Eddie A. Jauregui

Eddie A. Jauregui is a partner in Holland & Knight's Los Angeles office, co-chair of the firm's White Collar Defense and Investigations Team and a member of the firm's Litigation and Dispute Resolution Practice. A former federal prosecutor, Mr. Jauregui focuses on internal corporate investigations, corporate compliance and training, False Claims Act matters, white collar criminal defense and complex business disputes. His clients include senior corporate officers and directors, financial institutions, product manufacturers, energy companies, entertainment companies, real estate developers and other corporate entities.

Prior to joining Holland & Knight, Mr. Jauregui served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Los Angeles U.S. Attorney's Office, where he prosecuted high-profile fraud and public corruption cases. Mr. Jauregui was part of the trial team that tried and convicted former Los Angeles County Sheriff Leroy Baca and Undersheriff Paul Tanaka for obstruction of justice in connection with a federal civil rights investigation of the Los Angeles County jails. For his role in these landmark prosecutions, Mr. Jauregui received a California Lawyer of the Year Award in 2018 and a special recognition from the Los Angeles County Bar Association Criminal Justice Section.

As a Major Frauds prosecutor, Mr. Jauregui investigated and prosecuted complex financial crimes, including money laundering, bank and wire fraud, investment advisor fraud, mortgage fraud, defense procurement fraud, import/export crimes, tax crimes and extortion by threat to reputation. Among other cases, Mr. Jauregui co-led, investigated and charged a $1.8 billion complex fraud and international money laundering scheme targeting U.S. and foreign corporations and individuals that has resulted in multiple convictions thus far. He also successfully tried and argued on appeal United States v. Koziol, 993 F.3d 1160 (9th Cir. 2021), in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held, in a matter of first impression in the circuit, that threats of sham litigation, if made to obtain property to which a person knows she has no lawful claim, are "wrongful" under the federal extortion statute, 18 U.S.C. § 1951(a). In addition, Mr. Jauregui handled parallel investigations involving the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the U.S. Department of Justice's (DOJ) Civil Fraud Division, and served for several years as the U.S. Attorney's Office's Procurement Fraud Coordinator. He was later promoted to Deputy Chief in the General Crimes Section, where he supervised and trained prosecutors handling a wide variety of criminal cases, ranging from aggravated identity theft and bank fraud to violent crimes and drug trafficking. While serving as an Assistant U.S. Attorney, Mr. Jauregui worked on hundreds of criminal matters, tried six jury trials, briefed and argued multiple cases before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and mentored and supervised trials for newer prosecutors.

Before entering government service, Mr. Jauregui practiced law at two Am Law 100 firms in New York and Los Angeles, where he focused on internal investigations, compliance and white collar criminal defense. Mr. Jauregui represented his corporate and individual clients in investigations brought by the DOJ's Antitrust Division, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, the U.S. House of Representatives, the New York State Attorney General's Office and the Manhattan District Attorney's Office. In addition to conducting internal investigations in the U.S., Mr. Jauregui has conducted investigations internationally, most significantly in Japan.

Mr. Jauregui is active in the legal community and has maintained a pro bono practice throughout his career. As an advocate for diversity in the legal profession, Mr. Jauregui has led diversity, recruiting and mentoring efforts for more than 10 years in both private practice and government service. He has developed programming aimed at building the pipeline of diverse attorneys and mentored numerous young lawyers throughout his career. He currently serves as an adjunct lecturer in law at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law.

Mr. Jauregui is a graduate of Columbia Law School, where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar and recipient of the Valentin J.T. Wertheimer and Allen Morrow prizes. During law school, Mr. Jauregui served as an extern to then-Judge Sonia Sotomayor of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Upon graduation, he served as a law clerk to the Hon. Jan E. DuBois of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.