Kobre & Kim

Kobre & Kim LLP is a litigation firm founded in New York by Steven Kobre and Michael Kim, former Assistant U.S. Attorneys in the securities and commodities fraud unit of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York. It describes itself as a "conflict-free, litigation-only" firm for cross-border disputes, government investigations and asset recovery, with offices in several countries, and most of its business referred by other law firms. Two supervisors of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida's 2006 to 2007 investigation of Jeffrey Epstein joined it on leaving government: Matthew Menchel, chief of the Criminal Division, who left in August 2007 while the Epstein non-prosecution agreement was being negotiated, and Andrew Lourie, who left the Justice Department in February 2008.¹²³

Founders and Model

Kobre had been an Assistant District Attorney in the New York County District Attorney's Office and clerked for Judge Lowell A. Reed Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania before serving as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Criminal Division in Manhattan. In a 2014 interview he said that he and Kim had been prosecutors "in the unit of the Southern District of New York that handles cases involving securities and commodities frauds," that at first the firm "focused primarily on white collar investigations, lawsuits involving financial institutions, and asset forfeiture and recovery matters," and that eleven years on "approximately 80 to 90 percent of our business today comes by way of referrals from other law firms." The firm then employed English solicitors and barristers, including three Queen's Counsel, and offshore lawyers in the Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands.¹²

Menchel

Menchel was chief of the Criminal Division of the Miami office from October 2006 to August 2007, the months in which the office declined to approve an indictment of Epstein and offered him instead a two-year state plea. He communicated the offer to Epstein's lawyers. After the office presented its term sheet on July 31, 2007, the defense lawyer Lilly Ann Sanchez wrote to him on August 2 proposing two years of home confinement; the office's reply of August 3, addressed "Dear Lilly" and signed by Menchel under U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta's name, stated that the two-year term was "a non-negotiable minimum." It was Menchel's last day in the office before he joined Kobre & Kim; he told the Office of Professional Responsibility that the timing was a "total coincidence."⁴⁵

The Office of Professional Responsibility found that Menchel had dated, in 2003, a former deputy who by 2007 was one of Epstein's defense lawyers, that his supervisors did not know it, and that it "would have been prudent" for him to tell them; it found no evidence supporting a 2018 claim that the two-year offer was a favor to defense counsel. Epstein estate records released by the House Oversight Committee in October 2025 show appointments, telephone calls and dinners between Menchel and Epstein in 2011, 2013 and 2017. Menchel has said he had no business relationship with Epstein "at any point, not before, during or after my tenure," and has denied skiing with him.³⁶

At Kobre & Kim Menchel became a partner in the government enforcement defense practice, a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers and head of the firm's trial advocacy program. The firm credits him with the "landmark acquittal" of the UBS banker Raoul Weil and with a defense verdict "against the CFTC on all causes of action" for the trading firm DRW.⁴

Lourie

Lourie was a deputy chief of the Criminal Division and manager of the West Palm Beach branch, supervising the Epstein investigation. He had twice been detailed to Washington as acting chief of the department's Public Integrity Section, where, according to his Kobre & Kim biography, he supervised public corruption prosecutions including investigations arising from the prosecution of the lobbyist Jack Abramoff. He left Miami in September 2007, while the agreement was being negotiated, to become Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General and chief of staff to Alice Fisher, head of the Criminal Division, and left the department in February 2008. At Kobre & Kim he became a partner in the same government enforcement defense practice as Menchel, handling commodities manipulation, spoofing, insider trading and Foreign Corrupt Practices Act matters; in 2015 the firm quoted the Chambers guide that his "skills are extraordinary, and his judgment is first-rate." The Office of Professional Responsibility named him one of five subjects of its Epstein investigation and found no professional misconduct. He later became of counsel at the Miami firm Tein Malone.⁷⁸⁹

Epstein as Recipient

On June 21, 2017 the firm sent Epstein a client alert, "Kobre & Kim Update: China's State Secret Laws: Five Unique Risks for Working With SOEs".¹⁰