As Executive Managing Director, Seth P. Berman oversees Stroz Friedberg’s London and Boston offices where he supervises digital forensics, cybercrime investigations, and electronic disclosure assignments involving the collection of electronic data in criminal, civil, regulatory, and internal corporate matters. Mr. Berman has extensive experience in dealing with cross-border electronic disclosure projects, and he regularly provides recommendations for clients on how best to structure and manage such projects. Mr. Berman also oversees computer investigations involving data breaches, securities fraud, identity theft, employee misconduct, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) violations, and theft of trade secrets.
Since joining Stroz Friedberg, Mr. Berman has managed numerous major international electronic disclosure efforts, including several cases implicating European Union data protection laws and national bank secrecy regulations. He also has extensive experience assisting clients in investigating potential FCPA violations and in structuring large, multijurisdictional electronic disclosure matters.
Mr. Berman has additional expertise in addressing network intrusions and other hacking incidents. He has led investigations into major data breaches that resulted in notification to hundreds of thousands of individuals that their Personally Identifying Information (PII) had been lost or stolen, and he has assisted clients navigating the complex technical and legal issues surrounding the notification process. In another instance of an apparent data breach, Mr. Berman led a team that was able to definitively prove that no critical information had been lost, and thus no notification was needed, despite the apparent data breach.
He has further assisted clients dealing with theft of trade secrets and intellectual property by recently departed groups of employees, allowing the victimised companies to seek rapid restraining orders and damages from the ex-employees and their new employers. Additionally, Mr. Berman led a team that used computer forensic evidence to demonstrate that an investment banker had accessed inside information prior to contacting a friend who then traded on the information. In part as a result of this evidence, the investment banker was convicted of insider trading after a federal criminal trial in the U.S.
Prior to joining Stroz Friedberg, Mr. Berman was an Assistant U.S. Attorney (AUSA) in the Criminal Division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts. As an AUSA, Mr. Berman served in the Computer Crimes Unit as Computer and Telecommunications Coordinator (one of the lead computer crimes prosecutors). He also served as a member of the New England Electronic Crimes Task Force. Whilst in the government, Mr. Berman conducted and supervised investigations and prosecutions of computer intrusions, denial of service attacks, computer and Internet fraud, identity theft, and other abuses involving the theft and use of information over computer networks. Among his notable cyber cases, Mr. Berman prosecuted one of the leaders of a Russian identity theft ring who obtained millions of dollars worth of fraudulent goods and reshipped the stolen goods to Russia. Mr. Berman also prosecuted a juvenile who hacked into the database of an online information services company, allowing the hacker and his associates access to hundreds of thousands of individuals’ social security numbers and other PII. Additionally, Mr. Berman used computer forensic evidence to obtain indictments and convictions of a ring of individuals who used bank insiders to obtain account information about bank customers in order to forge and cash cheques worth millions of dollars, purporting to draw on the accounts of the banks’ customers.
During his time at the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Mr. Berman also served in the Economic Crimes Unit, where he investigated and prosecuted complex frauds and crimes committed by corporations, and in the Major Crimes Unit, where he prosecuted bank robberies, gun crimes, drug possession cases, and other violent crimes.
Before joining the Department of Justice, Mr. Berman was a partner at the law firm McDermott, Will & Emery in Boston, where he focused on complex civil litigation and white collar defense work in federal and state criminal and regulatory matters.
Mr. Berman began his legal career as an Assistant District Attorney in the New York County District Attorney’s Office where he investigated and prosecuted frauds and computer crimes, as well as burglaries, robberies, car thefts, assaults, and drug crimes, among other violations. While at the District Attorney’s office, he served as a member of the New York Electronic Crimes Task Force.
Mr. Berman received his A.B., cum laude, from Princeton University, and his J.D., magna cum laude, from Cornell Law School where he served as an editor of the Cornell Law Review.