John Reed Stark is Managing Director in charge of Stroz Friedberg’s Washington, DC, office. He actively manages digital forensics, electronic discovery, and other projects for major law firms and corporations involved in civil, criminal, regulatory, and internal corporate matters. He is also engaged in structuring and running corporate compliance projects for broker-dealer and other regulated business units. Mr. Stark brings to the firm an unusual depth and breadth of experience in the realm of technology-related securities fraud, and he has been a frequent guest commentator in the national media on cybercrime and related areas.
Mr. Stark joined Stroz Friedberg from the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) where he founded, and for over a decade served as Chief of, its Office of Internet Enforcement (OIE). In this capacity, he conducted scores of investigations and oversaw dozens of filed actions—including five coordinated “sweeps”—covering the widest range of securities violations: hacking, identity theft, and brokerage account intrusion; money laundering; Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violations; hedge fund fraud; unlawful insider trading; market manipulations; exchange, electronic communication network, and other market-center related regulatory infractions; offering fraud; and others.
As OIE Chief, Mr. Stark created and managed the SEC Enforcement Complaint Center website that receives up to 5,000 emails per day reporting instances of fraud, and he coordinated and led multiple securities fraud training programs attended by hundreds of members of the law enforcement and regulatory community. In addition, he constructed and managed the Enforcement Division’s sole computer lab and headed a number of innovative Enforcement initiatives, including the Internet Search Engine; the early intervention program, designed to catch small, inadvertent infractions at an early stage; and the“CyberForce” program of coordinated web surfing.
While with the SEC, Mr. Stark also served as FBI Instructor at the Quantico Marine Training Facility and gave more than 200 speeches and presentations to the public about the SEC. Acting as spokesperson for the Commission, he has frequently been quoted in major periodicals and featured in television and radio appearances. Providing liaison to the SEC Office of Public Affairs, he handled legislative relations, drafting speeches, congressional testimony, and other presentations on many enforcement, regulatory, and technology-related topics.
During Mr. Stark’s SEC tenure, he also served as a Special Assistant US Attorney for the District of Columbia, where he secured a high percentage of convictions in domestic violence, gun, and drug prosecutions. He previously handled financial and commercial litigation matters at the Washington, DC-based firm of Arent Fox LLP.
The author or co-author of numerous articles, Mr. Stark is Adjunct Professor of Law at the Georgetown University Law Center, where he has for more than a decade taught courses in Securities Law and the Internet and Advanced Securities Regulation. He holds a B.A. in political science from Union College and a J.D. from the Duke University School of Law, where he was Vice Chairman of the Moot Court Board.