Name: Edward V. Sapone
Item: Edward V. Sapone
Author: ed2

Bio

Edward V. Sapone is a founding partner of Sapone & Petrillo, LLP. He concentrates his practice on federal criminal defense and white collar litigation. Mr. Sapone has spent his entire career successfully defending people and corporations accused of crimes. As lead trial counsel, Mr. Sapone has tried an extraordinary number of cases throughout the last 20 years and has gained acquittals in federal courts for clients indicted for the most serious crimes such as multi-million dollar fraud, structuring financial transactions, conspiracies, and other alleged crimes. Mr. Sapone also has won in state court—from the most serious murder cases, to trials including the assault of CIA agents protecting Barbara and Jenna Bush, wife and daughter of U.S. President George W. Bush—to other offenses. In addition to successfully defending his clients at trial, Mr. Sapone has negotiated dismissals, deferred prosecutions, and other favorable resolutions that have removed for his clients the risk of a trial.

Following Mr. Sapone’s numerous acquittals in criminal cases in federal and state courts, plaintiffs firms and defense firms began to retain him as lead trial counsel to try their civil labor law and personal injury cases. Mr. Sapone has won trials for both plaintiffs and defendants, obtaining millions of dollars in verdicts for plaintiffs and preventing millions of dollars in verdicts for defendants.

Mr. Sapone has routinely represented high profile clients. Some examples include a target of a large-scale federal prosecution in the NXIVM Sex Cult case (prevented prosecution); a $50 million trademark counterfeiting investigation stemming from China (prevented prosecution); a $29 million federal tax case prosecuted in the Central Islip federal courthouse (served 10 months in BOP camp); a $70 million Nike Air Jordan counterfeiting conspiracy in the Manhattan federal courthouse (sentence of supervised release), a San Diego federal prosecution that piggy-backed the BALCO professional athlete steroid scandal (sentence of Probation), and many multi-million dollar healthcare fraud and money laundering prosecutions in the Manhattan, Brooklyn and NJ federal courthouses.
Mr. Sapone’s representation of the advisor to a President of Mexico resulted in no criminal charges being filed. His representation of a mayor of a New Jersey township resulted in no criminal charges being filed. Mr. Sapone represented Sou El Flotador, a Regatón music sensation; a Yonkers City council member; and the captain of a vessel that contained thousands of kilograms of cocaine captured by the U.S. Coastguard—all in the Manhattan federal courthouse, and all receiving drastic downward variances from the sentencing guidelines.

Mr. Sapone is a Past-President of the New York Criminal Bar Association and the current Chair of its Sentencing Committee. He is criminal defense counsel to the Government of Mexico through its Consulate in New York. Mr. Sapone is a faculty member of the National Institute of Trial Advocacy at Hofstra Law School, and the Marino Institute of Continuing Legal Education, through which he has taught at New York Law School, Fordham Law School, and Rutgers Law School.

After gaining acquittals and dismissals throughout the New York courts, and successfully handling some of the most notable cases and clients in New York, Mr. Sapone began to represent criminal defendants throughout the U.S. He is routinely admitted pro hac vice in various foreign jurisdictions including New Jersey, Puerto Rico, Florida, California, Connecticut, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia, Colorado and Georgia.

For the last two decades, Mr. Sapone has represented hundreds of indigent criminal defendants. He also represents indigent defendants as a member of the Homicide Panel for the Appellate Division, First Department (2012 - Present), and the Criminal Justice Act Panel of the Southern District of New York (2016-Present).

Having successfully defended hundreds of people, Mr. Sapone received a Citation of Honor by the Hon. Helen M Marshall, Queens Borough President (2009), a Proclamation of Honor by New York State Senator Jose Peralta (2010 and 2014), and a Citation of Honor by New York State Assemblyman Francisco P. Moya (2011). Mr. Sapone has also been recognized by Super Lawyers (2014-Present) and VerdictSearch's Top New York Verdicts of 2010.

Mr. Sapone has taught advanced trial techniques and federal practice to thousands of lawyers and law students and has mentored more than a dozen law and college students. He teaches at the Manhattan federal courthouse annually. Since the coronavirus shutdown, Mr. Sapone has taught four seminars remotely to hundreds of lawyers and he wrote the course curriculum and recruited twenty lawyers to teach a fifteen-hour, ten-part federal practice seminar. Mr. Sapone will teach week eight on federal sentencing in August 2020. Having represented corporate CEOs and broker-dealers, Mr. Sapone also has been invited to lecture for the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners.

Mr. Sapone is often sought to share his extensive knowledge of criminal law with the public. He has appeared as a legal analyst on CNN, Headline News, Court TV, MSNBC, Fox 5, and TRUTV.

Mr. Sapone has been a subject of print news and magazines, and his high profile cases have been printed in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg Business Week, Crain’s New York Business, the NACDL Champion, and numerous New York City and local newspapers.

Mr. Sapone sits on the Board of Directors of the New York Criminal Bar Association, and is a member of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the New York State Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

As a courtesy to the NYCBA, Mr. Sapone publishes Ed Sapone’s Decisions of the Week, in which he analyzes and summarizes all published federal and NY state appellate opinions.

Mr. Sapone received a B.A. from Fordham University and a J.D. cum laude from New York Law School, where he was an editor of the International and Comparative Law Journal, and a Member of Distinction of the Moot Court Association. He completed externships for a NY Supreme Court Justice, and for a Deputy Chief of the Bronx DA’s Office. Mr. Sapone was also a contributor to the suppression law section of the 1998 Bench Manual relied upon by New York State trial judges. He attended law school at night while working as a full-time criminal defense paralegal during the day.

Mr. Sapone has managed to head a boutique criminal defense law firm while running marathons in New York and New Jersey, competing in the 2013 Northeast Regional Ironman Championship, cage fighting, reading the Bible daily, running a grassroots homeless outreach, traveling to Haiti on relief missions, and helping his wife raise four children (22 year-old recent college grad, 17 year-old actress/singer, 13 year-old all-star cheerleader, and a 6 year-old Pokémon trainer).

Edward V. Sapone

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