Receiverships 2.0

About Our Speakers

Hon. Melissa Damian 
United States District Court, Southern District of Florida

Melissa Damian was sworn in as a United States Magistrate Judge in the Southern District of Florida on January 10, 2022.  Judge Damian filled the magistrate judgeship position vacated upon the retirement of Chief United States Magistrate Judge John J. O’Sullivan.    

Judge Damian earned her undergraduate degree from Princeton University in 1990 and her law degree from the University of Miami School of Law in 1995.  Judge Damian is a South Florida native and grew up in Coral Gables. 

From 2010 until taking the bench, Judge Damian practiced law in private practice, specializing in civil appeals and complex federal litigation, most recently as Of Counsel to the law firm Damian & Valori, Culmo Trial Partners in Miami.  From 1999 to 2010, Judge Damian was an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida, most recently serving in the National Security Section where she earned the Attorney General’s Award for her work on matters of national security.  Before joining the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Judge Damian was an associate with the law firm Kenny Nachwalter in Miami, where she specialized in securities litigation.  From 1995 to 1997, Judge Damian served as a law clerk to the Honorable Ursula Ungaro, U.S. District Judge for the Southern District of Florida.   

Hon. Rodolfo A. Ruiz II
United States District Court, Southern District of Florida

Rodolfo “Rudy” Armando Ruiz II is a District Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida. Judge Ruiz serves on the Local Rules Committee of the Judicial Council of the United States Eleventh Judicial Circuit.  He is also Chair of the Probation Committee for the Southern District of Florida and former Chair of the Court’s Budget Committee. Judge Ruiz currently presides over two transferee assignments from the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation—MDL-3090, In Re: Fortra File Transfer Software Data Security Breach Litigation and MDL-2994, In Re: Mednax Services, Inc., Customer Data Security Breach Litigation.
 
Prior to his confirmation to the federal bench, Judge Ruiz was a Circuit Court Judge for the Eleventh Judicial Circuit of Florida from 2014 through 2019, and a Miami-Dade County Court Judge from 2012 through 2014.  During his tenure as a state court judge, Judge Ruiz served as Chair of the Florida Bar’s Civil Procedure Rules Committee. He was also appointed to the Florida Supreme Court Committee on Standard Jury Instructions in Criminal Cases. Judge Ruiz was an active Florida judicial faculty member and served as the Eleventh Judicial Circuit Court Liaison to Dade Legal Aid. 

Prior to taking the state court bench, Judge Ruiz was an Assistant County Attorney with the Miami-Dade County Attorney’s Office from 2009 through 2012. As an Assistant County Attorney, Judge Ruiz represented Miami-Dade County and government employees in federal and state court at both trial and appellate levels, serving as a member of the Federal Litigation, Tax & Finance, and Torts Sections. Before joining the Miami-Dade County Attorney’s Office, Judge Ruiz was an associate with White & Case L.L.P. from 2006 through 2008, where he specialized in mergers and acquisitions, asset-backed financings, and general corporate matters as a member of the firm’s Corporate Latin America practice group. 

Judge Ruiz served as a law clerk to the Honorable Federico A. Moreno of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida from 2005 through 2006. He received a Bachelor of Science in Economics from Duke University and his law degree from Georgetown University, where he served as the Articles Editor for the American Criminal Law Review. He currently serves as Board Vice Chair of the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University. He is also a member of the Georgetown Law Alumni Board and a member of the Judicial Group of Directors of the South Florida Chapter of the Federal Bar Association. Judge Ruiz has also served as an adjunct professor of law at St. Thomas University School of Law, teaching Complex Litigation.

Eric I. Bustillo 
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission 

Eric I. Bustillo currently serves as Director of the Miami Regional Office (“MIRO”) of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”). As Director, he is responsible for leading the functions of the MIRO, including the supervision of the office’s Enforcement and Examination programs, which jurisdiction covers the States of Florida, Mississippi, and Louisiana, as well as the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. The MIRO employs numerous professionals, including attorneys, accountants, and examiners, as well as support personnel who are assigned to these programs. 

Between March 1995 and February 2010, Mr. Bustillo was employed by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida (“USAO-SDFL”) as an Assistant United States Attorney (“AUSA”) where for the last five years of his tenure with the office he served as Chief of the USAO-SDFL’s Economic & Environmental Crimes Section, in charge of supervising a group of AUSAs and other professionals. Mr. Bustillo supervised and prosecuted criminal matters involving, among other things, securities/corporate fraud, health care fraud, environmental crimes, commodities fraud, mail fraud, wire fraud, bank fraud, tax fraud, and money laundering violations. 

Between February 1990 and March 1995, Mr. Bustillo was employed by the MIRO where he last served as Chief of one of the office’s Enforcement branches, in charge of supervising a group of enforcement attorneys and an accountant. He supervised and prosecuted complex matters involving, among other things, financial fraud, insider trading, stock manipulation, fraudulent sale of unregistered securities, broker-dealer/investment adviser fraudulent practices, and corporate accounting controls violations. Prior to joining the SEC, Mr. Bustillo worked, briefly, at a private law firm doing commercial litigation and some corporate/real estate transactional work. 

Mr. Bustillo attained a Bachelor of Business Administration degree with a major in Economics from the University of Miami School of Business and a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Miami School of Law. Mr. Bustillo currently serves as an Adjunct Faculty member of the Litigation Skills Program at the University of Miami School of Law where he teaches Trial Advocacy Skills. He also is a frequent speaker at securities and white collar crime seminars around the country.

Jonathan leads Venable’s Receivership Practice. Recognized as a preeminent practitioner in the field, Jonathan is the immediate past president of the National Association of Federal Equity Receivers (NAFER), the only national organization devoted to federal equity receiverships, and the unique issues receivers, judges and agencies face in such matters. Jonathan has served as court-appointed receiver over numerous ongoing businesses that had engaged in Ponzi schemes or other unlawful conduct, including in actions brought by the Federal Trade Commission and Securities and Exchange Commission. Jonathan has also represented receivers, investors and creditors in such matters.

A litigator by training, Jonathan has over 30 years of experience litigating individual and class action matters, including in the franchise, consumer protection, securities, asset recovery, banking, and employment areas. He also served 14 years as a director of a $1 billion community bank, where he chaired its compensation committee and served on its audit and compliance committees. Jonathan brings his broad experience to each receivership engagement to create and efficiently manage diverse teams best suited to each assignment’s needs.

Jonathan regularly lectures and writes articles regarding receivership and litigation matters. In June 2024, Jonathan moderated a Fireside Chat with SEC Miami regional director Eric Bustillo on receiverships before members of the Federal Bar Association, the Wilkie Ferguson Bar Association and NAFER. At the April 2024 Public Investors Advocate Bar Association Mid-Year Meeting in Las Vegas, Jonathan spoke to an audience of state securities regulators on how to protect more investors with less resources by “Leveraging the Power of an Equity Receiver.” At the 2023 NAFER Annual Conference in Nashville, TN, Jonathan held a Fireside Chat with CFTC Commissioner Summer Mersinger and was a panelist on “Avoiding Tears in Your Beer in Cross-Border Receiverships.” At the 2022 NAFER Annual Conference in Washington, DC, Jonathan produced and moderated NAFER’s first ever Regulators Panel consisting of regulators from the FTC, SEC, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. At the 2021 NAFER Annual Conference in Los Angeles, Jonathan presented a fireside chat with the FTC’s chief litigation counsel. At the 2020 NAFER Offshore Conference, Jonathan was a panelist and moderator on “What’s New for Receivers Around the World”; at the 2019 International Franchise Association Legal Symposium, he spoke on Americans with Disabilities Act accessibility class and damages actions; and at the 2018 NAFER Annual Conference, he spoke on protection of receivership assets. Jonathan also spoke as a panelist in recent webinars, including a ThoughtLeaders4 international insolvency webinar on “Assembling the A Team” with an international panel (2021), “Has the Bell Tolled for FTC Receiverships?” (NAFER 2021), and “Takedowns and Takeaways in Federal Receiverships” (NAFER 2020).

Jonathan attended the University of Florida College of Law, and obtained his undergraduate degree from Duke University, cum laude with special distinction honors in psychology. He resides in Miami, Florida with his wife, Dr. Molly Perlman, a nationally recognized psychiatrist and leader in the mental health field.

Jeffrey C. Schneider
Levine Kellogg Lehman Schneider + Grossman LLP

Jeff is an accomplished trial lawyer whose practice focuses on high-stakes business litigation, receiverships, and class action litigation, particularly in connection with receiverships. Jeff is one of the Firm’s founding partners, and has been the Firm’s Managing Partner since its inception fifteen years ago. Jeff also Chairs the Firm’s Receivership Practice Group.

Jeff has been trying complex, high-risk, eight-and-nine-figure cases in federal and state trial courts, and in arbitration proceedings, for over thirty years. Jeff has worked on some of the largest fraud cases in history, either as lead trial counsel, as receiver, or as counsel to the receiver.

Jeff has also served as receiver in actions brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and the Office of the Attorney General. Jeff has been appointed by District Court judges in the Northern District of Alabama, the Northern District of Illinois and the Southern District of Florida, and by state court judges in Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties.

Throughout the course of his career, Jeff has helped to recover well over $400 million for defrauded victims, including a $104 million recovery in the Mutual Benefits fraud, a $150 million recovery and a $32 million recovery in the Jay Peak fraud, a $54 million recovery in the Woodbridge fraud, a $32 million dollar recovery in the DLI fraud, and multiple other eight-figure recoveries. Jeff is known for his creative and passionate approach to litigation, and is considered an expert on Ponzi schemes and fraud cases.

Jeff has been recognized by many publications and peer-review organizations, including Chambers USA and The Best Lawyers in America, and has twice received the Daily Business Review’s “Most Effective Lawyer” award (having been nominated four times). As noted in Chambers USA, Jeff’s peers call him “a shrewd tactician” and praise him for his “creativity,” his “organization,” and his ability “to analyze, distill, and set forth complex issues in a simple, understandable way.” In 2024, Jeff was one of three lawyers in Miami-Dade County nominated for “Attorney of the Year” by the Daily Business Review.

Jeff is a frequent lecturer in the areas of receivership litigation and commercial litigation and arbitration.