Annemarie McAvoy

Annemarie McAvoy is a Bates Consulting and Testifying Expert in financial crimes, including Anti-Money Laundering (AML), Sanctions, Crypto-Currency and Anti-Bribery and Corruption compliance, internal investigations, fraud detection and prevention and crisis management. Ms. McAvoy is the founder and CEO of Clovis Quantum Solutions, LLC (Clovis), a consulting firm, as well as McAvoy Legal, PLLC, (McAvoy Legal), a law firm. She has developed AML and anti-fraud programs, including related to Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs), has conducted independent reviews for regulators of compliance program efficacy, and has strengthened existing AML programs. She also has conducted training sessions for numerous types of financial institutions, for law enforcement agencies and for consulting firms. In addition, Ms. McAvoy handles matters as an attorney, focusing mainly on white collar matters, financial crimes issues and investigations. In that role, she also assists victims of crime, especially where fraud or theft is involved, and liaisons with law enforcement on their behalf. 

More than twenty years ago, Ms. McAvoy began teaching the first class in the world on AML and Compliance issues, which she taught for many years as an adjunct professor at Fordham Law School, where she also taught classes on counterterrorism. Eventually she began teaching her classes on financial crimes and compliance at Columbia’s graduate School of International and Public Affairs, and she continues to do so. 

Early in her career, Ms. McAvoy served as Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York (EDNY) and, later, specialized in large financial crime cases at the Kings County (Brooklyn) District Attorney’s Office Rackets/Investigations Unit. She has legal, compliance and investigative experience from her time as in-house counsel at both Morgan Stanley and Citigroup. While at Morgan Stanley, she set up the AML program and was in charge of the handling of all matters of a criminal nature that came up. At Citigroup, she was the AML Compliance Officer for a brokerage unit, where she set up the AML program. She also ran the Citigroup Investigations Unit and worked on the corporate level on AML issues, which included running the Global Suspicious Activity Reporting Group. Ms. McAvoy was also a Senior Manager in Ernst & Young’s Financial Crimes Compliance Unit. 

Ms. McAvoy has appeared for years as an on-air legal expert for major television and radio networks, including NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, CNN, the Fox News Channel, Fox Business, ABC, CBS and the BBC, has been quoted by media outlets such as the Associated Press, Reuters, Bloomberg, The Times of London and moneylaundering.com, and authored articles published in forbes.com, foxnews.com and Family Security Matters. She is a member of the Association of Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialists (ACAMS), the Association of Certified Financial Crime Specialists (ACFCS), and the Global Digital Asset and Cryptocurrency Association (Global DCA), as well as the Compliance and Small Law Firm Committees of the NYC Bar Association.