as an associate at Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom in the firm's government and regulatory and white-collar law practice. He left the firm in late 2014.

At Skadden, Sanders helped author an article on proffer agreements and served as steering committee co-chair of the firm's LGBT affinity group. "The LGBT group offers another avenue for finding mentors, not just for questions about being an LGBT attorney but for anything related to your career,” Sanders told writers for the winter 2013 edition of FACETS, the firm's diversity newsletter.

Sanders was also affiliated with Lambda Legal, a civil rights organisation that focuses on LGBT issues. In 2010, he served as counsel in Debra H v Janice R. The case in the state of New York was brought by a woman who sought joint legal and physical custody of her former civil partner's biological child.

After becoming an FCPA prosecutor, Sanders has worked on the foreign bribery case involving Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA).

In March 2016, a federal judge in Houston unsealed charges against three former PDVSA officials and a former employee of a Houston-based contractor accused of participating in a bribery scheme. The three former officials pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit money laundering, while the former Houston contractor, Abraham Jose Shiera Bastidas, pleaded guilty to foreign bribery and fraud charges.

Also charged was Venezuelan businessman and US resident Roberto Rincon-Fernandez, accused of conspiring to launder money and violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

He is now appellate counsel for the criminal division's fraud section.