During his management and consulting careers, Mr. Cooney has had experience dealing with aspects of Articles 3, 4 and 4A of the Uniform Commercial Code; banking law; and Federal Reserve, FDIC and OCC regulations and operating rules. He began his first Litigation Support engagement in 1997. He obtained additional engagements from referrals provided by previous clients and opposition counsel prior to expanding this practice nationally. Mr. Cooney offers a full range of services and has experience with cases involving amounts at issue from $100,000 to over $130 million.

     $130,000,000 Fraud Case. After attorneys had been working on the case for nearly two years Mr. Cooney was brought in. After reviewing documents, he realized the case focused on two areas of little significance to bankers. Efforts were refocused to transactions originated by the perpetrators requiring bank officer approval. Transactions approved by the bank’s officers to avoid government reporting, launder money, buy cars, boats and other real property and services having no bearing on the nature of the business and in violation of existing banking law and regulations were identified. He also proved bank employees either knowingly or unknowingly assisted the perpetrators by opening a fiduciary account without proper documentation and inserting a notation on corporate checks that misrepresented the type of account. The case was settled out of court in the client’s favor.

     $53,000,000 Fraud Case. The amount at issue was originally $16,000,000 but Mr. Cooney noticed certain account irregularities that lead to the identification of an additional $37,000,000. He established that an unauthorized South American bank employee opened an account at a U. S. bank in the name of a British Virgin Islands (BVI) corporation in violation of the U. S. bank’s policies and procedures. Bank employees sold U. S. dollar instruments, issued certificates in the name of the BVI corporation and cleared the checks received through the U. S. bank using the BVI account. He also showed how many of the transactions transferring funds from the U. S. bank to other U. S. banks, South American banks and corporations were improperly authorized according to the U. S. bank’s procedures. This case was also settled out of court in the clients favor.

The two cases above required a detailed understanding of the policies, procedures, practices, processes and bank software with the following areas of both major and small banks:

• Opening deposit accounts
• Ordering checks
• Checking and fiduciary account differences
• Due To/Due From Bank accounting
• Corporate and individual account agreements
• Money laundering
• Deposit accounting software
• Cashiers Checks
• Checking account statement detail
• Corporate Account analysis statement detail
• Cash Management/Treasury Management Products
• Domestic & International check clearing
• Corporate information reporting
• Branch office procedures
• Bank relationship management
• Federal Reserve Board Regulations
• Various banking laws
• Remote transaction initiation software
• Domestic wire transfers – Fed Wire
• International wire transfers – CHIPS
• Structuring
• Teller & Platform software
• Bank operating processes