Trevor T. Tan of Girard Sharp LLP helped secure a $54 million settlement for investors defrauded in a massive Ponzi scheme when he represented them in a lawsuit against a bank that was accused of abetting the fraud, earning him a spot among the class action law practitioners under age 40 honored by Law360 as Rising Stars.

His biggest case:

Tan took the lead in briefing a key motion for the first time in the case against Comerica Bank in the Central District of California that led to the $54.2 million settlement for victims of a Ponzi scheme run by Woodbridge Investments and its founder, Robert Shapiro.

Shapiro is serving a 25-year prison sentence related to the scheme he operated from 2012 through 2017. Tan led briefing efforts in the victims' civil complaint against Comerica, the bank that serviced Woodbridge accounts, for allegedly aiding and abetting his crimes.

"I think the tricky issue with that case is that to prevail on an aiding and abetting claim, you have to show that the bank had actual knowledge of its client's wrongdoing, which is really hard to do, especially at the pleading stage, where you don't have long discovery and there's no smoking gun-type of public information you can hang your hat on," Tan said.

Tan's strategy was to make a simple "common sense" argument that even though there was no smoking gun, if the court looked at all the facts, it could reasonably infer Comerica did have actual knowledge of the wrongdoing. He did so by looking at similar aiding-and-abetting claims against banks and figuring out what they all had in common.

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