John Siddon

John’s professional experience includes:

• Led teams supporting several law firms in responding to alleged violations of representations and warranties as outlined in the relevant sale and securitization documents for several residential mortgage-backed securities underwritten by leading investment banks. Managed the process of conducting loan-level reviews including fraud reviews as well as evaluating contemporaneous due diligence.
• Performed comparative analysis of the structures and operations of various municipal finance programs at the direction of counsel as part of a dispute regarding the ownership of sources and uses of municipal debt.
• Led a large team of investigators and analysts at an international private bank with $20 billion in assets to create and implement a new transaction monitoring function for identifying and reporting suspicious activity. The bank was under a cease and desist order and entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with the Department of Justice. The bank’s clients were based in Central and South America in various countries including Columbia, Venezuela, and Ecuador.
• Completed an overall Bank Secrecy Act compliance review at a community bank with $1.5 billion in assets that was under a Memorandum of Understanding with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Assisted with transaction review and account investigations of suspicious activity including money laundering, terrorist financing, and OFAC violations. Evaluated the bank’s correspondent banking relationships for compliance with applicable anti-money laundering regulations. Assisted in drafting the bank’s overall risk assessment as well as developing methodology for risk rating the bank’s customers for both financial risk as well as regulatory risk.
• Investigated allegations of lender fraud at a community bank. Alleged fraud included loans to straw borrowers, kickback schemes, and other violations.
• Investigated an Antiguan bank allegedly used by international money launderers to determine the bank’s legitimacy. Various law enforcement bodies claimed that the bank was purchased by a group of investors for the single purpose of laundering criminal proceeds and that the bank performed little or no legitimate banking activity.
• Performed forensic accounting and economic analysis in connection with a civil forfeiture action targeting the assets of an international political figure. The individual was accused of abusing his office to embezzle and then launder hundreds of millions of dollars from his home country. Identified and reconstructed alleged fraudulent transactions which involved a web of shell companies or otherwise opaque structures in Guernsey, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Cyprus, and the Caribbean, among numerous other locations. In addition, analyzed the economic harm that resulted from the alleged schemes, which included complex structures and sometimes involved barter transactions.
• Identified and investigated potential suspicious activity including money laundering and terrorist financing for a Washington, DC Bank with $8 billion in assets to bring the bank into compliance with a consent order agreement with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. The investigations focused on embassy and international private banking clients and included transaction level analysis, as well as account profiling.
• Assisted in the investigation and subsequent prosecutions related to a multi-billion-dollar fraud scheme involving asset-backed securities in the healthcare finance industry. The scheme involved securities fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering.
• Assisted outside counsel investigate allegations surrounding investments into hedge funds determined to be Ponzi schemes. Analyzed trading activity and performed damage analysis considering falsified returns.