Jorge Sarmiento

Cooley navigated Nishad Singh, former FTX director of engineering, through the highest-profile and fastest-moving financial fraud investigation in decades. Judge Lewis A. Kaplan of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York said that he was “persuaded” by Singh’s cooperation in the investigation, and that he was put in a difficult position by Sam Bankman-Fried. Kaplan ordered Singh to contribute funds to the $11.2 billion forfeiture tab and spend three years on supervision. In addition to representing Singh in the investigation by the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, Cooley also represents Singh before the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the New York Attorney General’s Office in the highly visible criminal and civil investigation. The Cooley team was led by partners Andrew Goldstein and Russell Capone, with support from associates Anu Dhillon and Jorge Sarmiento.

A Cooley pro bono team secured an appeal from the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversing a lower court’s decision granting qualified immunity to officers who held Black teenagers looking for a lost dog at gunpoint. The Fifth Circuit held that the officers were not entitled to qualified immunity for stopping the teens because a reasonable jury could find that the officers had no reasonable basis to suspect any criminal activity.

Cooley secured a complete victory for Rappi, an on-demand delivery super app in Latin America, by obtaining dismissal of a high-stakes trade secret misappropriation case that contested the invention and ownership of Rappi’s business model. Lawyers Mike Rhodes, Patrick Gunn and Lilia Lopez led the Cooley team advising Rappi.