Sam Bankman-Fried’s defense team led by battle-tested lawyers

A pair of attorneys defending FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried against one of the biggest white-collar prosecutions in decades are veterans of high-profile cases, including ones involving drug lord El Chapo and disgraced socialite Ghislaine Maxwell.

Mark Cohen and Christian Everdell, former federal prosecutors who are now partners in the New York-based boutique firm Cohen & Gresser, are known for an unflashy, roll-up-their-sleeves style to cases, with a meticulous and persistent approach to building a defense, lawyers who know the men say. The pair are up against hard-charging Justice Department lawyers who moved quickly to indict Mr. Bankman-Fried after FTX’s collapse and secured two of his former top lieutenants as cooperating witnesses.

"The swiftness of charging coupled with the cooperators that emerged suggests this is an uphill battle for them," said Jennifer Rodgers, a former Manhattan colleague of Mr. Everdell’s in the U.S. attorney’s office who praised his work there.

The Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office this past month charged Mr. Bankman-Fried with stealing billions of dollars from FTX customers while misleading investors and lenders connected to his crypto-trading firm Alameda Research. He faces charges of fraud, conspiracy, money laundering and campaign-finance violations and pleaded not guilty last week. The demise of FTX and its impact on other spiraling crypto platforms has made Mr. Bankman-Fried one of the most high-profile white-collar criminal defendants in recent history.

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Lawyers from Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP had been advising Mr. Bankman-Fried before the federal charges but because of a conflict they referred him to Mr. Cohen, according to people familiar with the matter.

Messrs. Cohen, 59 years old, and Everdell, 48, have already navigated their client through a thorny extradition from the Bahamas, where Mr. Bankman-Fried had been jailed after the Justice Department requested that local police arrest him.

The two lawyers worked with local counsel to secure his transfer to U.S. custody while negotiating with federal prosecutors his pretrial release under a $250 million bond. They are now tasked with combing through voluminous and technical discovery, including documents relating to FTX investors, debtors and political campaigns.

Meanwhile, Mr. Bankman-Fried has stated that he intends to help customers recover their money, which some lawyers have said could conflict with his own defense.

The two lawyers declined to comment.

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Mr. Cohen, a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School, worked in the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn from 1990 to 1995, where he spent some of his tenure working on business and securities fraud matters. He had a reputation for questioning witnesses in a way that jurors respected, said lawyer Mark Kirsch, who met Mr. Cohen at the office in 1991.

"His light touch when examining witnesses was extremely effective in obtaining information," Mr. Kirsch said.

Mr. Cohen founded his law firm with attorney Lawrence Gresser in 2002. It has since expanded to have more than 80 lawyers with offices in New York, Washington, London and Paris.

"He’s very entrepreneurial," said lawyer Mark Zauderer, who shared a client with Mr. Cohen. "He’s expanded rapidly and attracted very able lawyers."

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Joel Cohen, a partner at law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP who isn’t related to Mark, said Mark is his go-to person for referring clients he is unable to represent or for a senior executive needing a separate lawyer. The two men worked together representing a fund manager and analyst at hedge fund Wynnefield Capital Inc. in a yearslong insider-trading case brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

During the trial, Mark Cohen showcased his ability to make legal arguments on the fly, including a 40-minute back-and-forth with a judge in which he cited case law off the top of his head, Joel Cohen said. He said he only realized Mark was speaking extemporaneously when he saw the legal treatise in front of Mark was turned upside down throughout the exchange.

"He won the argument," Joel Cohen said. A jury found the defendants not liable in 2014.

Mr. Everdell, a Harvard Law School graduate, worked from 2007 to 2016 as a federal prosecutor in the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office, where he handled cases involving terrorism, complex fraud and money laundering involving a digital currency. He was part of a team that investigated and charged Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán Loera, the notorious leader of a Mexican drug cartel who spent decades on the run from authorities. He was among the prosecutors who worked with witnesses to locate the kingpin, who was eventually convicted in a Brooklyn federal court of 10 criminal counts connected to his cartel.

Sarah Krissoff, a former federal prosecutor, said Mr. Everdell takes a low-key approach that could be helpful in a high-drama case.

"He’s not a showman," she said. "He’s a solid, trustworthy lawyer."

Mr. Everdell joined Mr. Cohen’s firm in 2017.

The two men were part of a legal defense team that advised and represented disgraced Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted in late 2021 of sex -trafficking offenses for recruiting underage girls for the disgraced financier. One of Mr. Everdell’s filings in the case led the presiding judge to lower Ms. Maxwell’s recommended potential sentence under federal sentencing guidelines.

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White-collar defense lawyer Glen McGorty of Crowell & Moring LLP, who has known Mr. Everdell since college, said he is empathetic when working with a defendant facing serious consequences.

"He’s undaunted by what may seem like an impossible defense," said Mr. McGorty. "He does the best he can with what he has."