Mark Sean Crowley

phone: 646-733-5679
email: mcrowley@milberg.com
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Mark is a veteran New York City Police Department detective who honed his skills with the full gamut of criminal cases within the limits of a police precinct, including homicide, armed robbery, and burglary.  He was assigned to the NYPD Detective Bureau’s Major Case Squad for the latter half of his police career, and was part of the investigation of scores of “kidnap for ransom” cases, which were very complex and multifaceted investigations.

As a member of the Major Case Squad, Mark also investigated bank robbery, truck-hijacking, and sophisticated high-end burglary cases. Joint efforts with federal and state agencies brought these complex, precedent-setting, cases to successful conclusions. Of course, lucky breaks never hurt. One investigation involved a series of New York bank robberies in which the suspect’s image was captured by bank surveillance cameras. Detective Crowley took the photographic evidence to the NYPD Reproductions Unit to create a “WANTED” poster. Without lifting her head from her log book, the clerk muttered, “I know him… he use to work here in the building [Police Headquarters]… mopping floors.” Mark arrested the robber a few days later.

During the early 1990s, while in the Major Case Squad, Mark had the opportunity to work on a high-profile human smuggling case, referred to as the “Snake Head” case, based on a Chinese term for human smuggling. In the 1990s, New York experienced waves of illegal human smuggling from Fukien Province, China. This smuggling was an international phenomenon prompting action by The U.S. State Department against corrupt individuals in the government of Fukien Province. This scheme came to a head in June 1993, when the aging freighter, Golden Venture, ran aground with 282 illegal Chinese immigrants aboard, ten of whom died from hypothermia. The intelligence compiled by Mark and his fellow investigators became vital pieces in the investigation.

Mark retired from the NYPD and was recruited to a Senior Investigator’s position at the Special Commissioner of Investigation Office (SCI), charged with investigating cases involving fraud and corruption within the New York City School District, comprising one million students, 200,000 employees, and a budget of over $14 billion. As a Senior Investigator with this office, Mark handled a diverse case load, from sexual abuse of students to high-level corruption by senior administrators who exploited their power and enormous budgets to the detriment of the NYC school system. Mark was designated lead investigator in several high-level investigations that led to sweeping reforms in school district policy and the removal and/or arrest of education administrators who had forgotten their duty to New York’s children. In one of Mark’s first cases at SCI, he was able to obtain the information from a local school administrator that a primary grade teacher was taking her “free period” by exiting the school grounds (forbidden by standing faculty rules) and walking to a nearby bodega to purchase heroin. She would often return to her classroom and succumb to a drug-induced “nod.” The teacher was observed and videotaped exiting the school in the shadows of school buses, entering the bodega and purchasing heroin. At Mark’s urging, the next morning local NYPD narcotics officers made all the same observations and sent an undercover detective inside the bodega to gather the evidence necessary to have his team make the arrests of the teacher, her fellow customers, and the heroin dealers. Mark’s video footage made a splash on local news programs.

While at SCI, Mark also launched a lengthy investigation that began with an anonymous letter, involving a School Superintendent overseeing 25 schools, who was spending lavishly on himself and cronies (tens of thousands of dollars on car service, $50,000 on bakery bills, and other questionable expenditures, such as those in excess of $1,000,000 on so-called “Staff Development”). Due in large part to Investigator Crowley’s investigation, public spotlight was thrown on the issue resulting in insiders coming forward with additional information against the Superintendent, concluding in his termination.

Mark joined Milberg in 2002. One of his securities cases, involving a nationally known bakery corporation, took an unexpected turn when Mark developed witnesses who described a “cash reserve fund.” Information gleaned from Mark’s further inquiries into this cash reserve fund changed the course of the investigation from its original focus of the case and strengthened it. One of these cultivated witnesses, a former top executive of the company, requested a meeting in his native state where he provided physical records of this cash reserve fund to Mark and the Milberg partner on the case. The company initiated settlement discussions within days of being presented with this evidence.

If you are a potential whistleblower or aggrieved consumer or investor, Mark would be happy to discuss your situation with you.

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