Daniel L. Zelenko is a partner in the New York office of Crowell & Moring and serves as co-chair of the firm’s nationally recognized White Collar & Regulatory Enforcement Group. Dan is a former federal prosecutor and senior enforcement lawyer at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). He has been recognized as a leader in the white collar and regulatory enforcement bar and the antitrust bar by Chambers USA since 2016 and is held in high regard for his U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and SEC experience and his antitrust and securities enforcement experience. Chambers USA described Dan as a "tremendous talent" who "tries cases really impressively before the government," noting that he "is a very effective advocate who sees the whole picture," is "thoroughly knowledgeable about the legal and regulatory landscape," and that "he knows his way around the street, and knows how to work with people in difficult situations." Dan has been quoted as a leading authority on white collar defense and government investigations in numerous media outlets including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Bloomberg and Reuters and has appeared on CNN.
Dan has successfully defended clients in a wide variety of high-profile and sensitive internal and government investigations. Of particular note, Dan is routinely called upon by leading Wall Street investment banks, broker-dealers, and hedge funds and their senior investment professionals in the crosshairs of internal, regulatory, and criminal investigations. These matters often require a deep understanding of securities, derivative products and other complex financial instruments.
In addition, Dan is one of the leading lawyers in the country focusing on the defense of corporations and executives targeted in bid-rigging, labor practices and no-poach, procurement fraud, and price-fixing investigations by the DOJ Antitrust Division and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Dan has achieved excellent results for his clients in virtually every major bid-rigging and price-fixing investigation over the past fifteen years. He has convinced the DOJ to decline prosecution of his clients in more than thirty-five separate criminal antitrust grand jury investigations.
Dan represents corporations, special committees, and executives in criminal and related regulatory and complex civil matters, including grand jury investigations, internal investigations, and parallel proceedings by the Department of Justice, SEC, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Inc. (FINRA), the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), FTC, and state attorneys' general among other domestic and international regulators. His practice also includes regular counseling of public and private companies and their Boards of Directors and senior management on all areas of criminal and regulatory investigations and enforcement proceedings. He has represented clients in connection with matters involving a wide range of business offenses, including criminal antitrust, procurement fraud, public corruption and Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) violations, as well as securities, bank, tax, and accounting fraud matters.
Prior to joining Crowell & Moring in 2008, Dan was a federal prosecutor with the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice and a Senior Enforcement Attorney with the Division of Enforcement of the SEC. From 2004 to 2008, Dan served as Senior Counsel and Branch Chief in the SEC's New York Office, where he was lead counsel and supervised attorneys, accountants, and investigators on several high profile investigations and enforcement proceedings. Dan has also served as a Special Assistant United States Attorney (SAUSA) in the Eastern District of Virginia and the Eastern District of New York where he tried multiple cases to verdict.
In addition, Dan served as co-lead trail counsel and Special Assistant U.S. Attorney in a criminal jury trial involving the manipulation of multiple publicly-traded companies. The trial resulted in a conviction on all counts.
Before joining the SEC in 2004, Dan was a federal prosecutor in the National Criminal Enforcement Section of DOJ's Antitrust Division where he conducted investigations of international corporations and their executives for price fixing, bid rigging, market allocation conspiracies and related federal crimes. He was the lead prosecutor on several grand jury investigations, including the prosecution of an international cartel that provided transportation services to the Department of Defense. While at DOJ, Dan was also appointed Special Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia where he successfully prosecuted several felony and misdemeanor cases and assisted the terrorism prosecution team after 9/11 in United States v. Zacarias Moussaoui.
Dan has been a panelist and faculty member at bar association and industry conferences; and he has provided training to multiple law enforcement organizations on securities enforcement and white collar crime. He also co-edited a chapter in the ABA Handbook on Antitrust Grand Jury Investigations.
Upon graduation from law school, Dan clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. Dan is active in the American Bar Association and has previously served as an officer of the Criminal Justice Section of the Federal Bar Association. He is a member of the New York State Bar Association White Collar Crime Committee. Dan is also a former nationally ranked and collegiate tennis player and was certified as a tennis instructor by the U.S. Professional Tennis Association.