Michael Budwick

Commercial Litigation, Bankruptcy and Restructuring, Financial Frauds, Receivership and Assignments, Creditors’ Rights

Michael Budwick is a partner and serves as Co-Chair of the Financial Fraud Group. He is regularly involved in the most contentious and complex litigation and insolvency matters, having successfully litigated or resolved a broad array of commercial disputes.

He has represented trustees, receivers, creditors and victims in some of the country’s largest, most high-profile financial fraud cases, including in the $2 billion Ponzi scheme perpetrated by Tom Petters (the third largest Ponzi in U.S. history) and the $950 million Ponzi perpetrated by Jeff Carpoff, the largest fraud in the history of the Eastern District of California.

• Board Member, Rabbi Alexander S. Gross (RASG) Hebrew Academy

• Past first Vice-President, Treasurer and Director of the Bankruptcy Bar Association for the Southern District of Florida

• Past Member of the Florida Bar Grievance Committee

Serves as the Trustee’s special litigation counsel in connection with the largest Ponzi scheme in the E.D. of California (losses exceed $900 million). The firm is responsible for investigating and bringing all estate tort and avoidance claims. To date, we brought and consensually resolved claims against, among others, financial institutions (for $15.125 million & 9 million), professionals (for $20 million, $11.25 million & $3.2 million) and clawback targets (including a $19.5 million recovery from the United States and $5.75 million from NASCAR). We won (affirmed by the Ninth Circuit B.A.P.) a judgment for $3.7 million. We are presently litigating a clawback action seeking eight-figures in damages, and are investigating claims against other financial and professional targets.

Represents the bankruptcy trustee for Palm Beach Finance, a $650 million victim in the Petters Ponzi scheme, the third largest Ponzi scheme in U.S. history. In April 2019, we resolved the Trustee’s tort claim against GE Capital for $49 million, one of the largest recoveries against a financial institution for its alleged joinder in a Ponzi scheme. Altogether, the firm recovered over $220 million on behalf of victims.

Serves as litigation oversight counsel to Doug Kelley, the bankruptcy trustee for Petters Company, Inc., pending in Minneapolis which perpetrated the third largest Ponzi scheme in U.S. history, with $2 billion in cash-on-cash losses. Our firm has worked with the case manager and PCI Trust to manage multiple law firms pursuing dozens of litigations seeking to avoid an aggregate of hundreds of millions of dollars in litigation claims. We managed the successful mediation of a $200 million defendant/profiteer claim. The firm also prosecuted an 8-figure proof of claim in the related Polaroid bankruptcy case and served as co-counsel in an action against JPMorgan obtaining a $30.7 million recovery.

Serves as class counsel to 3,400 investor victims in a $322 million fraud perpetrated by the principals of 1 Global, a merchant cash advance company. The firm prosecuted an adversary against accounting and legal professionals, fundraisers, and the principal, obtaining class certification and leading to various recoveries.

Serves as special litigation counsel to a Chapter 11 Trustee to recover wrongful distributions to principals from debtors that defrauded thousands of consumers nationally through a fraudulent timeshare exit business.