U.S. Attorney's Offices in Manhattan and Brooklyn and the state's Attorney General are not alone in prosecuting fraud in the Big Apple. Last week we sat down with Manhattan's new District Attorney, Alvin Bragg, to discuss his Office's priorities with respect to white-collar crime. Mr. Bragg—who previously served as a prosecutor both in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York and as the Chief Deputy in the New York State Attorney General's Office, as well as the Chief of Litigation and Investigations with the New York City Council—emphasized that violent crime and street crime are top priorities in his office, but he displayed an acute awareness of the important role of the Manhattan D.A.'s office with respect to white-collar crime and the tools at his disposal.

While cognizant of the mandates of his federal and state colleagues, Mr. Bragg noted the need for his office to pursue significant white-collar cases when such cases most aptly would be brought by a local prosecutor, particularly where the city's consumers and businesses are victims. Throughout the discussion, District Attorney Bragg emphasized the work of the Office's Financial Frauds Bureau, the Construction Fraud Task Force, and what he referred to as his Office's unique "connection with the public." An area that D.A. Bragg sees as a particular strength of his office is combatting cybercrime. He discussed the exceptional cyber lab in the D.A.'s office and praised his predecessor's building up of the lab (it is no coincidence that the previous D.A., Cy Vance, recently announced he was joining Baker McKenzie to chair the firm's cyber and data security practice).