Leadership

Don Clark

Chairman

Don K. Clark, is the former FBI special agent-in-charge of FBI’s New York, San Antonio, and Houston field offices. Mr. Clark brings immense experience in areas of white collar crime, securities and investment fraud to the firm. MR. Clark oversaw these areas during his tenure while managing the New York, San Antonio, and Houston FBI field offices.

Mr. Clark served as a Special Agent of the FBI in Miami, New York, Washington D.C., Los Angeles, Newark, San Antonio and Houston. His assignments as an investigative agent and manager in the FBI included security fraud, white-collar crimes, foreign counterintelligence, counterterrorism, organized crime, and other FBI investigative programs.

Mr. Clark’s many assignments included, Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the Criminal Division New York Office, in 1991 and in January 1994, Mr. Clark was assigned to manage all counter-terrorism investigations in the New York Office. Later in June 1994, he was designated Special Agent in Charge of the Criminal Division of the New York FBI Office. In December 1994, he was named Special Agent in Charge of the San Antonio FBI Division and on July 2, 1996, FBI Director Louis Freeh appointed Mr. Clark as the Special Agent in Charge of the Houston Division, one of the FBI’s Top three Field Divisions, the position he held until his retirement.

Mr. Clark supervised numerous high profile FBI investigations including the 1979 Iranian Hostage Crisis where he handled the movement of the Shah of Iran from New York City to San Antonio and beyond. He supervised the investigation of the terrorist attack aboard the Achilles Lauro cruise ship, and he managed the investigation of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City.

Amir Mireskandari

CEO & Managing Partner

In the early 90’s, Mr. Mireskandari worked at The World Bank in Washington, D.C including time at the International Finance Corporation, a private sector lending division of The World Bank, with a focus on emerging market lending. Amir has served as an advisor on privatization to the Kingdom of Morocco, the Government of Belize, and various capacities to Governments of Jamaica and Barbados.

Mr. Mireskandari cofounded The Lugano Group, Incorporated in 1998, which offered securities brokerage, advisory and investment and consulting services as well as economic and financial studies.

Amir founded and operates various companies active in distressed assets and retail operations of luxury and high-end home furnishings, primarily focused on rugs and furniture. He also has founded and operated brick-and-mortar & online retailers.

Mr. Mireskandari previously held both General Securities Representative (Series 7 and Series 63) and Principal (Series 24 and Series 28) licenses. He earned his B.B.A. and M.B.A. in International Business from George Washington University and completed his postgraduate studies in Management from Harvard Business School.

Amir Mireskandari is fluent in English, Farsi, French and Italian. He resides in Houston, Texas, and is married with two young daughters.

Jack Nichols

Legal Counsel

Jack Nichols graduated from O'Gorman High School in his home town of Sioux Falls, South Dakota. He earned his bachelor's degree in history (Summa Cum Laude) from the University of South Dakota where he was also President of Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity, a Student Senator, President of the Interfraternity Council, and a Homecoming Royalty Finalist. He went on to earn his M.B.A and graduated law Cum Laude from Creighton University School of Law in Omaha, Nebraska where he worked at First National Bank of Omaha. Mr. Nichols joined Lindquist & Vennum, PLLP (which is now Ballard Spahr LLP) and from 2012 to 2014 he drafted/negotiated more than 100 commercial leases for locations around the United States. In 2014, Mr. Nichols started the firm Jack J. Nichols, P.C. (affiliated with Nichols & Rabuck P.C.) in Sioux Falls, South Dakota where Mr. Nichols's practice areas included corporate law, M&A, real estate, employment law, cyber law, trademark prosecution, commercial litigation, criminal defense, and juvenile defense. In 2015 Mr. Nichols began a specialty practice in bankruptcy and debtor/creditor law and grew it to be one of the largest volume bankruptcy practices in the state. In addition to jury and court trials at the state and county level, Jack has experience in federal court litigation in South Dakota, Texas, and Delaware, as well as federal bankruptcy court litigation and trials.

Mr. Nichols was named a Super Lawyers Rising Star in 2014, 2015, and 2016. In 2020, East River Legal Services featured Mr. Nichols in their annual publication for his dedication to helping low-income and modest-means families through pro bono work.

Wayne Greenwald

Chief Bankruptcy law Consultant

Wayne M. Greenwald represents the entire spectrum of parties-in-interest in debtor-creditor matters and cases under the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. He has extensive experience in business and commercial litigation and assists clients at all phases of dispute resolution, including pre-claim negotiations, mediation, arbitration and trial.

Wayne M. Greenwald has been concentrating in debtor-creditor law for more than 30 years. He was the assistant chair of the Defense Research Institute's Special Litigation Group on Creditors' Rights and Bankruptcy. He formerly served as co-chair of the American Bankruptcy Institute's commercial fraud task force.

Mr. Greenwald lectures frequently and has published or edited articles, treatises and books on bankruptcy and creditors' rights, including Criminal Practice/ Bankruptcy Proceedings. He is highly regarded in the legal community and has been included in 2007, 2008 and 2010 New York Super Lawyers.

David Wenger

Shareholder Intelligence

With over twenty plus years in the securities industry, Mr. Wenger brings a broad range of numerous professional capacities spanning financial advisory work, venture capital, private equity funding, brokerage and public offerings. From those experiences, Mr. Wenger founded Shareholder Intelligence Services, LLC (ShareIntel) in 2003.

During his career on Wall Street, Mr. Wenger has been involved in numerous transactions involving investment banking, private equity financing, portfolio management, retail and institutional sales. Mr. Wenger was a founder and shareholder of Auerbach Financial Group, Inc. and Auerbach Pollak & Richardson, Inc., a regional boutique investment banking firm. In this capacity, he was responsible for the strategic development and growth of the firm and he led and managed the firm's Private Equity Group. Previously, Mr. Wenger was associated with a number of global financial firms and investment banks, including PaineWebber, Inc., Lehman Brothers and Drexel Burnham Lambert, where he focused primarily on client service, training, and new business development.

Mr. Wenger obtained his formal education at Syracuse University. He currently maintains a Series 24 General Securities Financial Principal's License and a Series 7 General Securities Representative's License. He is registered with an NASD member firm.

Yuval Ran

Yuval Ran is an international expert with over 25 years experience fighting securities fraud in both US and emerging markets.

Mr. Ran has helped companies uncover various kinds of stock-market and investment fraud, with his extensive knowledge and proven experience in uncovering and reverse engineering various kinds of securities and corporate malfeasance, perpetrated through multi-layer transactions, shell corporations, and straw-people.

Prior to starting his career in the private sector, Mr. Ran worked as portfolio manager and broker at Israel Central Bank.

Mr. Ran was the first entrepreneur to implement and float “blank check” companies in the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (“TASE”). Between 1992 and 1995, eleven of his portfolio companies performed IPOs in the TASE, or were listed.

In 1993, Mr. Ran founded Israel Credit Lines, Complementary Financial Services Ltd, Israel’s first non banking, non-institutional, retail finance company. In 1993, Israel Credit Lines went public in the TASE.

In 1995 and 1996, Israel Credit Lines, led by Mr. Ran performed a leveraged buyout of J.O.E.L. and the Isramco Group, which at the time was the biggest publicly traded oil and gas exploration group in Israel. (A summary can be found in Columbia University Case Study: ”Yuval Ran and Israel Credit Lines” by Professor David Beim.)

In 2000, as a result of a deep financial crisis in the Israeli stock market and as a result of the embezzlement of Israel Credit Line’s main assets by insiders, Israel Credit Line went under involuntary receivership.

Since 2009, Mr. Ran has been working together with Israel Credit Line’s receivers in order to reveal, expose and reverse the fraudulent insider transactions that led to the collapse of Israel Credit Lines.

In 2012, under Yuval Ran and Associates, Mr. Ran acted as an adviser and detected, exposed and prepared for litigation a multi company reverse merger “Pump and Dump” schemes, in the US micro cap market. His work led to a multi-million dollar settlement to his clients, the victims.

In 2013, together with Mr. Amir Mireskandari and Mr. Don K. Clark, the former FBI special agent in charge of the New York and Houston field offices, Yuval Ran founded Mires, Ran, Clark & Associates, LLC, which specializes in the investigation, detection, and analysis of stock and investment fraud on behalf of companies, shareholders and entrepreneurs.

Mr. Ran received his undergraduate degree in Economics from Tel Aviv University, and received his Master’s degree in Economics with a specialty in Finance also from Tel Aviv University. Mr. Ran also taught economics at the Law School of Tel Aviv University.

Ken Biorsky

Tax Related Litigation

Trial Attorney and then a Senior Trial Attorney with the Tax Division of the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) in Washington, DC from 1969 to 1983, where I represented the Government in a broad range of tax litigation. My duties included coordination with various divisions in the national and field offices of the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”), negotiation of settlements, and the handling of all aspects of pretrial discovery, trial, briefing, oral argument, and appeal. I was a charter recipient in 1977 of the Tax Division’s Outstanding Attorney Award, which I again received in 1981.In 1982 as a result of my involvement with the litigation of a number of investment tax credit(“ITC”) cases, I was selected by the Justice Department’s Assistant Attorney General (Tax Division) to head a study of the Government’s ITC ruling and audit policies and practices, and to prepare the Government’s brief in a lawsuit seeking to enjoin one of the then “Big-8”accounting firms (Ernst & Whinney) from deceptive and abusive practices in the preparation of ITC studies for clients.

Upon leaving Government practice in August 1983, and until April, 1986, I joined and became a partner in a Houston law firm (Axelrod, Smith, Komiss, & Kirshbaum, P. C., tel: 713-861-1996; ok to contact) where I was primarily involved with federal tax audit, controversy, and litigation matters in the representation of individual, partnership, trust, and corporate clients on a broad range of legal issues, with an emphasis on tax shelter matters.

From April 1986 to present I have been practicing in my own firm, continuing my tax audit, controversy, and litigation practice and adding an emphasis on the resolution of collection matters before the IRS, including bankruptcy aspects.

Jim Palavan

Real Estate Valuations /Testimony

Mr. Palavan is a registered professional engineer and has more than thirty-eight years of professional experience in the areas of geotechnical engineering, foundation design, environmental engineering and construction materials testing and inspection. This experience has been on a wide variety of projects throughout the U.S.A as well as overseas.

Mr. Palavan’s experience in geotechnical engineering includes structural foundation design of various structures from high-rise building, bridges, dams and petrochemical plants to individual homes, roads, warehouses and retaining wall. He has also supervised numerous pile driving operations and quality control inspections for chemical plants and high-rise buildings.

Mr. Palavan’s environmental and hydro geological experience includes performing comprehensive site assessments, soil sampling and installation of monitoring wells, industrial waste disposal site evaluation and design of industrial landfills, design and permitting of municipal solid wastes landfills, groundwater site evaluations and studies, and continental ground water movement evaluation. He has also designed and investigated numerous sanitary and storm sewer facilities. He has worked as a Senior Project Engineer for several landfills sites throughout Texas and California where he was responsible for field investigations plus laboratory testing and analysis of all potential disposal areas.

He has a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering, A&M University System of Texas, Texas; Master of Science in Civil Engineering (Geotechnical) University of Houston, Texas; Post Graduate studies in Soil Mechanics, University of Houston, Texas.

He is member of National Society of Professional Engineers, Texas Society of Professional Engineers, National American Society of Civil Engineers, American Society of Civil Engineers Texas Section, and National Civil Engineering Honor Societies (Chi-Epsilon) and National Engineering Honor Society (Tan-Beta-Pi).

Paul Price

Digital Forensic Investigations

Paul Price specializes in complex digital forensics investigations, electronic discovery management, and expert witness testimony.

Prior to entering the private sector as a consultant, as Managing Director of Forensics and analytics at Beyond IT, Mr. Price gained invaluable experience and training as a law enforcement officer, where he received certification as a Computer Forensic Examiner. Over the course of his career, Mr. Price has conducted, assisted, or supervised over 1000 forensic exams for local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies as well as law firms, corporations, and private individuals. His law enforcement background includes specialized assignments in Financial Crimes Investigation, Crime Scene, Computer Forensics, and Counterterrorism. Paul spent the last five years of his law enforcement career on assignment with the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) and working National Security matters and held a TS/SCI security clearance.

Mr. Price has worked on several high profile engagements including cases dealing with Intellectual Properties, Trade Secrets, Bankruptcy, Embezzlement, Fraud, Commercial Litigation, Family Law, and Criminal matters. His work requires him to identify, preserve, analyze, and document electronically stored information (ESI) for purposes of evidentiary or root-cause analysis and he has testified as a forensic expert in legal proceedings pending before the Texas courts.

Mr. Price Investigated and federally prosecuted an international Internet fraud ring. At the request of the Texas Rangers, analyzed and recovered deleted data in the South Texas shooting of a US Border Patrol Agent. Involved in the execution of several search warrants issued by the court of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The nature of these national security matters requires surreptitious entry and security countermeasures. Analyzed electronic evidence in Arabic, Russian, Spanish, and other foreign languages. Trained law enforcement and private sector on computer forensics, network security, and fraud prevention. Processed electronic evidence in multi-agency investigation of serial bank robbery.

Alidad Mireskandari, Ph.D, MBA.

Executive Managing Director

Mr. Alidad Mireskandari was trained as a molecular genetics at the National institutes of Health (NIH). After obtaining an MBA form University of Michigan Business School, Mr. Mireskandari spent three years as a consultant where he led cross-functional teams in designing complex R&D/Marketing/Supply Chain integration initiatives for pharmaceutical and medical device clients.

From 2000-2009 Mr. Mireskandari was a Hedge Fund Manager trading life sciences portfolios for a number of multi-national banks and hedge funds. He is an experienced financial analyst trained to predict and track profitability of investments by conducting proprietary research, financial analysis and evaluating product development initiatives for both public and private life science companies. His has extensive experience in M&A valuation, due diligence and technology transfer. He also has expertise in building valuation models and developing revenue-forecasting models for life science companies

In 2009, Mr. Mireskandari became President & CEO of a Start-up venture, overseeing the introduction a number of genetic tests to market by licensing 2 platform technologies from Yale University. He directed the build-up of his company’s commercial infrastructure to include, billing, marketing, reimbursement and customer service capabilities. He also managed R&D activities and built operational capabilities of commercial laboratory to include CLIA license certification and CAP accreditation. He led all Quality and Regulatory Assurance activities and FDA interactions on behalf of company.

Since selling his startup company in March 2014, Mr. Mireskandari has been leading MRC’s Life Sciences consulting division, which provides consulting services for life science companies in all aspects, including operational improvement, product development, technology transfer, fundraising, deal structure, and financial due diligence.