Adam S. Fels

On June 13, 2025, after only four hours of jury deliberation, a federal jury in Miami returned a full acquittal for Adam Fels's client, Kenia Valle Boza, who had been charged with health care fraud and wire fraud in connection with what the Department of Justice's Fraud Section alleged was a $12 million Medicare fraud conspiracy. The DOJ had been promoting the prosecution publicly — at health care law conferences and in press releases — as a landmark effort to hold medical billing supervisors personally responsible for coding decisions. The acquittal stopped that enforcement theory cold.

Ms. Valle Boza's lead trial counsel, Franklin Monsour, now of Dechert LLP (formerly of McDermott Will & Emery), brought Mr. Fels onto the trial team specifically to try the case with him to verdict, a pairing that has become one of the firm's niche practices. National firms increasingly retain FFS for trial-specific reinforcement when a matter is headed to a jury rather than a plea, drawing on Mr. Fels's trial record rather than replacing their own.

That result captures what distinguishes Adam Fels's practice: he tries cases other lawyers settle, and he wins them. A founding partner of Fridman Fels & Soto, PLLC, Mr. Fels is a former Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of Florida for thirteen years and one of the lead prosecutors — who delivered the opening statement — in the federal government's successful prosecution of Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, widely considered one of the most significant drug trafficking prosecutions in American history. For that work, Mr. Fels and the prosecution team were honored with the 2019 U.S. Department of Justice Attorney General's David Margolis Award for Exceptional Service, the Department's highest award for employee performance.

His practice at FFS spans grand jury investigations and subpoena responses, corporate internal investigations, federal criminal defense, money laundering and unlicensed money transmitter cases, health care fraud, trade secrets litigation, FCPA matters, antitrust investigations, and high-stakes civil litigation. He has appeared in federal courts across the country and has represented both individual defendants and corporations facing the full spectrum of government scrutiny — from grand jury subpoenas to trial.

Adam Fels tries cases other lawyers settle, and he wins them. A founding partner of Fridman Fels & Soto, he defends companies and individuals in white-collar criminal matters, international money-laundering cases, and complex internal investigations, appearing in federal courts from Florida and New York to California and Illinois. Chambers USA ranks him Band 2 for White-Collar Crime and Government Investigations, and the Daily Business Review has named him a Most Effective Lawyer in criminal law.

Representative Matters

In June 2025, after only four hours of deliberation, a Miami federal jury acquitted his client Kenia Valle Boza on all counts in what the Justice Department's Fraud Section had promoted as a landmark $12 million Medicare-fraud prosecution, an effort to hold a medical-billing supervisor personally responsible for coding decisions. The acquittal stopped that enforcement theory cold.

His other matters range as widely as the government's reach. He defended a former Gunvor executive charged in the Eastern District of New York in a roughly $22 million PetroEcuador bribery and money-laundering case, carried a Venezuelan businessman's challenge to a $106 million asset seizure by FARC terrorism victims to the Eleventh Circuit, and represents a client in an unlicensed-money-remittance case framed by the government as among its largest, involving more than $300 million. In a confidential arbitration with more than $100 million at stake, he defended biotechnology employees against trade-secret-theft claims, and he has assisted corporations in grand jury investigations involving national security issues. Across his matters he has won a federal appeals-court reversal of a civil judgment, below-guideline and probationary sentences, and decisions by prosecutors not to charge.

Thirteen Years as a Federal Prosecutor

Before co-founding the firm, Fels spent thirteen years as a federal prosecutor in the Southern District of Florida, specializing in international money-laundering, counternarcotics, and counterterrorism cases, and he served as a Special Assistant US Attorney in the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York. He was one of the lead prosecutors, and delivered the government's opening statement, in the successful prosecution of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, one of the largest drug kingpins ever tried in the United States; the trial team, including Fels, received the 2019 Attorney General's David Margolis Award for Exceptional Service, the Department's highest honor for employee performance. He tried and argued some of the office's highest-profile matters, among them counterterrorism cases and the prosecutions of prominent Colombian cartel leaders, and argued several appeals.

Earlier, as a Senior Trial Attorney in the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations, Fels worked to denaturalize and deport former World War II concentration-camp guards who had entered the United States unlawfully, and he was recognized alongside his OSI colleagues with the first Assistant Attorney General's Award for Human Rights Law Enforcement. He has lectured on three continents to law-enforcement audiences and university students on money laundering, terrorist financing, and international criminal procedure. Fels holds a law degree from the University of Chicago and an undergraduate degree from Columbia University, and he began his career clerking for United States District Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks in the Southern District of Florida.