A federal prosecutor in Boston, Stephen Frank, who oversaw the “Operation Varsity Blues” investigation into the U.S. college admissions scandal and secured the conviction of a Kremlin-linked businessman involved in last month’s prisoner swap between Russia and the West, has joined the law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan. Frank, who previously served as chief of the securities, financial, and cyber fraud unit at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Massachusetts, started as a partner at Quinn Emanuel in Boston and New York on Monday. He plans to focus on white-collar crime, investigations, and litigation.
Quinn Emanuel, a litigation-oriented firm with over 1,000 attorneys, has been expanding in Boston, where it now has more than 40 lawyers, including former Acting U.S. Attorney William Weinreb, who joined the firm in 2018 as a white-collar defense attorney.
With 16 years of experience as a federal prosecutor—first in Brooklyn and then in Boston—Frank pursued cases against business executives and others, often testing the limits of federal bribery and fraud laws. He emphasized the importance of elevating Boston’s status in prosecuting white-collar crimes. “There was no reason Boston needed to be a backwater in terms of prosecuting white-collar crimes,” Frank said, noting that the office had the talent to bring impactful cases on par with any district in the country.
William Burck, Quinn Emanuel’s co-managing partner, praised Frank’s leadership in building a team that has brought significant financial crime prosecutions. He highlighted Frank’s national reputation in white-collar criminal matters and investigations.
Frank’s most notable work includes the Varsity Blues probe, where over 50 executives, celebrities, coaches, and others pleaded guilty in a scheme that allowed wealthy parents to secure spots for their children at prestigious universities through fraud and bribery. Frank oversaw the investigation and personally handled the sentencing of the scheme’s mastermind, William “Rick” Singer, who received a 3.5-year prison sentence.
He also led the trial teams that secured convictions in the first two trials stemming from the probe. These cases involved private equity executive John Wilson and former casino executive Gamal Aziz, as well as former University of Southern California water polo coach Jovan Vavic. Although appeals largely overturned the convictions in the parents’ case, a federal appeals court recently showed openness to potentially reversing the ruling in Vavic’s case.
Additionally, Frank served as the lead prosecutor in the case against Vladislav Klyushin, a Russian businessman sentenced to nine years in prison for participating in a $93 million insider trading scheme involving hacked confidential earnings information. Klyushin later featured in the August prisoner swap involving 24 individuals. Frank also prosecuted several other notable cases, including that of a former State Street executive for overcharging customers and a bribery case involving former employees of the proxy solicitation firm Georgeson.
