David L. Axelrod

• United States v. Teva Pharmaceuticals USA, Inc., et al.: defended generic pharmaceutical manufacturer charged with conspiracy to fix prices in case brought by DOJ Antitrust Division, and negotiated resolution of the case through a novel post-indictment deferred prosecution agreement.
• Russo and Steele, LLC v. Gannett Ventures, LLC, et al.: represented defendant, a subsidiary of Gannett Co.; lead trial lawyer in contract dispute that culminated in an April 2024 jury trial, in which client successfully defeated all of plaintiff’s claims and prevailed on all of its counter-claims including an award of punitive damages for fraud. No. CV2021-017679 (Super. Ct. 2021).
• United States v. Paul Spivak, et al.: represent president and founder of publicly-traded company charged with conspiracy to commit securities fraud and related charges. No. 1:21CR491 (N.D. Ohio 2021).

David has directed strategy in cases involving investment fraud, accounting fraud, FCPA violations, and market manipulation, and has tried to verdict cases involving insider trading. The following examples are representative of his experience at the SEC:

• SEC v. Daryl M. Payton (S.D.N.Y.): lead trial counsel in jury trial in which two brokers were found liable for insider trading in advance of IBM’s acquisition of a data analytics company. It was the first insider trading case tried after the Second Circuit's Newman decision heightening the "personal benefit" requirement.
• SEC v. Bonan Huang, et al. (E.D. Pa.): lead trial counsel in case where the SEC charged two Capital One employees with stealing credit card data for hundreds of publicly traded companies, which they used to make profitable trades. Successfully tried to a jury in a week-long trial in January 2016, resulting in a more than $12 million judgment.
• SEC v. Dubovoy, et al. (D.N.J.): supervised a team of trial lawyers where the SEC charged more than 30 defendants in the United States and Europe with using stolen press releases to make more than $100 million trading U.S. securities.

Prior to joining the SEC, David was an Assistant U.S. Attorney at the U.S. Attorney's Office, Eastern District of Pennsylvania, where he focused on investigating and prosecuting economic crimes, including securities fraud, public corruption, and tax evasion. He tried more than a dozen cases to verdict and argued multiple times before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. The following examples are representative of his experience as a federal prosecutor:

• In United States v. Robert Stinson, investigated and prosecuted a $17 million Ponzi scheme.
• In United States v. Steven Pitchersky, investigated and prosecuted a California mortgage lender who stole millions of dollars from a national warehouse lender.
• In United States v, Kelly Defeo, investigated and convicted at trial a real estate developer that created fake tax returns and defrauded his lenders and investors.