MARCH 4 • 2021 | 27
A
fter a long and storied
career as a white-collar
criminal defense law-
yer working with some of the
most important cases in the last
few decades, attorney Richard
Zuckerman is back in town.
Zuckerman, whose most
recent assignment was serving
three years as acting attorney
general of the Tax Division of
the Department of Justice in
Washington, D.C., is taking
some time to unwind in Metro
Detroit as he waits for his next
big opportunity.
It’s a strategy that has worked
for the Yonkers, N.Y., native
since the mid-1960s, when he
graduated from the University
of Michigan and spent four
years in the U.S. Navy. Time
and time again, interesting
opportunities came knocking
at Zuckerman’s door without
him really looking for them.
His career was a sort of a dom-
ino effect where one thing led
to another, putting him in the
right place at the right time.
The journey began after
his time with the Navy
ended. Zuckerman attended
Southwestern University School
of Law in Los Angeles where
he took a mix of business and
criminal law courses. He want-
ed to find a way to combine the
two. “I didn’t want to pick one
area over another,
” Zuckerman
said. “I took a lot of tax courses,
and I liked tax.
”
One day, an opportunity to
connect his two passions arrived.
An employment placement
signup sheet at his law school
showed that the Department
of Justice was hiring. “It’s a one
in a million chance to get hired
by the Department of Justice at
a law school,
” he recalled. He
decided to take a practice inter-
view for it. At least, he thought it
was a practice interview.
Zuckerman sat down
with a member of the DOJ.
He expressed an interest in
white-collar criminal law, and it
just so happened that the person
he interviewed with was a dep-
uty chief of the organized crime
section of the Criminal Division.
“I decided that I could marry
criminal law and corporate law
by doing organized crime pros-
ecutions,
” Zuckerman said. “Not
the violent stuff, per se, but the
economic aspects.
”
He aced his interview and
received a job with the DOJ,
moving to D.C. for training.
From there, a career in white
collar crime with a subspeciality
of tax was born.
HIGH-PROFILE CASES
It was a fluke, he said, that even-
tually brought him to Detroit.
In the mid-1970s, a depart-
ment head mentioned that the
Detroit Strike Force office had
an opening. Having met his wife
at the University of Michigan,
Zuckerman asked to be assigned
to Detroit. By January 1975, he
was working in the Motor City.
During his time in Detroit,
Zuckerman worked on some
of the highest-profile cases in
the city, including the 1975 dis-
appearance of Teamsters boss
Jimmy Hoffa and the income
tax evasion of Detroit mafia
captain Anthony Giacalone,
among others.
Zuckerman then spent 30
years as part of the Honigman
Miller Schwartz and Cohn law
firm, now Honigman LLC, in
Detroit, mostly as head of its
white-collar crime and govern-
ment investigations practice
group. He also represented the
Detroit Free Press in the text
messaging scandal involving
former Detroit Mayor Kwame
Kilpatrick, another high-profile
case to add to his roster.
In December 2017,
Zuckerman left Honigman to
accept his most recent position
with the Tax Division of the DOJ
in the Trump administration. He
was part of the senior leadership
of the department, directing
some 350 lawyers and 150 sup-
port staff to carry out enforce-
ment of the nation’s tax laws.
His appointment ended on
Jan. 20 with the inauguration
of President Joe Biden. Now,
Zuckerman has returned to his
longtime home of Michigan
with no plan other than to see
what might happen next.
As an integral part of the local
Jewish community, Zuckerman
was one of the founding mem-
bers of Temple Shir Shalom,
also serving on its board. He
served on the board for the
Detroit chapter of the American
Committee for the Weizmann
Institute of Science as well.
“I’m still interested in prac-
ticing if the right thing came
along,
” Zuckerman says. “But
I’m not in a great hurry to go
back. I’ve decided to take it easy
for a while and see what comes
along.
”
White-Collar
Warrior
“I’M STILL INTERESTED IN
PRACTICING IF THE
RIGHT THING CAME ALONG.”
— RICHARD ZUCKERMAN
Jimmy Hoffa and the income
tax evasion of Detroit mafia
captain Anthony Giacalone,
among others.
years as part of the Honigman
Miller Schwartz and Cohn law
firm, now Honigman LLC, in
Detroit, mostly as head of its
white-collar crime and govern-
ment investigations practice
group. He also represented the
Warrior
From Jimmy Hof
a
to Kwame Kilpatrick,
attorney has seen it all.
ASHLEY ZLATOPOLSKY
CONTRIBUTING WRITER