Last week, Neil H. MacBride, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, announced that he will be stepping down as U.S. Attorney next month. As a fellow Virginian, I have been following MacBride on and off since June 2010, when he made the interesting announcement that his office was organizing a new “investigative Task Force” to crack down on financial crime and securities fraud. 

MacBride launched the Task Force based on his belief that out of all of the U.S. Attorney's districts in the U.S., only two districts had jurisdiction over all securities-fraud cases involving publicly traded companies: Virginia and New York. It is not a stretch to think that New York, the financial capital; of the world, would have jurisdiction over a huge number of securities fraud cases. But Virginia? As I wrote in a column in June 2010,

It turns out that MacBride's claim of jurisdiction has nothing to do with companies headquartered, or even doing business, in Virginia. Rather, he contends that his office has jurisdiction over most securities fraud because the Securities and Exchange Commission's EDGAR database is physically housed in Alexandria, Va. That means that every publicly traded company technically makes their SEC filings in his district. In addition, MacBride says that the Eastern District may also have jurisdiction in cases involving wire transfers because the Federal Reserve Bank in Richmond is one of the primary hubs for such transfers, and in cases involving alleged misuse of bank-bailout funds as the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is also based in Arlington.

MacBride's EDGAR-based theory of jurisdiction was supported by a Fourth Circuit case, U.S. v. Johnson, 510 F.3d 521 (4th Cir. 2007), in which the Fourth Circuit held that "causing the transmission of the Form 10-Q to the Eastern District of Virginia will suffice to sustain venue in that district." Although I am not aware of any definitive court ruling on this issue following the formation of the Task Force (anyone?) the Task Force has continued to target out-of-state defendants and has successfully opposed at least one defendant's motion to transfer venue out of the Eastern District of Virginia. 

MacBride did not state what type of position he will pursue next, and told the Blog of the Legal Times that he was "looking forward to taking a big chunk of time off to be with my family." The DOJ stated that an acting U.S. Attorney will be appointed until a permanent replacement is nominated and confirmed by the U.S. Senate. 

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