© 2012 The Texas Lawbook.
By Mark Curriden
Senior Writer for The Texas Lawbook
Jeffrey Ansley, a former federal prosecutor and enforcement lawyer for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, has joined Bell Nunnally & Martin as a partner in the firm’s growing White Collar Defense and Internal Investigations practices.
A 1994 graduate of the SMU Dedman School of Law, Ansley is widely considered one of the leading lawyers in North Texas representing businesses and corporate leaders under investigation for civil and criminal fraud-related offenses.
With Ansley’s addition to the Dallas office, Bell Nunnally now has 55 lawyers firm wide. For the past two years, Ansley was a partner at Curran Tomko Tarski.
“It was a hard decision to leave Ed Tomko and the great lawyers there, but Bell Nunnally wants to grow a white-collar practice,” says Ansley. “This is an opportunity to branch out and develop a new practice.
“Bell Nunnally is a significantly larger law firm, but it’s not too large that its rates are outrageously high,” he says.
Ansley spent four years as an enforcement lawyer at the SEC’s Fort Worth Regional Office and then two years as a prosecutor with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of Texas, where he led the Securities Fraud Task Force, coordinating the actions of a multi-agency criminal and regulatory task force.
In 2005, he joined Bracewell & Giuliani as a partner, before jumping to Curran Tomko in 2010.
“Jeff is a great lawyer and a good friend,” says Tomko, who is a former assistant director of enforcement at the SEC.
Ansley, who received his bachelor’s degree from Texas A&M in 1991, says he expects the SEC’s Fort Worth Regional Office to increase the number of financial fraud cases it brings during the next year.
“The SEC office here has signaled that it is getting much more aggressive in pursuing violators of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act,” he says. “It is clear the SEC is also increasing the investigations it undertakes against broker-dealers involved in fraud and in formal accounting fraud matters.”
On the criminal side, Ansley predicts the U.S. Attorney’s formation of a six-lawyer healthcare fraud task force will automatically mean more cases will be brought.
Ansley currently represents Fort Worth-based Wound Management Technologies CEO Scott Haire, who has been charged by the SEC with market manipulation. He also represents Alex Dowlatshahi, the former CFO of Dallas-based China’s Voice, on allegations of offering fraud and market manipulation.
“The SEC Fort Worth Regional Office has really beefed up during the past year or so,” says Ansley. “That office has some terrific lawyers and I think we are about to see them get very active.”
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