Jeffrey Wertkin a Washington, D.C., lawyer at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, was arrested while trying to sell a copy of a secret lawsuit involving a company that was under investigation by the U.S. Justice Department. He was picked up 1/31 in the lobby of a hotel in Cupertino, CA, where he believed he was about to collect $310,000 for selling the lawsuit. Instead, he was met by an FBI agent.

 “My life is over,” Wertkin told the agent.

Wertkin joined Akin Gump as a partner in April 2016 after working as a trial attorney at the Justice Department, where he “led more than 20 major fraud investigations,” including false claims cases, according to the FBI, which cited his law firm biography. 

It wasn’t clear how Wertkin obtained the False Claims Act complaint. He was charged with contempt of court and obstruction of justice. He appeared in San Francisco federal court February 1 and was released on $750,000 bail.

ACCORDING TO THE FBI, … The case began with an employee at an unidentified technology security company in Sunnyvale, CA, getting a voice mail on Nov. 30. The caller left a phone number and said a sealed False Claims Act lawsuit had been filed against the company,.

When the employee dialed the number, the caller identified himself as Dan and said he could provide a copy of the complaint for a “consulting fee.” He mailed a redacted copy of the cover page to the employee, who notified the FBI. The agency verified that the case has been pending since January 2016.

The employee agreed to secretly record calls to Dan for the FBI. On Dec. 22, Dan said he would provide the full complaint for $300,000, the FBI said. Two weeks later, Dan suggested he get paid in untraceable bitcoins, and said buying the complaint would help the company “get out ahead of the investigation.”

On Jan. 19, Dan outlined to the employee his plan to meet on Jan. 31 near Sunnyvale, boosting his price to $310,000. Five days later, the employee said a colleague named Bill would meet him with the money in a hotel lobby. Dan wanted Bill’s cell phone number to text the location. That proved his undoing.

Bill turned out to be FBI agent William Scanlon. As he had agreed, Scanlon wore a gray Titleist hat and carried a blue duffel bag into the lobby of the Hilton Garden Inn.

“Approximately 10 seconds after I sat down, a male approached me and held a copy of the complaint out and handed it to me,” Scanlon wrote in the complaint. “At that point he was immediately arrested by FBI agents who were present in the hotel lobby.”