Counsel for former Dewey & LeBoeuf chief financial officer Joel Sanders struck back hard Thursday at the prosecution’s most damaging witness to date—the firm’s third-ranking finance department manager who pleaded guilty to a single felony conspiracy charge in early 2014.
Earlier on Thursday, the witness, former controller Thomas Mullikin, told Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Steve Pilnyak that he didn’t alert firm executives about false accounting adjustments that his finance department was instructed to make between late 2008 and mid-2011, a time when the firm was struggling to meet cash benchmarks set by its bank lenders, because he feared for his job and for the firm’s survival.
