Coates Lear

Member

coateslear@sgslitigation.com
303-530-3452 x 7

Coates Lear represents companies, board committees, and individuals in regulatory and internal investigations, litigation, and compliance matters. A former senior enforcement attorney with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Coates has investigated, prosecuted, and defended cases involving, among other issues, financial disclosures, securities offerings, audit practices, asset management, anti-money laundering compliance, foreign corruption, whistleblower protection rules, federal health program payments, and insider trading. His clients have included public and private companies, audit committees, broker-dealers, investment advisers, audit professionals, and corporate executives.

With a national practice, Coates has represented clients in investigations and litigation across the country, including matters with SEC offices from Boston to Los Angeles, the U.S. Department of Justice, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), and multiple state regulators. He has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal, Law360, and The Anti-Corruption Report, among other publications, and has presented on SEC enforcement and internal investigations at a variety of forums.

Coates brings a strategic, client-centered approach to his cases, focusing on each client’s unique objectives and the facts and legal issues that will shape the outcome. He has a keen interest in litigation technology and electronic discovery and leverages those tools to identify and synthesize key evidence to tell the client’s story. A Washington, DC native, Coates began his career as a litigator at Hogan & Hartson (now Hogan Lovells) in DC before moving to the firm’s Denver office in 2001. There, he worked on high-stakes litigation and white-collar matters and met his future SGS colleagues, Andrew Shoemaker and Cindy Mitchell. Before joining SGS in 2021, Coates was a partner in the Government Investigations & White-Collar group at the international law firm of Squire Patton Boggs.

Representative Matters

Coates’ experience (including prior to joining SGS) includes:

• Defending the broker-dealer subsidiary of a large retirement plan service provider in an SEC investigation into potential violations of anti-money laundering rules

• Defending a video-streaming company in an SEC investigation concerning non-GAAP performance disclosures and compliance with SEC whistleblower protection rules

• Defending multiple audit professionals in a PCAOB investigation concerning alteration of audit documentation and cooperation with a PCAOB inspection

• Conducting an internal investigation on behalf of a registered investment adviser into potential misuse of client assets and defending the firm in a related SEC investigation

• Defending an audit engagement partner in an SEC investigation concerning an audit by a foreign affiliate of a Big Four accounting firm

• Defending a crypto ATM company in a lawsuit arising from the fraudulent use of one of its machines

• Defending a manufacturing company in an SEC investigation into financial reporting and internal control issues, including inventory cost accounting, lease accounting, and journal entry controls

• Defending the spouse of an alleged fraudster in an SEC action seeking to recover investor funds