Mark L. Krotoski

During nearly 20 years as a federal prosecutor, Mark handled a variety of complex and novel investigations and high-profile cases.  As the assistant chief of the National Criminal Enforcement Section in the DOJ’s Antitrust Division, he oversaw international criminal antitrust cartel investigations and successfully led trial teams in prosecuting antitrust and obstruction of justice cases involving corporations and executives. He also provided guidance on electronic evidence and forensic issues.

Mark served as the national coordinator for the Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property (CHIP) Program in the DOJ’s Criminal Division, which involved approximately 250 federal prosecutors specially trained to prosecute cybercrime and intellectual property enforcement cases. He successfully prosecuted and investigated virtually every type of computer intrusion, cybercrime, and criminal intellectual property violation.

As chief and deputy chief of the Criminal Division in the US Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California, he supervised cases involving white collar crime, securities fraud, computer intrusion, intellectual property, organized crime, and antiterrorism. While serving as a Special Assistant Attorney General in California, Mark was counsel of record on 10 amicus briefs filed in the US Supreme Court on criminal justice matters.

He is a former law clerk to Judge Procter R. Hug Jr. of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Chief Judge William A. Ingram of the US District Court for the Northern District of California.

Mark frequently speaks at national and international conferences on topics involving criminal antitrust enforcement, cybersecurity, cybercrime, and trade secret issues, as well as the use of electronic evidence in investigations and at trial.

Criminal Antitrust Cases

• Lead counsel on the conviction of an executive for agreeing on bids and prices for automotive instrument panel clusters sold to an automobile manufacturer
• Led a team on the conviction of a former executive and company director for obstructing an automotive parts investigation
• Lead counsel for the retrial of a former airline executive concerning the price fixing of fuel surcharge rates on air cargo shipments from Miami to South America; five days before trial, a guilty plea was entered
• Lead counsel concerning other investigations involving price fixing, bid rigging, and market allocation among international corporations in the automotive parts and air cargo industries

Economic Espionage and Trade Secret Misappropriation

• Obtained the first conviction in the United States involving source code under the Arms Export Control Act and International Trafficking in Arms Regulation and the first sentencing under the Economic Espionage Act of 1996 for foreign economic espionage involving the misappropriation of a trade secret with intent to benefit a foreign government (under 18 U.S.C. § 1831)
• Co-counsel in a case that resulted in a foreign economic espionage conviction involving the misappropriation of trade secrets with the intent to benefit foreign instrumentalities (under 18 U.S.C. § 1831)
• Following an international investigation, filed charges against a foreign national for computer intrusions involving NASA and a leading provider of computer network equipment and theft of trade secrets involving source code
• Lead counsel in the investigation and conviction of a company vice president for the theft of trade secrets from his former employer, a Fortune 15 company
• Led other criminal convictions and investigations involving the misappropriation of trade secrets from international, medium, and small companies

Cyber and Data Security, Unauthorized Access, Computer Intrusions, Cybercrime

• Co-counsel in a jury trial that led to a conviction concerning the intrusion into the Yahoo! account of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and obstruction of justice; argued the appeal before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, which affirmed the convictions (United States v. Kernell, 667 F.3d 746 (6th Cir. 2012))
• Obtained a jury trial conviction concerning a computer intrusion “time bomb” that corrupted more than 50,000 company records (United States v. Shea, 493 F.3d 1110 (9th Cir. 2007))
• Obtained a computer intrusion conviction involving high-technology companies (United States v. Heckenkamp, 482 F.3d 1142 (9th Cir. 2007))
• Led numerous other prosecutions and investigations of computer intrusions, computer fraud, cybercrime, and the obstruction of justice

Other Intellectual Property Enforcement Cases

• Lead counsel on an undercover investigation, which culminated in the largest CD and DVD manufacturing piracy scheme prosecuted in the United States at the time and convictions of three key manufacturers for copyright, trademark, counterfeit labels, and FBI seal violations
• Following an undercover investigation concerning an Internet “warez” conspiracy involving pirated movies, games, and software, coordinated approximately 40 searches simultaneously executed across the United States with other searches outside the country and developed case strategies resulting in 30 convictions in one year, with 40 total convictions for various criminal copyright violations
• Obtained the first convictions under a new federal “camming” statute (unauthorized recording of motion pictures in a motion picture exhibition facility) and a new statute for uploading prereleases on the Internet (criminal copyright infringement by distributing a copyrighted work on a computer network)
• Obtained the first conviction in California and the second in the United States under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)
• Obtained convictions for the unauthorized manufacture and distribution of satellite television access devices and DMCA violations as part of a satellite piracy scheme, including manufacturing and distributing software and devices that were used to steal satellite programming
• Multiple other DMCA convictions and investigations