Randall Lee to Head SEC’s Regional Office

Randall R. Lee was named Wednesday as the new director of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s regional office in Los Angeles.

Lee, 40, succeeds Valerie Caproni, who left in July for a private law firm in New York. Lee will assume his new post next month.

Since 1994, Lee has worked in the criminal division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles. He is deputy chief of the major frauds section, where he oversees a team of about 10 attorneys prosecuting various financial crimes, including stock manipulation, insider trading and money laundering.

Lee is one of the first appointees of new SEC Chairman Harvey Pitt.

“I am honored to have been chosen by him and look very forward to being part of his team,” Lee said Wednesday.

Lee received an undergraduate degree from Yale University and a law degree from UC Berkeley. He was an associate specializing in corporate and securities law at Munger, Tolles & Olson in Los Angeles for five years before joining the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

The Pacific Region headquarters includes offices in Los Angeles and San Francisco and coordinates SEC enforcement and regulatory activities in a nine-state area.

Among several high-profile cases undertaken by the Pacific region office recently was last year’s Emulex Corp. stock-fraud case, in which a former student admitted issuing a fake news release that sent the stock tumbling.