Alejandro O. Soto is a former federal prosecutor and senior SEC official, and a co-founder of the firm. He has substantial experience in complex civil disputes and white-collar criminal, securities compliance, and regulatory matters. An accomplished trial lawyer, Mr. Soto has personally tried over thirty federal, state, and arbitral cases and teaches trial advocacy at the University of Miami School of Law.

Mr. Soto regularly represents clients in matters before the Department of Justice, the SEC, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). He focuses his practice on federal and state securities fraud and shareholder actions, SEC enforcement actions, violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and related litigation. Mr. Soto has also represented individuals and entities in business disputes before the American Arbitration Association (AAA) and FINRA’s arbitration forum. Mr. Soto also has significant experience representing and advising Latin American clients with business interests and holdings in the United States.

Mr. Soto previously served as both a Staff Attorney and Senior Trial Attorney in the Enforcement Division of the SEC’s Miami Regional Office (MIRO). He led enforcement investigations and litigation in federal courts and administrative proceedings before the Commission in numerous complex securities enforcement actions involving public companies, hedge funds, bank holding companies, registered investment advisors, accounting companies, and their respective board members, officers, and executives.He has extensive experience handling cases and investigatins involving accounting fraud, sophisticated market manipulation schemes, broker-dealer violations, EB-5 Immigration cases, Ponzi schemes, SOX violations, and books and record violations, to name a few. Early in his career at the SEC, Mr. Soto successfully charged a former member of one of the largest organized crime organizations in New York with a complex Ponzi and market manipulation scheme and went on to investigate and litigate some of MIRO’s most complex cases.

Prior to his tenure at the SEC, Mr. Soto served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of Florida for over eleven years, where he specialized in white-collar fraud prosecutions including securities, tax, and mail and wire fraud. Mr. Soto also prosecuted environmental crimes cases, including maritime oil pollution and Lacy Act cases. Mr. Soto successfully handled a number of significant and high-profile cases, including the first case in the Southern District of Florida against a financial advisor for a criminal violation of the Investment Advisor Act of 1940, and an unprecedented case involving a pesticide manufacturer and its executives who conspired to obstruct an EPA investigation.

He led the successful prosecution of a Foreign Terrorist Organization and its leadership for numerous transnational narcotics and international money laundering violations. In light of his experience prosecuting the FTO and several other Colombian Cartel leaders, Mr. Soto was one of only ten federal prosecutors selected nationwide by the Narcotics and Dangerous Drug Section to teach trial advocacy skills to counter-narcotics prosecutors in Latin America and was cleared for top secret information and granted access to sensitive compartmented information. Mr. Soto was selected to serve as a Deputy Chief in the Major Crimes Section of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, where he supervised and trained several newly hired prosecutors.

In addition to teaching trial skills at the University of Miami School of Law, Mr. Soto has taught and lectured extensively in the areas of criminal trial practice, white-collar criminal law, and securities regulation. He has lectured in the areas of federal criminal practice and trial advocacy at the National Advocacy Center and has lectured and spoken on panels before federal and state prosecutors and law enforcement investigators across the country regarding parallel law enforcement and regulatory investigations and securities enforcement actions.

Prior to his service at the SEC and in the Department of Justice, Mr. Soto spent four years in private practice in Miami counseling and defending individuals and organizations in the areas of intellectual property and commercial litigation.

Mr. Soto draws on his extensive knowledge of the inner workings of law enforcement and regulatory agencies to defend corporations and their executives in investigations and district court and administrative actions brought by the SEC, CFTC, FINRA, DOJ, OFR, OFAC, and other federal and state law enforcement agencies. He is uniquely qualified to represent individuals and entities targeted and charged in parallel investigations—those brought by more than one law enforcement and regulatory agency against the same individual or entity for the same alleged conduct—having handled such investigations and lectured on the topic on numerous occasions.

He is a proud veteran of the United States Army and served in the Persian Gulf War. He has volunteered extensively as a lecturer for Lawyers for Literacy, an organization of lawyers and professionals who teach financial and legal literacy skills to disadvantaged youth and has been a child advocate and Guardian Ad Litem for nearly twenty years.