David Shapiro

Partner

(510) 906-4906 | dshapiro@nortonlaw.com | VCF

The former United States Attorney in San Francisco, David Shapiro served for sixteen years as a federal prosecutor in several offices – the Eastern District of New York, the District of Arizona, and between 1995 and 2002, the Northern District of California. In private practice at Boies, Schiller & Flexner and then at white-collar boutique Boersch Shapiro, David has represented a diverse array of clients in complex civil and criminal litigation, including securities class actions (plaintiff and defense), environmental cases, First Amendment law, and investigations and corporate governance reviews. He conducts internal investigations for corporate clients involving allegations regarding the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, breaches of fiduciary duty, and computer and other potential crimes.

David has extensive trial experience both as a federal prosecutor and in civil litigation. While a prosecutor, David tried accounting fraud, political corruption, tax evasion, RICO, and narcotics cases, including United States v. Jain and Allen (executives of Media Vision Technology, Inc. for financial accounting fraud); United States v. Gray (federal excise tax fraud); United States v. Pitera (trial of a mafia hitman in one of the first federal death penalty cases in the country after re-introduction of the federal death penalty in 1988). Since returning to private practice in 2002, he has successfully tried disputes in both state and federal court, including the successful defense of a nationwide class action, Hoffman v. American Express.

David has also won by convincing the government not to bring the case, much less try it. In his white collar defense work, he has successfully convinced the government not to indict clients, such as a vice-chairman of a Fortune 100 company for alleged FCPA violations in Europe, a CFO of a large public company for alleged accounting fraud, and a Fortune 500 company for alleged FCPA violations in China.

David has represented American Express, Tyco International, Qwest Communications, Copper River Management, and Siemens Healthcare, among other large corporations. He has represented top executives of public companies in grand jury investigations in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. He has also represented The San Francisco Chronicle in response to federal government subpoenas to journalists, and a journalist arrested while covering a story in Tucson, Arizona. He regularly represents hedge funds and short-biased analysts in responding to government requests for information, filing whistleblower complaints, and litigating subpoenas.