Mark J. Lesko is the Acting United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York. As Acting U.S. Attorney, Mark is the chief federal law enforcement officer for a district comprising Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island in New York City, and Nassau and Suffolk Counties on Long Island. The district serves over eight million residents through its Criminal Division, with approximately 115 Assistant U.S. Attorneys, and its Civil Division, with approximately 60 U.S. Attorneys. The Criminal Division’s main office in Brooklyn has practice area sections including General Crimes, International Narcotics & Money Laundering, Organized Crime & Gangs, National Security & Cybercrime, Business and Securities Fraud, Public Integrity and Civil Rights. The Long Island Criminal Division office in Central Islip is responsible for investigating and prosecuting the full range of federal crimes. The Civil Division, with a main office in Brooklyn and a branch office in Central Islip, is responsible for a wide range of affirmative and defensive litigation, including asset forfeiture, civil rights, environmental enforcement, programs fraud, financial litigation and Civil RICO. An Appeals Division supervises appellate work for the Brooklyn and Long Island Criminal Divisions.

Mark returned to the Office in October 2018, assuming the position of Special Counsel to the United States Attorney, and he was appointed to the position of First Assistant United States Attorney in March 2019. Mark previously served as the Vice President for Economic Development, the Executive Dean of the Center for Entrepreneurship and an Adjunct Professor of Law at Hofstra University. Prior to Hofstra, Mark served as the Executive Director of Accelerate Long Island, a regional collaboration between Brookhaven National Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Hofstra University, Northwell Health and Stony Brook University that oversaw a seed-stage investment program for biotech companies in New York City and on Long Island. Before Accelerate Long Island, Mark was the three-time elected Supervisor of the Town of Brookhaven, New York State’s second-largest town with a population of 486,000 residents.

Mark previously served in the Office from 2002 to 2009. He served as the Deputy Chief of the Long Island Criminal Division and as a Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property Coordinator. While in the Office, Mark conducted complex and wide-ranging criminal investigations and handled numerous jury trials and appeals. His most notable cases include the prosecutions of the former CEO and CFO of Symbol Technologies, a titanium manufacturing company and its CEO for violations of the Resource Conservation Recovery Act for illegal storage of hazardous waste, two fraudulent financiers of a major motion picture, and a Colombo associate. His trial convictions include a Muttontown, New York couple who tortured two Indonesian domestic servants held in a condition of forced labor and servitude, gang members convicted of the racketeering murder of a man they mistakenly believed to be a member of the MS-13, and the leader of a robbery crew based in the Louis H. Pink Houses in East New York who was responsible for more than 50 armed robberies throughout New York City and Long Island.

Prior to joining the Office, Mark served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the District of Columbia from 1999 to 2002, where he was in the Homicide/Major Crimes Section and handled numerous jury trials and appellate arguments. Mark also worked as an associate at the law firms of Miller & Chevalier in Washington, D.C. and Kirkpatrick & Lockhart in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (now K&L Gates). Mark received his B.A. from Yale University in 1989 and his J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center in 1994.