Richard Hong is a former federal prosecutor and senior SEC trial lawyer who represents individuals and entities in the banking, financial, securities and digital assets industries in government and internal investigations, civil enforcement actions and criminal prosecutions, as well as in other high-stakes litigations.
Richard litigated some of the highest profile and difficult post-financial crises cases, including the Bear Stearns and Fannie Mae subprime disclosure frauds. He also worked on accounting frauds, ADR sales practice violations, asset freezes, audit failures, breach of fiduciary duty/conflict-of-interest cases, CMBS bond trading frauds, cryptocurrency frauds, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violations (involving a receivership), insider trading, investment adviser/hedge fund frauds, market manipulations, offering frauds, a stop-order AP proceeding and subpoena enforcement matters.
Richard has tried 43 federal civil and criminal cases – 41 of them tried to jury – around the country. At the SEC, he tried several multi-week complex accounting/disclosure fraud cases before federal juries. Between 2019 and 2022, Richard tried two two-week federal jury trials in the Southern District of New York – tied for the most in the Enforcement Division during that period.
Prior to joining the SEC, Richard served as a federal prosecutor at Main Justice (DOJ) in Washington, DC and at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida (Miami), Economic Crimes Section, where he led numerous complex white-collar grand jury investigations, including bank and securities fraud cases, and prosecuted environmental enforcement cases. As a criminal Assistant U.S. Attorney, Richard tried, as lead or another principal trial counsel, 35 cases, including multi-week bank, securities, mail and wire fraud and money laundering cases, to verdict in less than six years. He also worked on more than 15 criminal appeals as an appellate Assistant U.S. Attorney and argued eight times before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, including “first impression” federal sentencing issues. Richard was awarded, among other awards, the Attorney General’s John Marshall Award (DOJ’s highest award for attorneys).
A member of the faculty for the National Institute for Trial Advocacy (NITA), Richard regularly teaches trial advocacy courses to lawyers across the country. He is actively involved on several committees of the New York City Bar Association; in 2022, he was appointed chair of the Federal Courts Committee and in 2023 was named to the City Bar’s working group evaluating the New York Court of Appeals nomination process.