April 14, 2026 Miami Regional Meeting

About Our Speakers

Jonathan E. Perlman
Venable LLP
Miami, FL

Jonathan is NAFER’s immediate past president and leads the Receivership Practice of Venable, LLP, an AmLaw 100 firm.
 
Jonathan has served as court-appointed receiver in numerous actions brought by agencies including the SEC and FTC. He currently serves as court-appointed receiver in an action brought by the SEC over the TCA Global Credit Fund, a Cayman Islands-registered $1 billion hedge fund. Jonathan also regularly represents other receivers, investors and creditors in such matters.
 
A litigator by training, Jonathan has over 35-years’ experience litigating class and individual cases, including in the franchise, consumer protection, securities, asset recovery, banking, and employment areas. He also served 14-years as a founder and director of a community bank.  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 about receivership and litigation matters. At the 2025 NAFER Annual Conference in Key Largo, Jonathan moderated the annual judges panel, and also spoke on receivers and investors working together on asset recoveries. At the 2024 NAFER Annual Conference in Santa Barbara, Jonathan led the keynote “Fireside Chat with the Enforcement Directors,” featuring CFTC Enforcement Division Director Ian McGinley and SEC Enforcement Division Acting Deputy Director Sam Waldon. In August 2024, Jonathan spoke at the National Association of Bankruptcy Trustees Annual Conference on Spotting Red Flags of Criminal Activity in Bankruptcy cases. 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.” Also in 2023, Jonathan spoke at the American Bar Association’s Annual Forum on franchising on Handling Judgment Enforcement and Collections. 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.
 
Jonathan obtained his undergraduate degree from Duke University, cum laude with special distinction honors in psychology, and obtained his J.D. from the University of Florida College of Law. He resides in Coral Gables, Florida with his wife, Dr. Molly Perlman, a nationally recognized psychiatrist and their cat Smokey.

Jeffrey C. Schneider
Levine Kellogg Lehman Schneider + Grossman LLP
Miami, FL

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.

Hon. Rodolfo A. Ruiz II
U.S. 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.

Paul H. Tzur
Deputy Director, U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission
Enforcement Division | Chicago, Atlanta, and Miami

Paul H. Tzur is the SEC Enforcement Division’s Deputy Director Central/South, overseeing the SEC’s Atlanta, Chicago, and Miami Regional Offices. Paul obtained his undergraduate degree from Duke University in mechanical engineering and worked as an engineer at Northrop Grumman building radar jamming systems for fighter jets. He subsequently obtained his J.D. from Northwestern Law School and clerked for the Honorable Steven Colloton of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. He then served for nine years as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Securities and Commodities Fraud Section and Deputy Chief in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois. Prior to recently joining the SEC, Paul was a partner at Blank Rome LLP in Chicago.