Ex-Willkie M&A counsel pleads guilty as DOJ charges 30 in BigLaw insider-trading ring

Federal prosecutors in Boston charged 30 people on Wednesday in what the government called a global insider-trading ring built around stolen merger files at three of New York’s most prominent law firms. Corporate counsel from Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, Latham & Watkins and Goodwin Procter were named in the two indictments. Among the cooperating witnesses is Gabriel Gershowitz, a former mergers and acquisitions counsel at Willkie Farr & Gallagher who pleaded guilty in February 2025. His sentencing is scheduled in connection with tips that fed trades around the $5 billion sale of Enstar Group to Sixth Street Partners.

Nineteen of the 30 defendants were arrested when the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts unsealed two indictments on 6 May. The Securities and Exchange Commission filed a parallel civil action the same day naming 21 of those individuals. Prosecutors said the scheme ran from 2018 through 2024 and produced tens of millions of dollars in illicit profits across roughly 30 deals.

“The trading on unannounced financial news alleged here not only violated the securities laws, but it also took advantage of the special access and ethical duties that come with a law license,” U.S. Attorney Leah Foley said in a statement.

The government identifies Nicolo Nourafchan, a 2011 Yale Law School graduate based in Los Angeles, as the alleged ringleader. Nourafchan worked at Sidley Austin, Latham & Watkins and Goodwin Procter between 2013 and 2023, according to the indictment. He is accused of misappropriating material non-public information from at least 12 pending corporate transactions while inside those firms. Robert Yadgarov, a college classmate, is alleged to have helped recruit other lawyers and route tips to traders who agreed to kick back a portion of their gains.

How the deals were tipped

Prosecutors and the SEC point to Occidental Petroleum’s $55 billion acquisition of Anadarko Petroleum in 2019 and Johnson & Johnson’s $31 billion takeover of Actelion Ltd. in 2017 as among the transactions the ring traded around. They also identify Amazon’s 2022 proposal to buy iRobot, advised by Goodwin Procter, where Nourafchan allegedly viewed deal materials on the firm’s document management system while on leave.

Gershowitz’s role centred on more recent activity. According to court filings, he tipped the Sixth Street acquisition of Enstar, announced in July 2024, and negotiated a roughly $30,000 kickback for the lead. He ultimately received a smaller payment. Co-conspirators bought between $2 million and $3 million of Enstar shares before the deal became public. Prosecutors are seeking a two-year prison sentence at his sentencing, which has been postponed multiple times since being initially set for November 2025.

Three firms, three responses

The named law firms moved to put distance between themselves and the conduct on Wednesday. Willkie Farr & Gallagher said it “is aware that a former employee is alleged to have engaged in conduct that would constitute a severe violation of our clear and well-defined compliance policies.”

Goodwin Procter struck a similar tone: “We are deeply disappointed that a former employee is alleged to have violated the trust placed in him and misused confidential information as part of a broader criminal scheme affecting multiple law firms and their clients.” Latham & Watkins said only that “the conduct as alleged would reflect a serious violation of our robust policies and procedures.” Wachtell, the fourth firm tied to the indictment by association with at least one defendant, did not issue a public statement on the day.

None of the firms have been accused of wrongdoing. The cases turn on individual lawyers allegedly accessing internal deal rooms and document management systems and then passing that information to a network of traders who, in several instances, are not lawyers themselves.

What it means for compliance

The case ranks among the largest BigLaw insider-trading prosecutions by defendant count. The 2018 Sean Stewart case at Perella Weinberg involved a single banker and a single tipping relationship. The Massachusetts indictment alleges a multi-firm, multi-tipper ring that operated across nearly a full M&A cycle.

The SEC’s parallel civil complaint names 21 individuals. Several names appear in both the criminal and civil filings: Mark Alperin, Miakel Bishay, David Bratslavsky and the Fensterszaub brothers, Brian, Mark and Simon. Prosecutors allege that some defendants received hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash payments in exchange for placing trades on the inside information.

Compliance officers across major M&A practices are likely to revisit access controls on document management systems following the disclosures. Several of the alleged leaks occurred while attorneys were either rotating between firms or formally on leave, a pattern that mirrors gaps flagged by the American Bar Association’s most recent technology audit guidance.

Nine defendants, including Gershowitz, have already pleaded guilty and are cooperating with the government. The remaining defendants are expected to be arraigned in the District of Massachusetts in the coming weeks. A spokesperson for the FBI field office in Boston, which led the investigation, declined to comment beyond the statement issued by the U.S. Attorney’s Office.