Steven Berryman is the founder of Berryman Prime LLC, an investigative firm focusing on sports corruption and integrity issues, match fixing matters, sports gambling, financial fair play, domestic / foreign bribery and corruption, anti-money laundering (AML), and complex financial fraud matters.
Mr. Berryman was a former Special Agent with the United States Department of the Treasury, IRS-Criminal Investigation Division (IRS-CID).
From 2011 through mid-2018, Mr. Berryman was the lead IRS-CID case agent on a worldwide investigation relating to tax, international money laundering, and corruption in sports governance within Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA).
In his position as a Special Agent working in the Los Angeles Field Office of IRS-CID, two decades ago Mr. Berryman foresaw the emergence of domestic and foreign corruption as major issues facing society around the globe. To help combat this, Mr. Berryman created a Public-Foreign Corruption Project. This project and its investigations concerned both public corruption of elected/appointed officials at local, county, state, and national levels, in addition to foreign corruption in the form of Politically Exposed Person’s (PEP’s), senior foreign political leaders, and other types of kleptocrats. The U.S. federal statutes associated with the project focused on bribery, extortion, kickbacks, honest services fraud, the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA), the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), and Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations (RICO).
Mr. Berryman has personally investigated both domestic and international financial institutions, and in the process led and supervised teams of agents and investigative analysts. These cases related to cross-border violations of money laundering, foreign bank account reporting, conspiracy to commit tax crimes, along with areas concerning compliance, enhanced due diligence, know your customer (KYC), and maintaining effective anti-money laundering controls and programs as required by the United States Bank Secrecy Act (BSA).
Over the course of his federal law enforcement career, Mr. Berryman worked numerous investigations pertaining to international money laundering and asset tracing involving cross-border jurisdictions with law enforcement and Financial Intelligence Units (FIU’s) in over forty countries across Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, the Caribbean, and Latin America. Mr. Berryman also held a position with IRS-CID International Operations as a Deputy Attaché (acting) at the United States Embassy in London, United Kingdom. Being an official working in the U.S. Embassy in London enabled Mr. Berryman to liaise with numerous law enforcement agencies from throughout the European Union and elsewhere. His cases have also given Mr. Berryman experience in investigating Sovereign Wealth Funds and the source and disposition of their investments and assets.
As part of his investigations, Mr. Berryman utilized the breadth of his forensic accounting experience to trace money and assets from both legal source and illegal proceeds, through multiple levels of offshore corporations, transnational layering, and concealed ultimate beneficial ownership.
Since the mid-1990’s Mr. Berryman has been personally responsible for asset forfeiture (civil/criminal) of approximately half a billion dollars in cash, financial accounts, real property and luxury assets.
Besides the investigative specialties listed above, Mr. Berryman has personally conducted complex criminal investigations in areas including, but not limited to, tax crimes, narcotics trafficking under the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF), bankruptcy fraud, securities violations, and counter-terrorism with the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF).
During the course of his career, Mr. Berryman participated with federal prosecutors in many lengthy and high-profile jury trials in the Central District of California (Los Angeles) and the Eastern District of New York (Brooklyn). These trials enabled Mr. Berryman to gain extensive experience in trial strategy and logistics, witness preparation, discovery matters, litigation support, jury selection, jury instructions, extensive trial testimony, post-trial appeals, sentencing, and probation matters in various federal judicial districts.
Mr. Berryman has worked with informants, confidential sources, proactive cooperating witnesses/defendants, and whistleblowers, both before the IRS and the U.S. Department of Justice.
From 2001 until his retirement in 2018 Mr. Berryman was a member of IRS-CID’s Money Laundering Expert Witness Cadre. He is also a Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist (CAMS) with the Association of Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialists (ACAMS), an internationally recognized organization in the fields of banking, compliance, risk management, and anti-money laundering.
Mr. Berryman has participated in speaking engagements at the Department of Justice’s National Advocacy Center (NAC) on the subject of advanced international money laundering. He also assisted in developing a module relating to the tax and money laundering aspects of FCPA investigations which was used to provide training to both U.S. and international law enforcement. Mr. Berryman has been a guest lecturer at California State University Long Beach, providing money laundering insight and education to the Masters of Criminal Justice program.
Mr. Berryman is a California licensed Private Investigator (License # 188697), a member of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, International Police Association, Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, California Financial Crime Investigator’s Association, and the International Association of Financial Crime Investigators.
During his thirty-year career, Mr. Berryman received the U.S. Attorney General’s Award for Distinguished Service (2018), IRS Deputy Commissioner’s Award (2017), was the inaugural recipient of the IRS-CID Elmer Irey Award for Distinguished Service (2014), several Central District of California United States Attorney’s Office Awards (2005-2011), and numerous IRS-CID performance awards (1991-2018).
Mr. Berryman received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Business Administration (with a concentration in accounting) from California State University San Bernardino.