Lecturer Bios
James O. Druker, Esq.
Jim is a founding partner at Kase & Druker. He specializes in tax law and federal criminal defense matters.
Jim began his legal career as an Assistant Attorney General for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and Special Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice, Organized Crime and Racketeering Section. He served as Assistant U.S. Attorney, Eastern District of New York, and Deputy Chief, Criminal Division and Chief of Official Corruptions Section. Jim was an Assistant District Attorney and Chief of Rackets and Narcotics Bureau in Nassau County.
Jim has served as the Master of the Bench, American Inns of Court, Theodore Roosevelt Inn. He is also the author of “New Cars and UCC Section 2-608: Your Client Isn’t Stuck with a Lemon.” He has been Guest Adjunct Law Professor at Fordham School of Law.
He is a graduate of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and earned his J.D. at Boston College.
Robert Bernard Eisman, Esq.
Robert Eisman is an Associate Attorney in the Brooklyn office of the Criminal Investigations Division of the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance. He previously served as the Attorney In Charge of the Manhattan Office of the Special Investigations Unit, the predecessor of the Criminal Investigations Division. As the Attorney In Charge of the Manhattan Special Investigations Unit, Mr. Eisman led a team of twenty-five investigators and auditors which worked closely with Federal and State prosecutors to convict numerous individuals and entities of tax fraud and raise millions of dollars in tax revenue.
Mr. Eisman previously served as an Investigative Attorney for the New York City Department of Investigation, where he conducted investigations of corruption, conflicts of interest, and criminal misconduct in New York City government for sixteen years. Mr. Eisman also previously served as the Anti-Corruption Advisor to the Republic of
Azerbaijan as a staff member of the American Bar Association, Central European and Eurasian Law Initiative. He has lectured on anti-corruption matters in Baku, Azerbaijan; Kiev, Ukraine; Yeravan, Armenia; and Tblisi, Georgia. Mr. Eisman has also lectured on investigative techniques and tax fraud at numerous Tax Department trainings and at the New York Prosecutors Training Institute.
Maureen Kokeas, First Deputy Sheriff
Maureen Kokeas began her career with the Department of Finance in 1987 as a Fraud Investigator and in 2003 became the Director of Tax Enforcement, a position she held until December 2014 when she was appointed First Deputy Sheriff. As the chief civil enforcement agency for the New York State Court System, the Office of the Sheriff
enforces mandates, orders, warrants and decrees for the Courts and conducts criminal tax investigations related to tax evasion and related crimes. As Director of Tax Enforcement she supervised criminal tax investigations for New York City Department of Finance and the regulation and enforcement of N.Y.C. cigarette excise tax laws. Prior to joining the Department of Finance she worked in the Frauds Bureau of the Manhattan District Attorney's Office. Ms. Kokeas received her B.S in Criminal Justice from Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York.
Gilda Mariani, Esq.
Gilda (Jill) Mariani is a litigation and trial attorney in white collar practice. She has experience in both private practice, as an associate with the firm of Obermaier, Morvillo & Abramowitz, P.C. (now Morvillo, Abramowitz, Grand, Iason, & Anello, P.C.) and in government, with the New York County District Attorney’s Office, where she held supervisory positions. These positions included Deputy Chief of its former Frauds Bureau and later, for over 20 years, Chief of its former Money Laundering and Tax Crimes Unit. Prior to that, she clerked as an appellate law assistant in New York State Supreme Court Appellate Division (Second Department). She is a graduate of St. John’s University School of Law (J.D. top five percent of her class and Law Review) and St. John’s University
College of Liberal Arts (B.A. summa cum laude, Political Science). She has conducted hundreds of investigations. Some investigations led to the issuance of Reports by the New York County Grand Jury, including a Grand Jury Report released in November, 2014 on MWBE reform, one in March, 2014 on workers’ compensation reform, and another in the summer of 2012 on real property tax reform. She has had a significant role in drafting legislation, including the 2000 New York Money Laundering Statute and the misdemeanor crime of Providing a Juror with a Gratuity. She has written articles and spoken on legal issues internationally, nationally and locally relating to money
laundering and tax fraud. In February 2014, she participated as a visiting professor in a course on Public Security presented at the Judges’ School in San Paolo, Brazil. She has held leadership roles in national and local bar associations. She was the New York City Bar Association’s Chair of the Personal Income Taxation Committee (September 2009 through June 2012), former vice-chair of the Personal Income Taxation Committee (3 years), and former Chair of the Legal Issues Pertaining to Animals Committee (3 years). She has been active in the leadership of the American Bar Association (ABA) as a past Chair of the Animal Law Committee (one year), past Chair of the Government Law 2 Committee of the Tort Trial and Insurance Practice Section (TIPS) and a member of TIPS’ Task Force on Disaster Preparedness and Response (August 2011 to July 2012). She co-hosted TIPS’ internet radio podcast series “Legal TIPS;” including podcasts on disaster preparedness, and served as TIPS’ liaison to the ABA’s Coordinating Committee on Military Law and Justice. She organized multi-day seminars on “Access to Justice for Persons with Disabilities and the Elderly” at Stetson University and on “Bio-ethics and Animals” at Duke University.
She served for six years as a member of Council in the Government and Public Sector Lawyers Division (GPSLD) and a liaison from the International Law Section to GPSLD. She was a member of the Task Force on Treaties in U.S. Law formed by the ILS and the American Society of International Lawyers and had a three-year ABA presidential appointment to the Special Committee on Bioethics and the Law. Currently, she is a vice-chair of the ILS International Criminal Law Committee and is in her second year of a ABA presidential appointment to the Committee on Disaster Response and Preparedness. She is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation.
On January 27, 2012 she received the Robert M. Morgenthau Award from the District Attorneys Association of the State of New York. The award was established in 2009 to recognize an Assistant District Attorney whose professional accomplishments, honesty, integrity and commitment to justice exemplify Mr. Morgenthau’s high standards during his tenure as District Attorney.
