In June 26, 2007, Barry Colvert arrived at the midtown Manhattan office of Cooley Godward Kronish. Colvert is a former Federal Bureau of Investigation agent who has given polygraph tests to Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard, Soviet spy Aldrich Ames and former Los Alamos nuclear weapons scientist Wen Ho Lee.
On this day, Colvert, now a private consultant, would administer a test to a major law firm partner. Cooley had hired the former FBI agent in a desperate attempt to stave off an indictment of their client, Joseph Collins, a senior partner at Mayer Brown. The 58-year-old Collins was being targeted by federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York for his role in the scandal at Refco Inc. The New York-based commodities trading firm collapsed in October 2005 after the discovery of massive internal fraud. Collins had been Refco’s principal outside lawyer for more than 10 years, and prosecutors were building a case that the Mayer Brown partner was a party to the fraud.
