Carol Lam

Carol Chien-Hua Lam (born June 26, 1959) is a former United States Attorney for the Southern District of California.

She received her J.D. from Stanford Law School in 1985.

Lam began her legal career as a law clerk to the Honorable Irving R. Kaufman of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit from 1985 to 1986.

From 1986 to 1997, she served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of California and was Chief of the Major Frauds Section from 1997 to 2000.

Lam convicted several high-ranking members of the Chicago organized crime family La Cosa Nostra; obtained a guilty plea and a civil settlement of $110 million from National Health Laboratories, Inc. in a Medicare fraud case; and briefed and argued the first appellate case upholding the constitutionality of "roving" wiretaps.

She then served as a judge of the Superior Court in San Diego, presiding over a criminal trial calendar.

Lam was sworn into office on an interim basis on September 4, 2002.

On November 12, 2002, Lam was further sworn in as a Senate confirmed presidential appointee.

She oversaw the Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham military contracting corruption case.

Lam was one of eight attorneys fired in the Dismissal of U.S. attorneys controversy.

Lam received her B.A. from Yale University with a degree in philosophy.

In 2002, Lam was appointed U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of California by George W. Bush.

In 2002, government agents raided the hospital.

In June 2003, the hospital's chief executive, Barry Weinbaum, was indicted on one count of conspiring to violate the federal anti-kickback statute and seven counts of offering and paying illegal remuneration.

The hospital and a Tenet unit were indicted a month later.

On February 17, 2005, a mistrial was declared when the jury failed to reach a verdict.

Lam personally prosecuted the case in a second trial; after seven months in the courtroom and a record of four months of jury deliberation, the judge declared another mistrial on April 4, 2006.

Tenet settled.

Denying that it paid kickbacks to doctors for referrals of patients to Alvarado, Tenet paid $21 million to the government, agreed to sell Alvarado Hospital and admitted that the case has led to "significant reforms" at hospitals around the country and that the company had been "distressed" to learn of "excessive payments" to some doctors.

Attorneys on Lam's staff, including Assistant United States Attorneys Jason Forge, Phillip Halpern and Valerie Chu, secured indictments against Central Intelligence Agency official Kyle "Dusty" Foggo and contractor Brent R. Wilkes.

Wilkes figured in the Cunningham scandal.

The New York Times, citing unnamed sources, has reported that Lam was investigating Republican Congressman Jerry Lewis at the time of her dismissal.

The Los Angeles Times, House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel and Senator Chuck Schumer, and others, asserted that Lam was investigating Jerry Lewis, suggesting that her firing by the Bush administration was politically motivated.

However, The Washington Post and other news organizations reported that the investigation into Lewis was being run out of the U.S. Attorney's office in Los Angeles in coordination with the Los Angeles FBI field office.

In January 2006, Lam announced the indictment of San Diego Gas & Electric on five counts of environmental crimes regarding mishandled asbestos removal during the decommissioning of the Encanto Gas Holder site in Lemon Grove, California.

A conviction as to some counts was reached by a jury after trial.

In December 2006, an attorney on Lam's staff, Assistant United States Attorney Christopher Alexander, convicted the Golden State Fence Company of Riverside, CA, and two of its executives, of hiring illegal immigrants.

The Golden State Fence Company (a.k.a. Fenceworks, Inc.), was one of the contractors hired by the U.S. government to build the southern U.S. border fence.

Mel Kay, founder, chairman and president of Golden State Fence Co., and manager Michael McLaughlin were sentenced to serve three years of probation and perform 1040 hours of community service.

Kay was fined $200,000 for his involvement in the crime and McLaughlin was fined $100,000.

Golden State was ordered to forfeit $4.7 million of illegal profits generated from hiring the illegal workers.

On December 7, 2006, Michael A. Battle, director of the Executive Office for US Attorneys, called Lam and notified her that she must resign no later than January 31, 2007.

In 2007, Lam was asked to resign by the Bush administration.

Subsequent to the dismissal, the administration claimed that Lam did not allocate sufficient resources to prosecuting border crimes, echoing US Representative Darrell Issa's (R-CA) complaints.

On February 26, 2007, Lam joined Qualcomm as Senior Vice President and Legal Counsel for the Company’s Legal Team.

On August 13, 2007, Lam took the role of acting general counsel at Qualcomm while "a nationwide executive search" was begun for a permanent replacement for Lou Lupin, who resigned as general counsel just after the finding by Hon. Rudi M. Brewster, United States Senior District Court Judge, that Qualcomm and its counsel engaged in egregious legal misconduct.

While the inception of Qualcomm and its counsel's misconduct predated the hiring of Ms. Lam, there has been no public statement as to whether her hiring was predicated on the emergence of the scandal.

In November 2008, Lam was named as Deputy General Counsel for Qualcomm.

Lam was an expert in prosecuting healthcare fraud, having authored a 954-page textbook on the subject.

As U.S. Attorney, Lam took an interest in the case of San Diego's Alvarado Hospital Medical Center, which was owned by Tenet Healthcare Corporation, the nation's second-largest hospital chain.