United States Attorney Kevin V. Ryan announced today that he has appointed Eumi L. Choi as First Assistant United States Attorney to replace C. Don Clay, who was recently appointed to a judgeship on the Superior Court by the governor.  In addition, Mr. Ryan announced that Miles Ehrlich would become the Chief of the White Collar Crime Unit within the Criminal Division of the U.S. Attorney's Office and that Sara Winslow would become a Deputy Chief of the Civil Division.  The appointments for Ms. Choi and Ms. Winslow are effective immediately, while Mr. Ehrlich will assume his supervisory responsibilities upon the departure of the current chief for private practice.

Eumi Choi has been an Assistant United States Attorney for nine years, and has been in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California for three years.  Most recently, she has served as Executive Assistant U.S. Attorney, the number three position in the office with oversight of the Civil, Tax and Administrative Divisions.  She has also continued to prosecute cases as executive assistant.  For example, Ms. Choi is the lead  prosecutor in the investigation of Network Associates which resulted in the recent guilty plea of a former vice president and controller to charges of securities fraud.

Ms. Choi has extensive experience as a prosecutor.  She has been an attorney for over 18 years, having spent nearly all of her legal career in state and federal service.  She has a background in civil and criminal practice, and has tried cases in all levels: state and federal trial courts, as well as many state and federal appellate courts.  Before joining the U.S. Attorney's Office in San Francisco, Ms. Choi was a prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Washington, D.C. and a criminal Trial Attorney with the United States Department of Justice, also in Washington, D.C.  When she joined this office, she was first assigned to the office in San Jose where she prosecuted white collar, computer crimes and organized crime cases, including the successful prosecution in 2001 of seven defendants who committed a multi-million dollar armed robbery of computer chips.  A graduate of Columbia University and the Emory School of Law, Ms. Choi recently declined to take a high profile position with the Justice Department's Anti-Terrorism Section in Washington, D.C. in order to continue her work here with United States Attorney Kevin V. Ryan and the Northern District of California.

Mr. Ryan said that he would not appoint another Executive Assistant U.S. Attorney, and that Ms. Choi will continue to handle the major responsibilities she had in that position as well as those she will assume as the First Assistant United States Attorney.  The Criminal, OCDETF (narcotics task force), Civil and Tax Divisions, the Oakland and San Jose Branch offices, and the Administrative Division will all report to Ms. Choi, and through her to Mr. Ryan.

Miles Ehrlich, the new chief of the White Collar Crime Unit, is also a highly experienced prosecutor.  Before joining the office three years ago, Mr. Ehrlich spent six years as a Trial Attorney with the Department of Justice's Public Integrity Section, where he prosecuted major public corruption cases against federal and state public officials in Ohio, Virginia, Florida, California, Minnesota, New York, Washington, D.C., and Hawaii. 

Among the most significant cases Mr. Ehrlich handled at the Public Integrity Section were the successful prosecutions of:  an Assistant U.S. Attorney who accepted more than $150,000 in gratuities from cooperating witnesses; a federal probation officer who took bribes from a defendant she supervised; a deputy prison warden who received bribes from an inmate; and a senior budget analyst in the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) who stole more than $6 million in government funds.

Here, Mr. Ehrlich has handled some of the office's most challenging and complex prosecutions in the areas of financial fraud, securities fraud, and public corruption – including the 2002 prosecution of the Chief Financial Officer of Media Vision, Inc., Steven Allan, who perpetrated a massive corporate fraud scheme designed to deceive the SEC, defraud investors, and artificially prop up the company's stock price.  The jury found Mr. Allan guilty of mail, wire, and securities fraud. And in 2003, Mr. Ehrlich secured the conviction of a former high-ranking officer in the City of San Francisco's Department of Building Inspection, Marcus Armstrong, who defrauded taxpayers out of more than half a million dollars, and then obstructed justice after he became the subject of a federal criminal investigation.

Mr. Ehrlich is currently prosecuting Nikolai Tehin, a local plaintiffs' attorney who has been indicted on charges that he stole and  laundered more than $2 million in settlement funds he secured on behalf of his clients, including disabled children and indigent tenants. 

A graduate of Harvard College and Stanford Law School, Mr. Ehrlich was a law clerk to United States Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy and Judge William A. Norris, formerly of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.   Previously, Mr. Ehrlich was a legislative assistant to then-Congressman, and now Senator Charles E. Schumer from New York.  He also interned on the staff of  California Governor George Deukmejian.  Mr. Ehrlich has taught criminal law as an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University Law Center, and has lectured on public corruption prosecution at the FBI's training academy in Quantico, Virginia, and the Justice Department's National Advocacy Center.

Sara Winslow has been an Assistant U.S. Attorney in San Francisco since 2001.  She specializes in False Claims Act cases and other affirmative civil enforcement matters.  She was the Assistant U. S. Attorney who handled the June 2002 settlement in United States ex rel. Khalsa v. California, et al., in which the State of California and the County of Los Angeles agreed to pay $73.3 million to the federal government to settle allegations that they had improperly billed the Medicaid program.  She also handled the civil aspects of the government's June 2003 landmark $92.4 million criminal and civil settlement with Guidant Corporation subsidiary Endovascular Technologies, Inc. regarding its Ancure Endograft System, a medical device used to treat abdominal aortic aneurysms which the government alleged had repeatedly malfunctioned. Ms. Winslow also serves as the ethics advisor and the civil health care fraud coordinator for the U.S. Attorney's Office.

Prior to joining the U.S. Attorney's Office, Ms. Winslow was also a United States Department of Justice Trial Attorney, having spent five years at the Civil Division in Washington, D.C., where she handled False Claims Act cases in various jurisdictions across the country.  She received her bachelor's degree from Syracuse University and her law degree from Georgetown University in 1995.  After graduating from law school, she clerked for Judge John M. Steadman of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals.  As Deputy Chief, she will be responsible for assisting in the management of all the civil litigation brought or defended by the United States in federal court.

In making the announcement, U.S. Attorney Kevin V. Ryan said, "Over the last year, I have had the opportunity to work on a day to day basis with Eumi Choi and have come to rely on her experience and advice.  She is an excellent prosecutor and a trusted confidante with established leadership skills.  Although it is regrettable that we have lost Don Clay to the bench, I am confident that Eumi will continue the strides we have made to strengthen what is already one of the premier U.S. Attorney's Offices in the country.  I am equally confident of the leadership and lawyering  abilities of both Miles Ehrlich and Sara Winslow and I know that they will bring new energy and vision to the management of this office."