In brief
With the Department of Justice having narrowed its focus to a smaller subset of white-collar crimes largely surrounding fraud against the federal government, state and local agencies are taking steps to fill the resulting enforcement gaps. On October 14, 2026, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg announced the creation of the Office’s first Corporate Crime and Antitrust Task Force, signaling an intent to take a more aggressive approach to criminal enforcement against companies and their executives. The initiative is part of a broader trend in New York toward heightened scrutiny of corporate conduct at the state and local level, and companies doing business in New York should expect more attention from prosecutors, regulators and legislators alike.
In more detail
Focus on systemic accountability and “the infrastructure of crime”
DA Bragg described the task force’s mission as targeting complex fraud and misconduct by corporations and their executives, with the goals of holding organizations and powerful individuals accountable, deterring industry-wide misconduct and driving systemic reform. The task force will take aim at what DA Bragg called the “infrastructure of crime,” meaning high-level actors, corporate entities and structures that enable and profit from wrongdoing.
Priority areas include accounting fraud, antitrust violations, consumer fraud, health care-related crimes and offenses facilitated by artificial intelligence (AI). The task force is expected to complement the Office’s Worker Protection Unit, which was created in 2023 to pursue wage theft cases, by bringing antitrust cases that target wage-fixing.
DA Bragg identified health care, food service and retail as sectors where workers are especially vulnerable to employer collusion. The antitrust focus is particularly significant for employers. Agreements among companies competing for labor concerning wages or other terms of compensation can create exposure, and communications regarding hiring, recruiting, employee mobility or competitively sensitive compensation information can create substantial investigative risk even where they do not result in criminal charges.
DA Bragg also called AI “a category of particular interest,” noting that generative AI tools can make offenses such as boiler-room securities fraud easier to execute and harder to detect. As an example of the type of matter the task force is designed to pursue, he pointed to the pending prosecution of Nir Meir, the former top executive of now-defunct real estate investment firm HFZ Capital Group. That case involves allegations of investor fraud, falsification of records and related tax fraud schemes resulting in theft of more than USD 86 million. The intersection between AI and antitrust also bears watching. Prosecutors and regulators are increasingly examining whether pricing, compensation, benchmarking or other algorithmic tools facilitate the exchange or use of competitively sensitive information or otherwise contribute to coordination among competitors.
The task force is led by Matthew Bogdanos, a longtime veteran of the Office, and includes approximately five assistant district attorneys and two investigative analysts, among them a former trial attorney from the US Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division and former members of the Office’s Financial Frauds Bureau. It will draw on the Office’s forensic accountants, career investigators and Financial Intelligence Unit, which works with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and manages joint and parallel investigations with financial institutions.
Building on a longstanding Manhattan tradition
Underscoring that the task force is not an empty gesture, DA Bragg noted the Office’s long history and deep institutional knowledge in corporate and white collar enforcement. Unlike most district attorney’s office around the country, the Manhattan DA has prosecuted financial and corporate wrongdoing for generations, dating back to Thomas Dewey’s tenure in the 1930s, when the Office prosecuted Richard Whitney, the former president of the New York Stock Exchange, for stealing customer securities. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Office broke open the global investigation into the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), reasoning that prosecuting a bank that handled drug money could have as much impact as the many prosecutions of traffickers themselves. The Office has long led on white collar policy as well as enforcement. In 2013, the White Collar Crime Task Force, led by the Manhattan DA’s Office, issued a report recommending legislative and procedural reforms to give prosecutors better tools against fraud, corruption, cybercrime and money laundering. Many of those recommendations were introduced as legislation in 2015.
In the 2010s, the Office leveraged New York’s jurisdiction over falsified business records to reach global financial institutions, charging several banks with falsifying records and conspiracy in connection with concealed US dollar payments made on behalf of sanctioned countries and obtaining a corporate guilty pleas and fines of almost USD 14 billion, and joining the New York Department of Financial Services in civil resolutions. Under DA Bragg, the Office secured the first criminal convictions of The Trump Corporation and The Trump Payroll Corp. in December 2022, on charges including scheme to defraud, criminal tax fraud and falsifying business records.
A broader state and local enforcement trend
The task force arrives as other state and local authorities in New York are also sharpening their tools. New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin has said she intends to use the Council’s subpoena power to target corporate crime, opening inquiries into prediction market platforms and AI safety.
At the state level, the New York Attorney General’s Economic Justice Division, which includes antitrust, consumer fraud, investor protection and internet and technology bureaus, continues to secure significant recoveries. Nationally, state attorneys general have formed a working group on criminal antitrust enforcement, and New York, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Ohio have each brought criminal antitrust cases in recent years, suggesting that state-level exposure will continue to grow and become more coordinated.
What companies should consider
The change in federal prosecution policies and priorities and the DA’s new emphasis on corporate crime means that companies with business touching Manhattan in any way should consider that corporate misconduct, particularly in the areas of consumer or worker protection, tenant rights or AI-enabled deception may create criminal exposure in Manhattan.
From an antitrust perspective, companies should consider reviewing practices involving competitor communications, wage and compensation information, employee recruiting and mobility, benchmarking initiatives, trade associations and third-party pricing or compensation tools. Criminal investigations may also arrive in parallel from the DA, the Attorney General, financial regulators and the City Council. As such, companies should consider enforcement from New York City and State in their risk mapping and mitigation efforts.