A former federal prosecutor for the Fraud Section of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Criminal Division, Blake handles white collar enforcement matters and high-stakes civil cases. He has extensive experience leading complex financial investigations and litigating them to verdict, having taken numerous cases to trial.
Drawing on his government experience, Blake helps individual and corporate clients navigate criminal investigations and regulatory enforcement actions, including those brought by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and other federal and state enforcement agencies; and he conducts related internal investigations. Blake also advises clients on international sanctions regimes in the U.S., U.K., and EU, including enforcement actions involving the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. In addition to defending clients targeted by the government, Blake has an active practice representing whistleblowers and seeking redress for those that have been victimized by fraud and corruption. This includes representing clients in their most important civil matters, often involving allegations of fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, or other wrongdoing.
For the majority of his time at the DOJ, Blake worked in the Fraud Section’s Market Integrity and Major Frauds (MIMF) Unit. In that role, he led the prosecution of many sophisticated criminal matters, including the securities fraud investigation and prosecution of the founder of Trustify, a privately held technology startup, and the jury trial of a purported broker in an international investment fraud scheme.He was also part of the team that successfully handled the first jury trial to arise out of the DOJ’s foreign exchange (FX) investigation, which the Second Circuit upheld on appeal, and secured a related Deferred Prosecution Agreement with a major international bank.
During his time as a prosecutor, Blake received the DOJ Criminal Division’s Assistant Attorney General (AAG) Exceptional Service Award along with a group of prosecutors combatting loan fraud related to the Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program. Earlier in his career, he was detailed as a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney in the District of Columbia, where he first-chaired a number of cases in D.C. Superior Court.
Before his time in the government, Blake served as a judicial law clerk to the Hon. Amy J. St. Eve in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. He began his career as a litigation associate at a Chicago-based law firm.