The two offices are vastly different both in culture and their approach to white-collar crime. New York prosecutors often deploy techniques associated with organized crime investigations, including wiretapping, executing search warrants and flipping suspects to testify against bigger targets. Prosecutors in San Francisco, meanwhile, typically will issue a grand jury subpoena and request emails from a company, former employees say. That approach takes much less work and, often, produces fewer results. Some prosecutors go many months or even a year between bringing cases, insiders say, while those who underperform are rarely let go.
“It’s a lifestyle thing,” a former supervisor in the San Francisco office said, adding that with a couple of exceptions, prosecutors rarely stay at the office late. “It’s a wasteland by 5:20 p.m.”
via ‘Gun-Shy’: How Federal Prosecutors Forgot Silicon Valley — The Information.
