The dramatic 2021 collapse of Archegos Capital Management will be revisited in a criminal trial over the next two months, as prosecutors aim to convict founder Bill Hwang for market manipulation, racketeering and fraud.

Jury selection is set to begin Wednesday in the case against Hwang, who’s accused of misleading some of Wall Street’s biggest banks into inflating the value of Archegos’ holdings to as high as $160 billion before the family office imploded.

Here’s a look at the main players in the legal drama about to unfold in Manhattan federal court:

Defendants

Sung Kook “Bill” Hwang
Age: 60
Roles: Archegos Founder and CEO

One of Julian Robertson’s Tiger “cubs,” Hwang founded his own hedge fund called Tiger Asia Management in 2001. He converted it into a family office called Archegos in 2013, a year after Tiger Asia pleaded guilty and agreed to pay $60 million to resolve an insider trading investigation. Hwang immigrated to the U.S. from South Korea as a teenager and graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, and Carnegie Mellon University’s business school. A devout Christian, Hwang has lived modestly in Tenafly, New Jersey, and has devoted much of his wealth to his charity, the Grace & Mercy Foundation. Archegos, an ancient Greek word for leader or author, is a reference to Jesus.


Patrick Halligan
Age: 47
Role: Archegos CFO

Hwang’s most trusted lieutenant, Halligan was also previously CFO at Tiger Asia. Like his boss, the Manhattan College graduate and certified public accountant has lived a relatively modest lifestyle as a father of three in suburban Long Island. He continues to work for Hwang as treasurer of the Grace & Mercy Foundation, where he was paid $539,000 plus benefits in 2022. 

Witnesses

William Tomita
Age: 40
Role: Archegos Head Trader

One of two former staffers who’ve pleaded guilty and are expected to testify against Hwang and Halligan, Tomita is the son of a prominent Chicago surgeon. An avid polo player, he briefly worked at Lehman Brothers before joining Tiger Asia in 2008 at the age of 24. As part of his 2022 plea deal, he admitted making false statements to banks to persuade them to enter into swap agreements with Archegos on margin. Prosecutors will likely elicit testimony from Tomita that he did so at Hwang and Halligan’s direction.

Scott Becker
Age: 40
Role: Archegos Chief Risk Officer

Becker is the other cooperating witness in the case. The summa cum laude Manhattan College accounting graduate joined Tiger Asia as an associate in 2007 after reaching out to fellow alumnus Halligan about job opportunities. Like Tomita, Becker has admitted that he lied to other financial institutions about Archegos’s holdings as part of a scheme to get them to extend credit or take part in swap transactions.
 

Judge

Alvin Hellerstein
Age: 90
Role: U.S. District Judge, Southern District of New York

Hellerstein was nominated to the federal bench by President Bill Clinton in May 1998. A New York City native, Hellerstein is a graduate of the Bronx High School of Science and went to Columbia University for both college and law school. He worked in private practice for decades before becoming a judge. He’s perhaps best known for overseeing the lengthy litigation stemming from the Sept. 11, 2001, World Trade Center terrorist attack. 

Prosecutors

Matthew Podolsky
Role: Assistant U.S. Attorney

Podolsky is co-chief of the securities and commodities task force at the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office. A graduate of Harvard University and Columbia Law School, Podolsky was one of the lead prosecutors in the fraud case against Nikola Corp. founder Trevor Milton, who was sentenced to four years in prison for misleading investors about the electric-truck maker’s prospects.

Alex Rossmiller
Role: Assistant U.S. Attorney

A graduate of Middlebury College and New York University School of Law, Rossmiller had a pre-law career as a Defense Department intelligence analyst, which saw him deployed to Iraq for six months. A federal prosecutor since 2014, he participated in the sex-trafficking cases against Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.

Alexandra Rothman
Role: Assistant U.S. Attorney

Rothman, a graduate of Princeton University and Fordham University School of Law, has been a federal prosecutor since 2017. She helped prosecute Stephen Calk, a Chicago banker convicted of pushing through $16 million in sketchy loans to Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign chief Paul Manafort.

Andrew Mark Thomas
Role: Assistant U.S. Attorney

Thomas, a Yale Law School graduate, is a veteran of several financial crime cases. He last year successfully prosecuted former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. investment banker Brijesh Goel for insider trading and Glen Point Capital co-founder Neil Phillips for foreign-exchange market manipulation. 

Defense Lawyers

Barry Berke
Age: 60
Role: Hwang’s Lawyer

Berke chairs the litigation department at New York law firm Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel. A Harvard Law School graduate, Berke began his legal career as a trial lawyer for the Federal Defenders, the federal-court equivalent of the public defenders’ office. In private practice, he’s represented many high-profile white-collar defendants. Berke also served as chief impeachment counsel for the U.S. House of Representatives in the first Senate trial of then-President Trump. 

Mary Mulligan
Age: 62
Role: Halligan’s lawyer

Mulligan is a former prosecutor who’s now head of Friedman Kaplan Seiler Adelman & Robbins’ white collar defense practice. She recently represented former Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg, who pleaded guilty to tax fraud and other charges for accepting unreported perks like luxury housing and cars as salary.

This article was provided by Bloomberg News.