The New York Law Journal recently highlighted the news that Victor Suthammanont joined Kostelanetz LLP as a partner after serving at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for more than a decade.
The article details Victor’s time at the SEC, where he rose from Senior Trial Counsel to Enforcement Counsel for then-SEC Chair Gary Gensler. The piece notes that Victor worked on some of the agency’s highest-profile enforcement actions and policy stances. This includes the SEC’s case against AT&T, in which the agency obtained the largest penalty ever against an issuer in a regulation fair disclosure, or Regulation FD, case, and a case in which Victor was part of a team that charged well-known celebrity influencer Kim Kardashian for failing to disclose that she had been paid to endorse EthereumMax, which the SEC found to be a crypto-asset security.
Looking forward now that he has left the SEC, Victor told the New York Law Journal, “It remains to be seen how the SEC will enforce existing rules or seek to reform certain rules.” He added, “There is still enforcement staff and career staff that will seek to vindicate the agency’s mission in a way that would leave market participants and institutions vulnerable to investigations and enforcement actions.”
The article also notes that Victor is expecting his debut novel, Hollow Spaces, to be published in August 2025. The work of fiction tells the story of an Asian-American partner in a law firm who faces personal and professional challenges after he is acquitted of murder and his children’s investigation of the case decades later in an effort to uncover the truth about their father. The article also details Victor’s previous acting career before earning his J.D. at New York Law School.
Prior to joining the SEC, Victor was in private practice, handling commercial disputes for domestic and multinational businesses. He also worked on internal investigations, including sensitive and high-profile investigations like the NYPD’s Crime Reporting Review Commission.
Victor’s practice at Kostelanetz will focus on securities enforcement defense, commercial litigation, and white-collar criminal defense.
The full article can be found here.
