In another example of the federal government to Wall Street revolving door, FBI securities fraud division chief Patrick Carroll resigned over the weekend to take a position at Goldman Sachs.
Bloomberg is reporting that Patrick Carroll, the FBI agent who headed up the Bernie Madoff investigation and was heavily involved in the use of wiretaps that led to insider-trading convictions, has taken a job with the Goldman Sachs Group.
Carroll has switched allegiances to the investment bank after after 25 years with the FBI. He is just the latest in a strong of former federal government officials who have ended up at high-paying jobs on Wall Street. Apparently, Carroll has become a vice president in GS’s compliance, surveillance and strategy group, which is managed by Alan Cohen.
More on Patrick Carroll taking the revolving door
Carroll joined the Bureau 1991, after working at Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch for a few years. He earned his Series 7 and Series 63 licenses shortly after graduation from Fordham University.
After a few years, Carroll worked his way up to head of one of NY’s FBI’s two squads assigned to white-collar crimes.
The Bernie Madoff Case also fell into Carroll’s lap in 2008 as the financial crisis was unwinding, and he led the FBI’s investigation working closely with the SEC.
The conviction of Galleon Group co-founder Rajaratnam was the first use of wiretaps in a high profile securities-fraud case. The verbal evidence was essential, noted Richard Holwell, the nows-retired judge who presided over the trial.
“They provide a chance for the jury to hear it as it happens,” explained Holwell, now of Holwell Shuster & Goldberg LLP. “And there is something else — maybe if there is someone out there intent on breaking the law, they will now be more careful in light of the fact that their phone may be tapped.”
Can be seen as a major coup for Goldman Sachs
“It’s really about how Goldman is reacting to the tidal wave of litigation that now seems to be part of the ongoing government toolkit for regulating banks,” commented Roy Smith, a professor of finance at NYU’s Stern School of Business and himself an ex-Goldman employee. “It can help to have some people who know how government prosecutors and investigators think, some guy who has the mindset of an alligator.”
