Nicholas Folly is a litigation counsel in the firm’s San Francisco office and a member of the firm’s White Collar & Regulatory Defense Group. A former federal prosecutor with extensive trial experience, he advises clients on complex matters concerning white collar criminal defense, regulatory enforcement, internal investigations, and civil litigation.

Before rejoining Debevoise, Mr. Folly served for eight and a half years in the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York (SDNY), where he prosecuted and supervised some of the DOJ’s largest and most complex white-collar cases. Most recently, Mr. Folly served as Deputy Chief of the Criminal Division, where he oversaw prosecutorial work across multiple units, spearheaded office-wide policy initiatives, and worked closely with senior officials at the DOJ, FBI, SEC, CFTC, and the IRS–Criminal Investigation. Before his supervisory role, he served as a member of the Securities and Commodities Fraud Task Force and the Complex Frauds and Cybercrime Unit. He tried ten jury trials to verdict and briefed or argued more than a dozen appeals.

During his tenure, Mr. Folly handled cases involving securities and commodities fraud, tech startups, payment processing, investment adviser fraud, insider trading, tax fraud, artificial intelligence, national security, cyber-attacks, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act offenses, COVID-19 relief fraud, money laundering and forfeiture, and bribery. He also has deep expertise with healthcare fraud and abuse cases, including cases involving the False Claims Act, home health aide agencies and other healthcare providers, Anti-Kickback violations, and medical device companies. Mr. Folly also led several significant corporate prosecutions and resolutions, including the conviction of a subsidiary of one of the world’s largest insurance companies for a complex $8 billion securities fraud, and a corporate resolution with Switzerland’s largest insurance company for concealing more than $1.4 billion in offshore policies from the IRS. For his work on that matter, Mr. Folly received the 2022 Assistant Attorney General’s Award, which the AAG deemed “the most significant prosecution to date involving insurance wrappers.”

At SDNY, Mr. Folly tried ten trials to verdict, including seven white-collar trials, and supervised three additional trials. Mr. Folly has trial experience in cases involving bank fraud, wire fraud, securities fraud, health care fraud, and money laundering. Mr. Folly’s trial experience includes the prosecution of a former partner of an international law firm for laundering $400 million in proceeds from the “OneCoin” fraud scheme. DOJ described OneCoin as “one of the largest fraud schemes ever perpetrated,” and the scheme’s co-founder is the only white-collar fugitive on the FBI’s Top Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list. Mr. Folly also tried two architects of a $150 million international payment processing scheme involving a startup delivery app. He also has trial experience in healthcare industry cases, including those against doctors and lawyers for allegations of medically unnecessary procedures and prescriptions.

Mr. Folly was previously a Debevoise litigation associate. He clerked for the Hon. Joseph A. Greenaway, Jr. on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit (2014-2015), and the Hon. George B. Daniels on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (2013-2014).

Mr. Folly received his J.D. from Columbia University School of Law in 2011, where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar, and his B.A. from Columbia College, Columbia University in 2008.