Christina O. Gotsis

Christina Gotsis is a Partner at Sitaras & Associates, PLLC and leads the firm’s white collar defense, investigations & financial litigation practice. A seasoned, BigLaw-trained litigator, Certified Public Accountant and Certified Fraud Examiner, Christina represents companies, executives, professionals, and individuals in high-stakes government investigations, enforcement matters, internal investigations, and litigation involving complex financial and accounting issues.

Christina counsels and defends clients in investigations and enforcement proceedings involving the Department of Justice, Securities and Exchange Commission, Internal Revenue Service, and other federal, state, and local authorities. Her experience encompasses securities and accounting fraud, Ponzi and other investment schemes, insider trading, money laundering, bribery and corruption, criminal tax matters, False Claims Act violations, lending, mortgage, and Paycheck Protection Program fraud, digital-asset fraud, and other alleged financial misconduct. Drawing on her accounting background, Christina scrutinizes loss calculations, challenges financial assumptions, and dismantles complex theories of alleged fraud to narrow the issues and mitigate clients’ exposure from the earliest stages of an investigation.

Companies, boards, audit committees, executives, and other stakeholders also turn to Christina to conduct internal investigations when suspected misconduct or financial irregularities surface. Combining traditional investigative techniques with forensic analysis of accounting records, financial transactions, and other evidence, she designs and directs investigations to determine what occurred, the financial impact, and the legal and regulatory implications. Christina also advises clients on the difficult decisions that follow an investigation. She assesses potential civil, criminal, and regulatory exposure and advises on disclosure, remediation, and interactions with auditors, lenders, counterparties, and government authorities. Her focus is on containing potential exposure and guiding her clients to make informed decisions before an issue develops into shareholder and derivative litigation, director and officer liability, or government enforcement.

Her advisory practice also includes anti-money laundering, anti-corruption, fraud prevention, internal controls, risk assessments, and compliance program design and remediation. Drawing on both her legal and accounting backgrounds, Christina works with clients to identify vulnerabilities in financial and compliance systems, assess the significance of identified conduct, strengthen controls, and develop practical responses to regulatory, litigation, and reputational risk.

Christina brings the same financial fluency to sophisticated financial litigation in federal and state courts and in arbitration. She represents clients in disputes involving fraud and civil RICO claims, investment funds, shareholders and investors, bank and auditor liability, trustees and fiduciaries, asset concealment, and other complex commercial and financial matters, including cross-border disputes. Christina’s dual background in law and accounting allows her to engage directly with the financial evidence at the center of a matter rather than relying solely on others to interpret it. She often directs expert teams to develop defensible financial models that withstand scrutiny in litigation and challenge opposing narratives.

Christina began her legal career representing the Trustee in the liquidation of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, where she analyzed BLMIS and feeder-fund records, worked extensively with experts on financial models, and helped develop recovery theories as part of the Trustee’s efforts that ultimately recovered more than $15 billion for defrauded investors. She later represented a federal receiver in an SEC digital-asset Ponzi-scheme matter, leading experts in tracing cryptocurrency transactions and developing litigation and recovery strategies.

Those experiences continue to shape Christina’s representation of corporate and individual victims in significant financial fraud and digital-asset matters. She develops strategies to trace funds, evaluate and pursue claims against third parties, and coordinate broader investigative and litigation strategies.

Her experience on both sides of complex fraud matters—defending clients accused of financial wrongdoing and investigating fraud and pursuing assets on behalf of victims and fiduciaries—gives Christina a distinctive perspective on how allegations of financial misconduct are developed, investigated, and litigated. Resourceful and persistent, Christina approaches problems from every angle and is not easily deterred by an apparent dead end. She anticipates how adversaries will build their cases, identifies weaknesses others may overlook, and finds creative paths to protect her clients’ interests and create leverage.

A first generation student, Christina earned her J.D., cum laude, from St. John’s University School of Law, where she received a full academic Dean’s Scholarship and served on the St. John’s Law Review. She earned her B.S. in Accounting, summa cum laude, from Molloy University on a full academic scholarship, graduating two years early. Christina is involved in programming for the New York Chapter of the Women in White Collar Defense Association and currently serves as Treasurer of the Hellenic Lawyers Association. She is fluent in Greek.

Representative matters:

• Represented the SIPA Trustee with respect to the largest Ponzi scheme in history to recover funds for the victims of Bernard L. Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.
• Represented the federal receiver in SEC v. Qin, a digital-asset Ponzi-scheme matter, tracing potential cryptocurrency wallets and exchanges and helping develop litigation, recovery, and financial-modeling strategies.
• Secured cooperation and plea agreement for an individual charged with insider trading and analyzed trading losses to negotiate restitution issues with the DOJ and SEC.
• Developed federal trial strategy based on analysis of cellphone extractions, FBI footage, financial transactions, and related data in a matter involving allegations of a Ponzi scheme, money laundering, bribery, and witness intimidation.
• Secured a deferred prosecution agreement for multi-million-dollar corporation in DOJ matter, including a substantial reduction in the government’s loss calculation.
• Secured a declination for a government contractor in a criminal IRS investigation.
• Achieved favorable settlement terms and full insurance coverage in the defense of officers and directors of a technology start-up against class-action misrepresentation claims. 
• Represented boards of directors in internal investigations involving allegations of misconduct across complex accounting transactions and systems.
• Investigated a client’s books and records and developed a technical defense against the Department of Taxation & Finance, resulting in a tax savings of over $1 million for the client.
• Represented beauty industry leader in DOJ investigation defense strategy relating to allegations of SBA loan fraud and tax evasion.
• Represented individual in a late-stage DOJ investigation relating to PPP loan fraud and secured favorable cooperation agreement and non-custodial sentencing terms.
• Performed a comprehensive investigation of accounting issues for a financial services company to assess potential corporate misconduct, identify weaknesses infrastructure, and propose solutions to the Audit Committee.
• Represented a tech executive in measuring and securing proprietrary assets upon separation as well as combatting allegations of wrongdoing.
• Conducted onsite internal investigation of start-up data management company to identify the source of a confidential-information leak.
• Successfully prevented multiple witnesses in DOJ and SEC investigations from becoming targets related to allegations of fraud and improper broker-dealer relationships.
• Successfully prevented the prosecution of a former energy executive in a cross-border bribery scheme.
• Represented individual in pursuing third party liability against a banking institution for failure to protect against fraud.
• Represented Director nominees in a challenge against incumbent Directors of a pharmaceutical company in expedited proxy contest and litigation proceedings.
• Secured a rare victory in an investment-fraud matter, obtaining a ruling that data extracted from the client’s cellphone was protected from compelled production under the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination.
• Represented a hedge fund and its executives in an arbitration concerning when a former employee’s formation of a competing hedge fund triggered post-termination noncompetition covenants.
• Obtained a multimillion-dollar recovery in a bank-liability matter involving unauthorized wire transfers.
• Designed and implemented anti-fraud policies and controls for several clients across the infrastructure, pharmaceutical, digital asset, construction, technology and financial sectors.