Mark White
Mark has practiced law in Texas for over 20 years. His passion is to represent clients charged with serious criminal offenses, in order to not just navigate their legal problems, but also to help improve the clients’ overall wellbeing. Mark started his career as an Assistant District Attorney for Harris County, Texas where he rose to Chief Prosecutor in a County Criminal Court at Law. Afterwards, he served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of Texas, Houston Division, where he prosecuted firearms and drug trafficking, terrorism, export violations, and fraud, among other violations of federal law.
In parallel with his legal career, Mark served as a Special Agent (Reserve) in the United States Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI) where he commanded an AFOSI detachment at Incirlik AFB, Turkey. He was responsible for criminal investigations, force protection activities, and counterintelligence for the base. Mark’s training and experience as an investigator sets him apart from other lawyers. Those skills allow him to truly dig in and learn the client’s full truth which he aggressively presents to tell his clients’ stories and achieve clients’ goals.
In the private sector, Mark has conducted internal investigations and provided counsel in designing, implementing, or assessing corporate compliance programs related to the United States Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the Bank Secrecy Act, fraud, investigations best practices, and codes of business conduct.
Mark represents clients in all manner of Texas state-law misdemeanors and felonies and federal offenses, including mail fraud, bank fraud, wire fraud, bank robbery, drug trafficking, money laundering, healthcare fraud, firearms offenses, murder, sexual assault, theft, fraud, assault, driving while intoxicated, and other regulatory violations and criminal charges.
Representative significant matters
- Represented a client in federal court who was accused of exchanging Bitcoin without complying with United States Treasury regulations (charge dismissed)
- Represented a senior executive of a Houston, TX area government agency in connection with an FBI corruption investigation
- Represented a client charged with money laundering and delivery of a controlled substance (probation revocation motion dismissed)
- Represented a capital murder suspect during an investigation (client not charged)
- Prosecuted multiple international firearms trafficking conspiracies in coordination with the United Kingdom Crown Prosecution Service, the Colombian National Police, and the Mexican PGR
- Prosecuted a Houston-area resident for a terrorism-related offense for attempting to provide material support to Al Qaida
- Prosecuted a transnational Asian organized crime organization involved in drug trafficking, money laundering and gambling
- Led the global internal investigations and Foreign Corrupt Practices Act compliance programs for Cameron International, a Fortune 500 oil and gas services company based in Houston
- Investigated multiple major internal fraud cases for numerous companies and obtained federal charges against employees
- Conducted internal investigations for corporate clients into accounting restatements, financial statement fraud, sex discrimination, fraud, conflict of interest code of conduct violations
- Designed the Title IX internal investigations program for a public college and major research institution in the Houston area
- Designed a process, leveraging information technology, for a global energy company to automate corruption risk assessments of its third-party business partners and to process due diligence on risky partners
- Drafted the Code of Business Conduct for a global engineering and construction company based in Japan
Some of Dick’s notable cases include
A landmark environmental case that was tried in 2007. Dick represented the corporation, CITGO. The prosecution was based on operations at CITGO’s refinery in Corpus Christi. The government accused of the company of violating benzene waste management regulations, among other regulations. The jury acquitted CITGO of the more serious benzene counts as well as charges brought under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA).
The government initiated Operation Lighting Strike in 1993. The operation was estimated to have cost at least $4 million to stage. The intended targets of the sting were suspected unscrupulous Johnson Space Center contractors. By the time that the operation was uncovered by investigative reporters in 1994, the government had charged fifteen defendants, including Dale Brown. Brown was the only one to fight his case. At trial, Dick presented a case detailing government coercion and entrapment. The jury could not reach a verdict and the judge declared a mistrial. The government did not retry the case.
The federal agents in Sharon Hogge’s case were the same as those in Dale Brown’s. Like Brown, Hogge was accused of defrauding the government. Her alleged fraud was based on the government’s contention that Hogge’s company billed for work that was never done. The government’s key claim was that the company billed for mechanical drawings that did not exist. However during trial, the government was forced to admit that the drawings did in fact exist. The judge ordered an acquittal when the government rested it case.
Texas singer/songwriter Billy Joe Shaver was charged with aggravated assault for shooting a man in the face following an altercation in a Waco-area bar in 2007. The weapon used was a .22 caliber derringer, and the complainant’s life was never in jeopardy. The bullet, however, remain lodged in the complainant. The defense presented evidence that the complainant provoked the situation by being rude and aggressive while brandishing a knife. The shooting occurred when Shaver agreed to step outside with the man. The jury found that Shaver acted in self-defense and acquitted him. In an interview on the courthouse steps after the verdict, Shaver sincerely apologized to the complainant. Shaver also jested that he would like to get to know the complainant better because he hoped to get his bullet back.
A Houston immigration lawyer was charged with falsifying documents to help forty white-collar immigrants enter and stay in the country illegally in 1986. The allegedly false documents related to thirteen companies set up to hire the immigrants. The indictment lodged 88 counts against the lawyer. At trial, the judge dismissed six counts and the jury returned verdicts of not guilty on all remaining counts.
Dick represented an accountant in a prosecution under the Mann Act. The act prohibits interstate travel to advance prostitution. The accountant admittedly had handled the books and payroll for a multistate operation, but Dick contended that the conduct did not amount to knowing participation in the wider conspiracy. The trial was something of a spectacle during the summer of 1985—one reporter referred to it as the best show in town. The accountant was ultimately acquitted of all charges.
Robert Durst’s case was sensational and remains controversial. In 2001, a dismembered body was found floating in Galveston Bay. The body was that of Durst’s neighbor. Suspicion soon fell on Durst and he was arrested on the murder charge. Durst posted bond and fled the jurisdiction. He was captured in Pennsylvania several months later when he was caught stealing a sandwich in a convenience store. At trial, Dick conceded that Durst shot and killed his neighbor. But the defense also presented evidence of the decedent’s volatile nature. The jury concluded that Durst’s conduct following the killing, while certainly gruesome, did not diminish his right to defend himself. The jury found Durst not guilty.
Kay Bailey Hutchison was elected to the United States Senate in a special election in June 1993—Lloyd Bentsen resigned the seat to become Treasury Secretary in the Clinton administration. At the time, Hutchison, a Republican, was the Texas State Treasurer. Shortly after her electoral victory, local state authorities, led by Democratic district attorney Ronnie Earle, raided Hutchison’s offices at the State Treasury. Earle indicted her in September 1993 for official misconduct and records tampering. From the very start, Dick contended that the prosecution was politically based. Although he denied having political motives, Earle acknowledged during the pendency of the case that he sought appointment to Bentsen’s vacated seat before the special election. When the case was called to trial in February 1994, the judge ordered Earle to call his first witness, but Earle declined to do so. The judge directed the jury to acquit Hutchison as required by law, thus ending Earle’s “apolitical” prosecution.
