A former trial attorney for the Fraud Section of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Criminal Division, Blake handles white collar enforcement matters and complex civil cases. He has extensive experience leading investigations of complicated financial fraud and litigating them to verdict, having taken numerous cases to trial.
For the majority of his time at the DOJ, Blake worked in the Fraud Section’s Market Integrity and Major Frauds Unit (previously known as the Securities and Financial Fraud Unit). In that role, he led the prosecution of many sophisticated criminal matters, including the securities fraud investigation and prosecution of the founder of Trustify, a privately held technology startup, and the jury trial of a purported broker in an international investment fraud scheme. He was also part of the team that successfully handled the first jury trial to arise out of the DOJ’s foreign exchange (FX) investigation, which the Second Circuit upheld on appeal, and secured a related Deferred Prosecution Agreement with a major international bank.
During his time as a prosecutor, Blake received the DOJ Criminal Division’s Assistant Attorney General (AAG) Exceptional Service Award along with a group of prosecutors combatting loan fraud related to the Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program. Earlier in his career, he was detailed as a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney in the District of Columbia, where he first-chaired a number of cases in D.C. Superior Court.
Before his time in the government, Blake served as a judicial law clerk to the Hon. Amy J. St. Eve in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. He began his career as a litigation associate at a Chicago-based law firm.