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Bill Leone is the former United States Attorney for Colorado. He served in the United States Attorney's Office for Colorado from October 2001 until October 2006. He served on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' Advisory Committee on White Collar Crime and on the national Securities and Commodities Fraud Working Group together with representatives from the Securities and Exchange Commission, FBI, Commodities Futures Trading Commission, IRS, NASD and other agencies. He was a member of the Colorado Securities Fraud Task Force and has been a frequent lecturer at the National Advocacy Center in Columbia, S.C., teaching courses to federal prosecutors from across the United States in securities, accounting and corporate fraud.
Prior to joining the Department of Justice in 2001, Mr. Leone was a civil litigator and trial lawyer for 20 years. He was a litigation partner in a national law firm headquartered in Silicon Valley.
He has successfully represented three of the Big Four international accounting firms in matters including alleged securities fraud, false claims, accounting malpractice, issuance of tax opinions, and alleged raiding and misappropriation of trade secrets. Other significant matters include representation of the News Corporation in a $1.5 billion merger dispute relating to the satellite television industry, and Experian in connection with anti-trust and business tort claims brought by Experian. He has represented officers, directors, shareholders, underwriters, lawyers and accountants in various securities and corporate governance matters. He has also represented numerous corporate clients in antitrust, securities, complex contract, products liability, business tort, trade secret, franchise, employment and executive compensation disputes. A seasoned trial lawyer, Mr. Leone has tried more than 50 cases to juries, judges and arbitration panels.
From December 2004 until August 2006, Mr. Leone served as United States Attorney for Colorado. In addition to serving as the principal liaison to the federal courts and to all federal regulatory agencies, Mr. Leone was an active trial lawyer with a criminal prosecution case load. Under his leadership, the United States Attorney's Office was particularly active in the prosecution of complex commercial frauds and large scale criminal organizations. Mr. Leone personally led one of the largest corporate fraud investigations in the United States, the three-year investigation into Qwest Communication's $2.5 billion financial restatement. The investigation eventually resulted in indictments of seven Qwest executives, and convictions of the CFO and CEO for insider trading. The investigation required the coordination and analysis of 13 million documents, testimony of hundreds of witnesses, parallel regulatory and civil proceedings, and congressional hearings.
Mr. Leone also began and eventually concluded the investigation of the IPO market in the telecommunications industry and the practice of granting friends and family shares or pre-IPO options and stock to corporate insiders in exchange for purchase orders and other benefits. Mr. Leone was also involved in the successful prosecution of promoters of an investment scheme that resulted in the failure of Best Bank, the largest bank failure in the United States in recent years, in the investigation of manipulative gas trading practices and in the investigation of a number of other corporate frauds. Mr. Leone also established priorities for his office that led to the successful prosecution of several notorious criminal enterprises including an international document fraud ring, the violent street gang known as the GKI, and the Thompson Drug Trafficking Organization. He successfully lobbied for and obtained special resources to prosecute cyber crime, and reviewed and approved large healthcare fraud prosecutions and settlements.
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