As I discussed here, last week the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of New Jersey brought an high-profile insider trading case against Garrett Bauer of New York and Matthew Kluger of Oakton, Va. Although both defendants lived outside of the state, New Jersey asserted jurisdiction over the case under an interesting theory, Reuters reports: Bauer's trades at issue were processed through computer servers maintained by a subsidiary of Goldman Sachs in Jersey City, New Jersey. At a press conference announcing the case, U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman asserted that the growth of financial data processing in New Jersey ("where Wall Street is wired," he said) would permit his office to file more white-collar fraud cases.

Fishman's assertion of jurisdiction is similar to what we saw last year in the Eastern District of Virginia, when Neil MacBride, the U.S. attorney for the EDVA, launched a new “investigative taskforce” to crack down on financial crime. MacBride stated that in his view, "Virginia and New York are the only two districts that have jurisdiction over all securities-fraud cases involving all publicly traded companies.” MacBride explained that the SEC's EDGAR database is physically housed in Alexandria, Virginia, which means that every publicly traded company technically makes their SEC filings in his district. One DOJ official said at the time that MacBride was hoping to become the "SDNY of the South."

Fishman added at last week's press conference that his office is quite capable of handling an increase in white collar cases, and that in May 2010 New Jersey similarly formed an economic crime unit to conduct complex financial fraud investigations. So I guess New Jersey is now the "EDVA of the North?"

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