Prosecutor in Sheldon Silver Trial Heads Back to Mofo

Last week, Carrie Cohen appeared in a Manhattan courtroom as a federal prosecutor and urged a judge to hammer former state assembly speaker Sheldon Silver with prison time.

“His bribery and kickback schemes were multifaceted and nefarious,” Cohentold a judge. “No excuses, just pure greed.”

This week, she’s singing a different tune: Cohen joins the ranks of other prosecutors who switched to the defense side and joined Morrison & Foerster as partners. This includes James Koukios and Charles Duross in Washington, D.C. Cohen joins Mofo’s white collar defense, enforcement and securities litigation group in New York.

In an interview, she said a lot of regulatory bodies and enforcement agencies are filing cases right now and she’s looking forward to working on fraud cases of “all sorts and colors.”

“I’m excited to work on corruption cases internationally,” Cohen said, pointing to Latin America in particular.

She said she has been active in women’s issues in Latin America, helping spearhead a professional development program for women attorneys there through the New York City Bar’s Cyrus R. Vance Center for International Justice.

Jamie Levitt, co-chair of the firm’s commercial litigation and trial group, said one reason Cohen is attractive to the firm, besides her lawyering skills, is her commitment to women’s advancement.

The move is a homecoming for Cohen. She worked as an associate at Morrison & Foerster from 1998 to 1999 and then took a position in the New York State Attorney General’s Office, where she helped prosecute former New York State Comptroller Alan Hevesi for taking gifts from a state pension fund investor.

In 2007, she joined the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan where she tried eight jury cases including the one against Silver, who received 12 years in prison.