Mahrah Taufique

Mahrah M. Taufique represents individuals and organizations in high-stakes and sensitive criminal and civil legal challenges. Her practice includes white collar criminal defense, government and internal investigations, regulatory compliance, and complex civil litigation.

At Hecker Fink, Mahrah has served as counsel in government and regulatory investigations by the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), and state regulatory agencies for matters involving securities fraud, accounting fraud, foreign corrupt practices, money laundering, insider trading, crypto assets, and complex financial instruments. Most recently, she represented a crypto asset company in investigations by the New York State Department of Financial Services, the SEC, the CFTC and the DOJ; a utility company in a DOJ investigation into accounting fraud; employees of a major financial services institution in connection with DOJ and SEC investigations into block trading; an executive of a multinational software-solutions company in an SEC investigation into alleged accounting improprieties; numerous banks and their employees in SEC and CFTC investigations into recordkeeping violations; and several professional golfers in connection with antitrust litigation. She also advises clients on anti-money laundering, anti-corruption, and international sanctions compliance.

Mahrah maintains an active pro bono and public interest practice. She regularly represents indigent criminal defendants pro bono in federal and state criminal prosecutions, and she represents the Federal Defenders of New York in its litigation over the right to counsel at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. She has served as amicus counsel in cases relating to constitutional rights, discrimination, and administrative law. She has represented the Movement for Family Power as amicus curiae in support of a longtime U.S. resident’s challenge to a final order of removal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and history scholars as amici curiae in support of a challenge to the federal government’s invocation of the Public Health Service Act as a basis to deport noncitizens at the border in proceedings before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

Mahrah joined Hecker Fink after completing a clerkship with the Hon. Deborah A. Batts of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Prior to clerking, she was an attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)’s Immigrant Rights Project. She began her career as an associate at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP.

Mahrah is a graduate of Columbia Law School, where she was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar and received a Certificate of Achievement from the Parker School of Foreign and Comparative Law. She was the Solicitations Editor of the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law and a research assistant to Professors Amal Clooney and Ady Schonmann-Bethlehem. While in law school, Mahrah interned in the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice and served as a criminal defense extern at the Bronx Defenders.