Carol Alexis
Chen
Carol Alexis Chen is a litigation partner at Winston & Strawn LLP where she represents banks and other financial institutions, companies and institutions in higher education and health care, not-for-profit organizations, and corporate officers and other individuals in all aspects of high-stakes complex civil and white collar criminal litigation. She conducts sensitive internal investigations and counsels her clients on the development, implementation, and enhancement of compliance and remediation programs, and responds to inquiries from federal and state governmental and regulatory agencies. Carol has particular expertise with respect to anti-money laundering and financial crimes laws and regulations and the False Claims Act and related qui tam provisions, with her practice cutting across various sectors including Financial Services and Banking; Technology, New Media, and Telecommunications; Health Care and Life Sciences; and Complex Commercial Litigation.
Carol previously served as an Assistant United States Attorney with the United States Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles, California for over 15 years, specializing in complex money laundering and racketeering investigations and holding various supervisory roles including in the training section for rookie prosecutors and as the first (and still only) female Chief in office history of the International Narcotics, Money Laundering, and Racketeering (formerly known as the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force) Section which prosecuted priority criminal organizations including transnational and significant domestic money laundering syndicates. She also created and chaired various financial crimes-related initiatives, task forces, and working groups and led community and law enforcement outreach efforts on behalf of the Department. Carol has been recognized for her work in both the public and private sectors, including as the recipient of the OCDETF Director’s Special Investigations Award for Outstanding Transnational Money Laundering Case for a first-of-its-kind hawala money laundering investigation which resulted in over 20 convictions and the first-drug based hawala trial; the Los Angeles County Bar Association’s Criminal Justice Section’s 2019 Prosecutor of the Year Award; and the Los Angeles Times B2B Publishing’s 2021 Banking and Finance Visionary Award.