Joey Lipton

Joey Lipton was a senior trial attorney in the criminal division's fraud section, until leaving for JPMorgan Chase & Co. in November 2013.

A graduate of Washington University in St Louis, Lipton spent a number of years as an assistant US attorney in the Eastern District of New York. While working in the Brooklyn-based office, Lipton was one of the prosecutors working on the case against 62 defendants associated with the Gambino, Genovese and Bonanno organised crime families of La Cosa Nostra.

Lipton left the US Attorney’s Office in early 2009 to work in the criminal division at Justice Department headquarters in Washington, DC.

He was a lead prosecutor on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act “Africa sting” case, the largest single investigation and prosecution of individuals for FCPA violations in the history of the law. Lipton took over the prosecution team after then-fraud section deputy chief Hank Bond Walther was promoted to oversee the healthcare fraud unit.

Lipton led fellow prosecutors Laura Perkins and Jonathan Haray in the first-round trial of four defendants. The defendants – Pankesh Patel, Andrew Bigelow, John Benson Weir and Lee Allen Tolleson – were accused of conspiring to pay bribes for supply contracts through what they believed to be a representative of the African nation of Gabon. In reality, the representative of the nation was an undercover FBI agent. The four men were the first group of the 22 defence products executives from multiple companies charged with violating and conspiring to violate the FCPA.

US District Judge Richard Leon ordered a mistrial in the first trial in July 2011 after the jury failed to reach a verdict. Though Lipton did not lead the government's trial team inside the courtroom during the second round of sting trials, he continued to supervise the case. When the Justice Department eventually decided to drop the charges in March 2012 following a string of acquittals and a hung jury in the second round, Lipton wrote the motion to dismiss.

At JPMorgan, Lipton joined the litigation regulatory enforcement group in New York City, which is responsible for responding to government law enforcement inquiries.