Today, Neil MacBride, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, announced that his office was joining with other key partners to create the Virginia Financial and Securities Fraud Task Force.
MacBride stated that the Task Force was “an unprecedented partnership between criminal investigators and civil regulators to investigate and prosecute complex financial fraud cases in the nation and in Virginia.” At the federal level, task force participants include the SEC, the FBI, the CFTC, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and the IRS. The state partners are the Virginia Attorney General’s office and the State Corporation Commission.
MacBride added that the Task Force is also intended to be an investigative arm of the President’s Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force.
A week ago, the WSJ reported that MacBride was putting together the Task Force, and noted that McBride believes he has “jurisdiction over all securities-fraud cases involving all publicly traded companies” due to the fact that the SEC’s EDGAR database is physically housed in Alexandria, Va.
As I wrote here last week, there are, in fact, cases such as U.S. v. Johnson, 510 F.3d 521 (4th Cir. 2007), holding that “causing the transmission of the Form 10-Q to the Eastern District of Virginia will suffice to sustain venue in that district.”
