Manhattan, New York City. (Photo: Shutterstock.com)

Sharon Cohen Levin, who for decades led the asset forfeiture and money laundering unit at the U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan before moving to Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr in 2015, has moved to Sullivan & Cromwell.

Levin, dubbed "the Babe Ruth of forfeiture" by a colleague, oversaw the forfeiture of billions of dollars in her tenure at the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, plus assets ranging from a dinosaur skeleton to Nazi-looted art. She appeared earlier this month on the website of Sullivan & Cromwell, which hires lateral partners only infrequently.

Her new firm said she provides money-laundering and forfeiture advice to "a diverse group of corporate clients." She could not immediately be reached for an interview.

In her time at Wilmer, Levin was involved in one of the biggest money-laundering and asset forfeiture cases in recent years. She was on the team that represented Joey McFarland, a Red Granite Pictures executive who challenged the government's effort to seize over $14 million that it said was linked to the 1MDB scandal. That matter was settled earlier this year.

A search of court records shows that Levin's other matters included work for Eliezer Levin, a collector who challenged Turkey's claim to his marble statue of the Roman goddess Cybele (she withdrew from that case earlier this month); Yves Bouvier, the owner of a work by Edgar Degas that the government seized from a gallery owner (the painting was returned); TD Bank in a discrimination case that was dismissed; and two people in an international child-abduction case.

Other prominent attorneys to make lateral moves to Sullivan & Cromwell in recent years include James Bromley, a bankruptcy lawyer who came over from Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton in March, and Jeremy Kutner, who joined from Shearman & Sterling in August 2018.

Sharon Levin's entry into Big Law came after decades at the U.S. Department of Justice. Her LinkedIn profile indicates that she worked as a trial lawyer in the torts branch of the DOJ's civil division before doing civil work as an assistant U.S. attorney in D.C. She moved to the Southern District in the early 1990s and led the money-laundering unit from 1996 through 2015, her profile said.

The Babe Ruth moniker was bestowed upon Levin by Richard Zabel, the former deputy U.S. attorney in the Southern District. The district was a national leader among U.S. attorneys' offices under Levin's leadership, driven partly by multibillion-dollar sums won from big New York banks that were accused of violating money-laundering or sanctions laws.