Fraud in Accounting Records: Litigator's Guide to Analyzing Documents and Building the Case or Defense

Ms. Gotsis is a white-collar and complex financial litigator with a distinctive command of accounting, financial evidence, and sophisticated fraud schemes. A Certified Public Accountant, Certified Fraud Examiner, and Certified Cryptocurrency Tracer, she represents corporations, executives, professionals, and other clients in high-stakes criminal matters, government enforcement proceedings, internal investigations, and civil disputes arising from complex transactions, contested financial records, and allegations of fraud or misconduct. Ms. Gotsis handles matters involving securities and accounting fraud, Ponzi and investment schemes, insider trading, money laundering, bribery, criminal tax violations, digital-asset fraud, corporate misconduct, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the False Claims Act, and related regulatory violations brought by the DOJ, SEC, IRS, and other enforcement agencies. Early in her career, she assisted the SIPA Trustee in the liquidation of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC to recover funds for investors defrauded in the largest Ponzi scheme in history. Ms. Gotsis also advises companies and individuals through moments of crisis, including government inquiries, allegations of internal misconduct, suspected fraud or theft, potential control failures and other events presenting simultaneous criminal, civil, regulatory, financial, and reputational risks. Her experience includes defending companies against claims brought by customers, clients, and other stakeholders and counseling them on proactive compliance and anti-money laundering regimes. Ms. Gotsis also assists victims seeking to trace and recover funds lost through unauthorized wire transfers, impersonation schemes, bank or auditor misconduct, and other financial scams. Drawing on years of experience at large law firms, Ms. Gotsis converts complex financial evidence into a focused theory of the case, an effective investigative plan, and a strategy for achieving the client’s objectives. She scrutinizes the financial assumptions underlying the government’s or an adversary’s case, identifies gaps and inconsistencies in the evidence, and uses the records to dismantle theories of intent, knowledge, loss, causation, and damages. Ms. Gotsis has led teams of forensic accountants, financial experts, data professionals, and other specialists to expose misconduct, trace assets, challenge expert conclusions, reduce asserted losses, develop technical defenses, and recover funds for victims.  

Mr. Gottlieb is a Managing Director at MSG, where he oversees forensic accounting investigations, business valuations, and economic damages analyses in complex commercial and matrimonial disputes. He brings an unusual combination of credentials to this work: he is a licensed attorney, a certified public accountant, and a certified valuation analyst, which gives him a fluency in both the financial analysis and the litigation process that most forensic consultants simply do not have. Mr. Gottlieb's work covers the full scope of the firm’s litigation support practice. He conducts and supervises business valuations of closely held companies, prepares economic damages calculations in commercial disputes, and leads forensic investigations involving allegations of fraud, asset dissipation, and financial misreporting. Mr. Gottlieb also plays a central role in expert report preparation, deposition and trial support, and the development of rebuttal analyses targeting opposing experts’ methodologies and conclusions. He has provided expert testimony and lectures regularly on financial and tax matters in divorce litigation, presenting to organizations including the American Bar Association, BARBRI, the Suffolk County Bar Association, and Strafford Webinars.