Toni M. Mele

Toni Mele is a Senior Managing Director in the Forensic & Litigation Consulting segment of FTI and is based in New York.

With over 20 years of litigation and investigative experience, Ms. Mele specializes in conducting complex domestic and international corporate investigations for public and private corporations and law firms, with a focus on government investigations, fraud and forensic investigations, anti-money laundering (BSA/AML), anti-corruption and bribery (FCPA), False Claims Act, internal investigations, due diligence investigations on third parties (including pre-acquisition and merger subjects) and employee misconduct matters.

Ms. Mele also advises companies on strategies to improve policies and procedures, internal controls and governance, and participates in compliance reviews to develop and strengthen compliance programs.  Her work includes integrity advisory and monitorship engagements. Ms. Mele also manages expert litigation support services, including helping companies respond to subpoenas from governmental entities and discovery requests in civil matters that require collection, processing, hosting, and review of voluminous electronic data. 

Ms. Mele draws on her years of experience as an attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice, the financial services industry and private law firm practice to provide clients with valuable strategies to address complicated issues.  Throughout the course of her career, Ms. Mele has conducted hundreds of grand jury, internal and regulatory investigations, tried almost a dozen cases -- six of which went to verdict before a jury -- argued numerous, complex issues before federal judges in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York and the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, and made a multitude of presentations to senior management and business leaders in the financial sector.  Her extensive experience makes her extremely qualified to assist corporations and law firms in all aspects of litigation, investigations, due diligence and compliance work. 

Prior to joining FTI Consulting, Ms. Mele worked in the Office of the General Counsel at JPMorgan Chase, where she was a Vice President and Assistant General Counsel in the Government Investigations and Regulatory Enforcement group.  Ms. Mele’s work focused on representing JPMorgan Chase in significant law enforcement investigations and bank regulatory inquiries relating to the Consumer Banking lines-of-business. She conducted and managed internal investigations implicating the Bank Secrecy Act, False Claims Act, violations of banking and consumer laws, and white-collar fraud.

For almost a decade, Ms. Mele was a federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, where she led several high-profile, multi-defendant investigations involving international money laundering, white-collar fraud, including bank, mail, wire, credit card, mortgage and healthcare fraud, international drug trafficking, identity theft and corruption.  

Before joining the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Ms. Mele was in private practice as a litigation associate at the law firms of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe and LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae, where she handled complex commercial and civil litigation matters and internal investigations. Ms. Mele began her career as a law clerk to the Honorable Jorge A. Solis, U.S. District Judge, Northern District of Texas. 

Ms. Mele graduated with honors from Fordham University School of Law and Barnard College, Columbia University.