From 1983 to 1984, he was a law clerk for John R. Gibson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in Kansas City, Missouri[7] and then went to work at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft as a litigation associate.

As a result, 120 persons were arrested on a variety of securities fraud charges in a single day, including 10 members of the Bonanno and Colombo organized crime families, a former New York City police detective, 57 securities brokers, 12 stock promoters, 30 corporate officers, directors and other insiders, two accountants, a hedge fund manager, and others.

[11] Bennett, who admitted to seven counts of lying to SEC prosecutors but otherwise maintains his innocence,[9] was described by his lawyers as an inept businessman overwhelmed by an expanding company.

[9] Khuzami was selected by then-U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White to work with Andrew C. McCarthy and Patrick Fitzgerald in the prosecution of the "Blind Sheikh", Omar Abdel-Rahman, a career-changing case.

[5] At the time, the largest terrorism trial in U.S. history, ten defendants were convicted of operating an international terrorist organization responsible for the February 1993 World Trade Center bombing and who planned simultaneous bombing attacks on Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) New York headquarters, the United Nations and the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels.

[7] Khuzami also prosecuted those accused of assassinating Meir Kahane,[12][13] and plotting the murders of Hosni Mubarak of Egypt[12][14] and the Secretary General of the United Nations.

[5] He created a new system to collect, organize, investigate and data mine tips and complaints,[5] tens of thousands of which are received by the SEC every year.

"[23] Khuzami also established a new Cross Border Working Group, a proactive, risk-based initiative focusing on U.S. companies whose substantial foreign operations might have accounting or auditing problems, and a MicroCap Fraud Working Group to address the long-standing problem of fraud in connection with offering and trading of microcap securities, otherwise known as "penny stocks".

[22] As part of the restructuring, Khuzami also initiated a cooperating witness program designed to incentivize persons with knowledge of securities laws violations to assist SEC investigations.

That type of evidence can expand our ability to conduct our investigations more swiftly, and to act quickly to file charges, freeze assets and protect investors.

"[30] According to Khuzami, "The program is designed to encourage 'insiders' and others to provide high quality evidence of wrongdoing early so we can minimize investor loss and take action against the organizers, leaders, and managers of unlawful schemes.

[36][37] As of November 2012, the Enforcement Division during Khuzami's tenure has charged 129 entities and individuals involving wrongdoing generally associated with the financial crisis, including: (a) concealing from investors risks, terms and improper pricing of collateral debt obligations, residential mortgage-backed securities, asset-backed commercial paper and other complex structured products; (b) misleading risk and accounting disclosures to shareholders of public companies in mortgage and mortgage-related businesses; and (c) concealing the extent of risky mortgage-related and other high-risk investments in mutual funds and other financial products.

In these cases, 57 CEOs, CFOs and other senior corporate officers have been charged and more than $2.6 billion of monetary relief has been ordered or agreed to, most of which has been or is in the process of being returned to harmed investors.

Since formation of the RMBS Working Group, the SEC has filed cases against two major investment firms ordered to pay a combined total of almost $420 million for misleading investors in connection with hundreds of residential mortgage backed securities.

[41] From October 2009 through November 2012, the Enforcement Division filed 168 total insider trading actions, the most in SEC history for any three-year period.

In addition, Khuzami embraced the use of sophisticated data analysis to identify patterns of suspicious trading and other misconduct from among the voluminous amount of tips and complaints that the SEC receives each year.

Aguirre says it turns the SEC into a middleman between Wall Street firms and the Justice Department that will negotiate fines and circumvent a prison sentence.

[45] He described how the DOJ (Department of Justice) makes its own decisions about how to resolve its cases, and has its own procedures and considerations for evaluating and handling potential cooperators, which they would not and could not delegate to the SEC.

As such, Khuzami wrote that the cooperation initiative operates in complete accord with long-standing SEC practice and the guidance in its enforcement manual.

[46] The value of the cooperation program was recently underscored when Khuzami issued a public statement in connection with the AXA Rosenberg Group LLC case.

"[52] From August 2013 through January 2018, Khuzami was a partner in the Government and Internal Investigations Group in the New York and Washington DC offices of Kirkland & Ellis LLP.

Due to the recusal of U.S. Attorney Berman, Khuzami became the Acting United States Attorney in charge of the case of United States v. Cohen, in which Michael Cohen the ex-counsel to President Donald Trump, was convicted of tax, bank fraud and campaign finance violations, the latter of which arose out of the payment of secret hush-money payments to two women as part of a "catch and kill" strategy designed to benefit the 2016 presidential campaign of President Trump.

[61] While Khuzami was selected to serve as Enforcement Director by Mary Schapiro, the SEC Chairman appointed by Democratic President Barack Obama, he also spoke before the 2004 Republican National Convention on behalf of then-president George W. Bush for the extension of the Patriot Act.

[15] On April 28, 2005, he testified before the United States House of Representatives Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security in support of the reauthorization of the Patriot Act.