Tim Howard is a partner in our New York office, where his practice focuses on white collar and government regulatory investigations, with special attention to cybersecurity, data breaches, and cryptocurrency fraud.
Tim is an accomplished trial lawyer and investigator, having managed significant white-collar cases across a wide range of disciplines, including cryptocurrency fraud, tax fraud, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) violations, health care fraud, consumer fraud, investment fraud, and government contracting fraud.
Tim joins Freshfields from the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, where he spent nearly 12 years in varied roles, most recently as Co-Chief of the Complex Frauds and Cybercrime Unit. At SDNY, Tim tried and supervised 17 trials to verdict. Tim also served as SDNY’s Coronavirus Fraud Coordinator, managing COVID-related fraud intake and cases across the office, and coordinating investigations and prosecutions with law enforcement agency partners. Tim also spent a year on detail to the Department of Justice's National Security Division, where he served as National Coordinator for the National Security Cyber Specialist Network, through which he coordinated the national program of investigations into nation state-sponsored cyberattacks across all 94 U.S. Attorney's Offices.
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Tim’s deep experience in cyber, national security, darknet, cryptocurrency, and complex white-collar cases includes:
- Charges exposing a wide range of Iran state-sponsored cyber attacks, including Iranian interference in the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election, a massive global hacking campaign engaged by the Mabna Institute to hack into universities and companies around the world, and a campaign of destructive distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against the U.S. financial sector (for which Tim received the 2016 Federal Bureau of Investigation Director’s Award for top cyber investigation);
- The unmasking and conviction of Ross Ulbricht, the founder and operator of the Silk Road darknet website for the distribution of over $200 million worth of narcotics, computer hacking tools, fake identity documents, and money laundering services using the Tor network and Bitcoin (for which Tim received the 2015 Attorney General’s Award for Distinguished Service in his role as trial counsel);
- The prosecution of leaders of OneCoin in connection with a billion-dollar international cryptocurrency fraud scheme;
- The first federal prosecution of individuals for engaging in a million-dollar non-fungible token (NFT) digital asset “rug pull” scheme;
- The prosecution of 18 former National Basketball Association players for defrauding the league’s health plan of millions of dollars;
- Corporate tax fraud cases against Swiss Life, Rahn & Bodmer Co., and Bank Hapoalim, and against individuals associated with the Panamanian law firm Mossack and Fonseca (known as the “Panama Papers”); and
- Multiple corporate FCPA investigations and resolutions.
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Education
- J.D., cum laude, Harvard Law School
- B.S., Computer Science and B.A., Government, magna cum laude, Georgetown University
Professional
- Adjunct Professor, Cybersecurity Law, Fordham Law School
- Law Clerk to the Honorable Jerry E. Smith on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
- Law Clerk to the Honorable Joseph F. Bianco on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York
Awards
- Exceptional Service Award, National Association of Former US Attorneys (2017)
- FBI Director's Award for Excellence - Outstanding Cyber Investigation (2016)
- U.S. Attorney General's Distinguished Service Award (2015)
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