David Paul Weber is an American criminalist, and the former Assistant Inspector General for Investigations at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
In the past, Weber was a whistleblower who reported allegations about foreign espionage against the stock exchanges, and misconduct in the Bernard L. Madoff and R. Allen Stanford Ponzi scheme investigations.
[8][9] Ultimately, he was successful in having his client Police Officer Jeffrey L. Smith designated as having died in the line of duty by the District of Columbia in March 2022,[10] and in August 2023 by the U.S. Department of Justice.
[1] Subsequently, Weber was Special Counsel for Enforcement for more than ten years at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, at the United States Department of the Treasury.
[1] In January 2012, H. David Kotz, SEC Inspector General during the previous four years, resigned and returned to the private sector as managing director of Gryphon Strategies.
[17] His resignation came in the midst of questions as to his conduct, as then-current and former SEC employees had complained that Kotz initiated investigations without credible evidence and unnecessarily tainted people's reputations.
"[3][17][19] In addition, the Williams report looked at separate allegations that Weber had created a hostile work environment at the SEC.
Chairman Darrell Issa noted in a Thomson Reuters' report that the House investigation about the suspicious and wasteful hiring of the Booz Allen consultants was "broadly compatible" with the Weber lawsuit allegations.
[3] Fagan then used the same private security contractor hired under the pay to play scheme to supposedly investigate Weber, a direct conflict of interest.
"You could find the system architecture and technology maps of both the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq, information about their key data centers, their emergency plans.
"[41] In 2015–2016, as a financial expert for the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, Weber analyzed a number of loan agreements included among the Panama Papers, a project awarded the Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting in 2017.
[44] In 2019, Secrecy World was made into a major motion picture, The Laundromat, for which Weber served as the technical consultant, and played a small cameo.
[46] In January 2021, Weber assisted the AP with review of the Congress override of the veto on the National Defense Authorization Act, which contained major money laundering changes to US law.
[47] In February 2021, Weber served as an expert for CBS News, which investigated Bank of America's handling of pandemic fraud connected with California Unemployment-issued debit cards.
[52] More recently, Weber represented the widow and estate of Jeffrey Smith, one of the three police officers to die at or in the aftermath of the 2021 Capitol Riot.
[53][54] In July 2021, Weber petitioned the Government of the District of Columbia to award line of duty death benefits for Washington, DC, Police Officer Jeffrey Smith, as reported by the New York Times.
[55] On August 5, 2021, Weber met with President Biden, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and United States Senators in the Rose Garden, upon the signing of H.R.
[8] During the Rose Garden event, Weber pressed the President to award line of duty benefits to his client and Howard Liebengood.
[9] On March 7, 2022, Officer Smith's death was ruled to be line of duty, "the sole and direct cause" of the injuries he suffered on January 6, 2021, at the Capitol insurrection.
[13] In October 2022, it was announced that Weber was awarded a $2.6 million grant by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to further the experiential learning program by focusing on elder financial and high-tech crime, through a variety of fraud-fighting interventions.