Diana J. Florence

Of Counsel

With nearly 30 years of diverse legal experience, Diana has dedicated her career to ensuring that the law works for her clients. This passion drove her 25-year tenure as a leader in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and continues in her current sports law practice, where she focuses on advising collegiate athletes and athletic organizations in “Name, Image, and Likeness” (NIL) matters.

Diana’s proven track record of success in the sports law arena includes achieving favorable outcomes both in and out of the courtroom for numerous collegiate athletes, securing them eligibility from the NCAA, achieving success within the transfer portal, and negotiating extraordinary NIL agreements. In addition to her work as a litigator, Diana also maintains an active sports consulting practice, where she advises and manages a basketball league for elite high school students.

Drawing on her unique skillset, Diana has taken over 60 trials to verdict, including those involving complex, multi-defendant, international corporate crimes; construction investigations, compliance, and defense; and white-collar crime. A true client advocate, Diana’s work on behalf of undocumented construction laborers led to changes in the way wage theft and construction fatalities were prosecuted nationwide. Not only did Diana prosecute these cases, she also spearheaded safety trainings at consulates and work centers throughout New York and authored two bills—Wage Theft and Carlos' Law—that later became New York State Laws. These successes lead to her run for Manhattan District Attorney with the support of over 23 labor unions.

The conclusion of Diana’s campaign coincided with a sea of change in collegiate athletics, namely the broad legalization of NIL. She recognized the parallels between the undocumented construction workers she represented and these young athletes—both groups were looking to be fairly compensated for their labor, which fuels multi-billion-dollar industries—and transitioned her practice to collegiate athletics as both an attorney and a consultant.

An alumna of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Diana earned both her J.D. and a B.A. from the institution. She is active in professional and community organizations throughout New York and North Carolina, and she frequently shares her insights in presentations to the legal community, construction industry, community groups, and academia, both locally and abroad. In addition, Diana is a highly sought after legal commentator in print and broadcast media, with recent appearances in MSNBC, Bloomberg, The BBC, CNN, and Business Insider.

Media Mentions:

  • Sued the NCAA on behalf of a basketball player at Manhattan College, and won a preliminary injunction that granted him immediate eligibility. 
  • Obtained largest wage theft conviction on record of an owner and corporate defendants for stealing $6 million in wages from nearly 500 workers and defrauding the Department of Labor (DOL) out of more than $260,000. In just under six months, have already paid $2 million back to workers.
  • Obtained guilty pleas of owners and company of the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) contractor that defrauded state workers’ compensation insurance fraud fund and $122,000 wage theft of three undocumented day laborers. Restitution fully paid of more than $150,000 within six weeks of the plea. 
  • Supervised case where company committed $1.7 million in wage theft for 300 workers and used alter ego companies to conceal $30 million in payroll. Evaded $7 million in New York State Insurance Fund (NYSIF) premium.  
  • Initiated and supervised case where owner of steel company defrauded six of his workers out of $51,000 in prevailing wages on a Health Product Declaration (HPD) project, Draper Hall, and committed over $3,000 in insurance fraud by underreporting and misclassifying workers. Pleaded to Grand Larceny and paid restitution.
  • Initiated and supervised a manslaughter case where Juan Chonillo plunged 29 floors to his death, and the company committed wage theft and NYSIF fraud for 51 employees.  
  • Initiated and supervised case where owner of company defrauded his workers out of $47,000 in wages.
  • Acted as lead counsel for a case where the owner of superstructure company defrauded his workers out of $500,000 in wages and committed $1,165,615.51 in insurance fraud with NYSIF. After long period of cooperation, defendant paid up-front wage theft monies and was scheduled to make last payment on NYSIF monies and be sentenced to conditional discharge (CD) on felony insurance fraud third degree in April 2020.
  • Obtained a manslaughter conviction after trial in a verdict called a “landmark” in the fight for safer worksites in the NYC construction industry. The case charged two companies and their supervisors with manslaughter and related crimes for sending Carlos Moncayo, an employee, into an unprotected trench at the meatpacking construction site and causing his death when the trench collapsed on him.  
  • Spearheaded an initiative to train workers to recognize workplace safety hazards, identify fraud, and work side by side with the Task Force to proactively report unsafe incidents to law enforcement. Under my leadership, the Construction Fraud Task Force conducted more than 70 presentations across the city for more than 3,000 construction workers.  
  • Led the Site Safety Inspection prosecutions, where nine defendants were indicted for and pleaded guilty to fraudulently conducting safety inspections, falsifying hundreds of safety reports, and leaving more than 40 active construction sites unsupervised. Obtained top count guilty pleas and state prison sentences, obviating the need for a trial. 
  • Led multiple inter-agency prosecutions into Disadvantaged and Minority and Women Owned Business Enterprise fraud, Minority Labor Coalitions, workmen's compensation insurance fraud, and construction safety fraud schemes. Co-authored New York State Grand Jury report into Minority and Women Owned Business Enterprise fraud. 
  • Obtained guilty plea for felony insurance fraud of owner and company of contractor that defrauded state workers’ compensation insurance fraud fund and Union benefit funds.  Restitution fully paid of more than $1.5 million.  
  • Organized a long-term investigation into a group of more than 30 criminals, scattered throughout the five boroughs of NYC and the Caribbean, who stole high-end motorcycles off the streets of New York and trafficked in assault weapons for distribution, both citywide and internationally. After most pleaded guilty, I handled a two-month trial that resulted in top count Enterprise Corruption convictions for the leaders of the ring. The joint investigation with NYPD’s Organized Crime Control Bureau Auto Crimes division and United States Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement resulted in state prison sentences for nearly all members of the ring. I was honored by the Federal Law Enforcement Foundation for my work. 
  • Initiated and led the “Concrete Investigations,” an industry-wide probe into the construction materials testing sector that led to the high-profile convictions of over 20 individuals and companies, including the conviction after trial of Testwell Laboratories and its CEO and Vice-President. The investigations led to city- and state-wide changes to the industry. Managed a team of investigators representing a half-dozen city, state, and bi-state agencies and authorities. Conducted three long-term Grand Jury presentations.
  • Lead counsel in case where defendant Cheryl McEwan, a long-time employee of The Rockefeller Foundation, hatched a scheme to steal over $400,000 from the Foundation’s matching gift program. The matching gift program allowed any contributions an employee made to a charity to be “triple matched” by the Foundation. For a period of three years, McEwan submitted documents to the Foundation indicating that she was making donations to a small charity run by her friend Frank Melli, and the Rockefeller Foundation “triple matched” her contribution. Melli then gave the contribution back to McEwan and split the remaining proceeds with her.  Later, McEwan and her husband created their own charity and cut Melli out of the scam. Anthony McEwan and Frank Melli pleaded guilty pretrial, and Cheryl McEwan was convicted after a jury trial and was sentenced to three-and-a-half to ten-and-a-half years’ incarceration.
  • Lead counsel in case where defendant stole over $150K from 81-year-old Joseph Gossner.  Defendant appeared at his townhouse on 50/Beekman/1st claiming she was a nurse there to check his blood pressure. She befriended him and then claimed she had cancer and needed money for chemotherapy, surgery, and drugs. She went with him to the bank and had him cash checks for just under $10,000, notations on the checks reflect Chemo, Surgery etc.  In late November, defendant duped Gossner into giving a check for $42,000 for surgery but instead used the money to buy a 2006 Hummer. She pleaded guilty to Grand Larceny in the Second Degree and received one to three years’ incarceration.
  • Lead counsel in case where defendant Sandrene Austin was the bookkeeper for Gramercy Tavern, a popular restaurant in the Flatiron area of Manhattan.  Over a three-year period, Austin stole over $270,000 by recording the cash she took as gift certificates. The case relied solely on circumstantial evidence to prove the thefts. Austin was convicted after a jury trial of all counts, including Grand Larceny in the Second Degree, and was sentenced to three-to-nine years’ incarceration.
  • Lead counsel in case where defendant Milliard insured over $250,000 worth of jewelry with a policy that required the jewelry to remain in her bank’s vault except when she obtained permission to remove it. Less than one hour after she obtained permission to remove several items, defendant claimed that she was the victim of a robbery. In fact, Millard lied about the robbery and had sold much of the jewelry the month before. As she pursued the insurance claim, defendant attended society events with movie stars, passed herself off as a Saudi princess, and induced American Express to give her a Centurion card. She used the card to go on a shopping spree and spent more than $500,000. When she was unable to pay the bill, American Express froze the account, but she managed to get it reactivated and spent an additional $490,000 in less than ten days. She later pleaded guilty to Grand Larceny in the Second Degree and falsifying business records and was sentenced to one-year in-patient treatment for her myriad psychological issues, which she violated and ultimately received one year in jail.
  • Lead counsel in case where defendant, a NYC Administrative Law Judge, wanted to get his partner’s attention and decided to attempt to commit suicide. Defendant taped all the doors and windows of his 12th floor Stuyvesant Town apartment, turned on all of the burners on his gas stove, extinguished the pilot lights, and lay down on the kitchen floor with a pillow and blanket to wait for the gas to poison him. The defendant waited six to eight hours with the gas pouring into his apartment until his refrigerator motor circulated and a massive explosion ensued. Air conditioners were thrown like projectiles onto the ground, showers of glass rained to the ground and the ceiling, and the floors of the apartment collapsed. Defendant’s downstairs and next-door neighbors fled with the clothes on their backs. After a bench trial, defendant was convicted of the sole count of the indictment, Reckless Endangerment in the First Degree, and ordered to pay restitution for the millions of dollars of damage he caused.
  • Lead counsel in cases where defendant Fleming recruited 16 co-defendants from the Ward’s Island Men’s Shelter and Promesa, a methadone clinic, to steal money from World Trade Center charities. Fleming drove vanloads of the codefendants to relief sites around the city, where they posed as Fleming’s “workers” at a vending table he purportedly operated in front of the World Trade Center. Fleming supplied them with (a) phony W-2s, (b) false employment verification letters, (c) fictitious addresses, and (d) false letters from “landlords” verifying their rent. Each co-defendant received relief monies, averaging approximately $3,000 from Safe Horizon per person, $2,000 from the Robin Hood Foundation, and approximately $5,500 from the American Red Cross. Fleming paid each co-defendant anywhere between $100 and $1,100 and kept the rest, managing ultimately to steal more than $100,000, with over $50,000 stolen from the American Red Cross alone. During opening statements, defendant pleaded guilty to the top count, Grand Larceny in the Second Degree, and was sentenced to six to twelve years in prison.
  • Lead counsel in case where defendant Kendall claimed his 13th son Wilfred, an undocumented Guyanese immigrant, died in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, and fraudulently collected more than $200,000 in World Trade Center disaster relief. In fact, Wilfred Kendall never existed. After a six-week, twenty-five witness jury trial, defendant was convicted of all counts and was sentenced to 11 to 33 years in prison, the longest sentence of any World Trade Center defendant.   
  • Lead counsel in case where defendants, who were tied to organized crime, ran an escort service catering to VIP clients that accepted credit cards. In order to withdraw proceeds from the credit card accounts, defendants wrote checks to fictional film noir detectives and cashed them at corrupt check cashing stores around the city. Defendants pleaded guilty to Money Laundering in the Second Degree, were sentenced to  imprisonment, and paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines and forfeiture.
  • Lead counsel in case for a First Degree Assault conviction for an unprovoked attack on an undercover police officer with a baseball bat. Attack left officer permanently disfigured with loss of use of arm.  
  • Lead counsel in case for a robbery/burglary where victim was deaf and elderly and only lip-read Spanish. After a hung jury, the defendant pleaded guilty, involving imprisonment.
  • Achieved attempted murder conviction in a Domestic Violence case that involved the defendant attacking his wife with the backside of a hammer. His two young daughters witnessed the attack, and one was also hurt.
  • Achieved conviction in a Domestic Violence case that involved the defendant attacking his wife repeatedly.
  • Lead counsel in case where defendant repeatedly beat his wife and violated order of protection. He pleaded to Criminal Contempt trial in New York County and went to prison.
  • Successfully tried the first felony Criminal Contempt trial in New York County. Obtained a top-count conviction in the first felony Domestic Violence trial in New York County without the testimony of the victim.
  • Lead counsel for case where defendant went to trial for sexually abusing a nurse on the subway and was convicted of Sexual Abuse in the Third Degree.
  • Overview

    With nearly 30 years of diverse legal experience, Diana has dedicated her career to ensuring that the law works for her clients. This passion drove her 25-year tenure as a leader in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and continues in her current sports law practice, where she focuses on advising collegiate athletes and athletic organizations in “Name, Image, and Likeness” (NIL) matters.

    Diana’s proven track record of success in the sports law arena includes achieving favorable outcomes both in and out of the courtroom for numerous collegiate athletes, securing them eligibility from the NCAA, achieving success within the transfer portal, and negotiating extraordinary NIL agreements. In addition to her work as a litigator, Diana also maintains an active sports consulting practice, where she advises and manages a basketball league for elite high school students.

    Drawing on her unique skillset, Diana has taken over 60 trials to verdict, including those involving complex, multi-defendant, international corporate crimes; construction investigations, compliance, and defense; and white-collar crime. A true client advocate, Diana’s work on behalf of undocumented construction laborers led to changes in the way wage theft and construction fatalities were prosecuted nationwide. Not only did Diana prosecute these cases, she also spearheaded safety trainings at consulates and work centers throughout New York and authored two bills—Wage Theft and Carlos' Law—that later became New York State Laws. These successes lead to her run for Manhattan District Attorney with the support of over 23 labor unions.

    The conclusion of Diana’s campaign coincided with a sea of change in collegiate athletics, namely the broad legalization of NIL. She recognized the parallels between the undocumented construction workers she represented and these young athletes—both groups were looking to be fairly compensated for their labor, which fuels multi-billion-dollar industries—and transitioned her practice to collegiate athletics as both an attorney and a consultant.

    An alumna of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Diana earned both her J.D. and a B.A. from the institution. She is active in professional and community organizations throughout New York and North Carolina, and she frequently shares her insights in presentations to the legal community, construction industry, community groups, and academia, both locally and abroad. In addition, Diana is a highly sought after legal commentator in print and broadcast media, with recent appearances in MSNBC, Bloomberg, The BBC, CNN, and Business Insider.

    Media Mentions:

  • Representative Matters
    • Sued the NCAA on behalf of a basketball player at Manhattan College, and won a preliminary injunction that granted him immediate eligibility. 
    • Obtained largest wage theft conviction on record of an owner and corporate defendants for stealing $6 million in wages from nearly 500 workers and defrauding the Department of Labor (DOL) out of more than $260,000. In just under six months, have already paid $2 million back to workers.
    • Obtained guilty pleas of owners and company of the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) contractor that defrauded state workers’ compensation insurance fraud fund and $122,000 wage theft of three undocumented day laborers. Restitution fully paid of more than $150,000 within six weeks of the plea. 
    • Supervised case where company committed $1.7 million in wage theft for 300 workers and used alter ego companies to conceal $30 million in payroll. Evaded $7 million in New York State Insurance Fund (NYSIF) premium.  
    • Initiated and supervised case where owner of steel company defrauded six of his workers out of $51,000 in prevailing wages on a Health Product Declaration (HPD) project, Draper Hall, and committed over $3,000 in insurance fraud by underreporting and misclassifying workers. Pleaded to Grand Larceny and paid restitution.
    • Initiated and supervised a manslaughter case where Juan Chonillo plunged 29 floors to his death, and the company committed wage theft and NYSIF fraud for 51 employees.  
    • Initiated and supervised case where owner of company defrauded his workers out of $47,000 in wages.
    • Acted as lead counsel for a case where the owner of superstructure company defrauded his workers out of $500,000 in wages and committed $1,165,615.51 in insurance fraud with NYSIF. After long period of cooperation, defendant paid up-front wage theft monies and was scheduled to make last payment on NYSIF monies and be sentenced to conditional discharge (CD) on felony insurance fraud third degree in April 2020.
    • Obtained a manslaughter conviction after trial in a verdict called a “landmark” in the fight for safer worksites in the NYC construction industry. The case charged two companies and their supervisors with manslaughter and related crimes for sending Carlos Moncayo, an employee, into an unprotected trench at the meatpacking construction site and causing his death when the trench collapsed on him.  
    • Spearheaded an initiative to train workers to recognize workplace safety hazards, identify fraud, and work side by side with the Task Force to proactively report unsafe incidents to law enforcement. Under my leadership, the Construction Fraud Task Force conducted more than 70 presentations across the city for more than 3,000 construction workers.  
    • Led the Site Safety Inspection prosecutions, where nine defendants were indicted for and pleaded guilty to fraudulently conducting safety inspections, falsifying hundreds of safety reports, and leaving more than 40 active construction sites unsupervised. Obtained top count guilty pleas and state prison sentences, obviating the need for a trial. 
    • Led multiple inter-agency prosecutions into Disadvantaged and Minority and Women Owned Business Enterprise fraud, Minority Labor Coalitions, workmen's compensation insurance fraud, and construction safety fraud schemes. Co-authored New York State Grand Jury report into Minority and Women Owned Business Enterprise fraud. 
    • Obtained guilty plea for felony insurance fraud of owner and company of contractor that defrauded state workers’ compensation insurance fraud fund and Union benefit funds.  Restitution fully paid of more than $1.5 million.  
    • Organized a long-term investigation into a group of more than 30 criminals, scattered throughout the five boroughs of NYC and the Caribbean, who stole high-end motorcycles off the streets of New York and trafficked in assault weapons for distribution, both citywide and internationally. After most pleaded guilty, I handled a two-month trial that resulted in top count Enterprise Corruption convictions for the leaders of the ring. The joint investigation with NYPD’s Organized Crime Control Bureau Auto Crimes division and United States Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement resulted in state prison sentences for nearly all members of the ring. I was honored by the Federal Law Enforcement Foundation for my work. 
    • Initiated and led the “Concrete Investigations,” an industry-wide probe into the construction materials testing sector that led to the high-profile convictions of over 20 individuals and companies, including the conviction after trial of Testwell Laboratories and its CEO and Vice-President. The investigations led to city- and state-wide changes to the industry. Managed a team of investigators representing a half-dozen city, state, and bi-state agencies and authorities. Conducted three long-term Grand Jury presentations.
    • Lead counsel in case where defendant Cheryl McEwan, a long-time employee of The Rockefeller Foundation, hatched a scheme to steal over $400,000 from the Foundation’s matching gift program. The matching gift program allowed any contributions an employee made to a charity to be “triple matched” by the Foundation. For a period of three years, McEwan submitted documents to the Foundation indicating that she was making donations to a small charity run by her friend Frank Melli, and the Rockefeller Foundation “triple matched” her contribution. Melli then gave the contribution back to McEwan and split the remaining proceeds with her.  Later, McEwan and her husband created their own charity and cut Melli out of the scam. Anthony McEwan and Frank Melli pleaded guilty pretrial, and Cheryl McEwan was convicted after a jury trial and was sentenced to three-and-a-half to ten-and-a-half years’ incarceration.
    • Lead counsel in case where defendant stole over $150K from 81-year-old Joseph Gossner.  Defendant appeared at his townhouse on 50/Beekman/1st claiming she was a nurse there to check his blood pressure. She befriended him and then claimed she had cancer and needed money for chemotherapy, surgery, and drugs. She went with him to the bank and had him cash checks for just under $10,000, notations on the checks reflect Chemo, Surgery etc.  In late November, defendant duped Gossner into giving a check for $42,000 for surgery but instead used the money to buy a 2006 Hummer. She pleaded guilty to Grand Larceny in the Second Degree and received one to three years’ incarceration.
    • Lead counsel in case where defendant Sandrene Austin was the bookkeeper for Gramercy Tavern, a popular restaurant in the Flatiron area of Manhattan.  Over a three-year period, Austin stole over $270,000 by recording the cash she took as gift certificates. The case relied solely on circumstantial evidence to prove the thefts. Austin was convicted after a jury trial of all counts, including Grand Larceny in the Second Degree, and was sentenced to three-to-nine years’ incarceration.
    • Lead counsel in case where defendant Milliard insured over $250,000 worth of jewelry with a policy that required the jewelry to remain in her bank’s vault except when she obtained permission to remove it. Less than one hour after she obtained permission to remove several items, defendant claimed that she was the victim of a robbery. In fact, Millard lied about the robbery and had sold much of the jewelry the month before. As she pursued the insurance claim, defendant attended society events with movie stars, passed herself off as a Saudi princess, and induced American Express to give her a Centurion card. She used the card to go on a shopping spree and spent more than $500,000. When she was unable to pay the bill, American Express froze the account, but she managed to get it reactivated and spent an additional $490,000 in less than ten days. She later pleaded guilty to Grand Larceny in the Second Degree and falsifying business records and was sentenced to one-year in-patient treatment for her myriad psychological issues, which she violated and ultimately received one year in jail.
    • Lead counsel in case where defendant, a NYC Administrative Law Judge, wanted to get his partner’s attention and decided to attempt to commit suicide. Defendant taped all the doors and windows of his 12th floor Stuyvesant Town apartment, turned on all of the burners on his gas stove, extinguished the pilot lights, and lay down on the kitchen floor with a pillow and blanket to wait for the gas to poison him. The defendant waited six to eight hours with the gas pouring into his apartment until his refrigerator motor circulated and a massive explosion ensued. Air conditioners were thrown like projectiles onto the ground, showers of glass rained to the ground and the ceiling, and the floors of the apartment collapsed. Defendant’s downstairs and next-door neighbors fled with the clothes on their backs. After a bench trial, defendant was convicted of the sole count of the indictment, Reckless Endangerment in the First Degree, and ordered to pay restitution for the millions of dollars of damage he caused.
    • Lead counsel in cases where defendant Fleming recruited 16 co-defendants from the Ward’s Island Men’s Shelter and Promesa, a methadone clinic, to steal money from World Trade Center charities. Fleming drove vanloads of the codefendants to relief sites around the city, where they posed as Fleming’s “workers” at a vending table he purportedly operated in front of the World Trade Center. Fleming supplied them with (a) phony W-2s, (b) false employment verification letters, (c) fictitious addresses, and (d) false letters from “landlords” verifying their rent. Each co-defendant received relief monies, averaging approximately $3,000 from Safe Horizon per person, $2,000 from the Robin Hood Foundation, and approximately $5,500 from the American Red Cross. Fleming paid each co-defendant anywhere between $100 and $1,100 and kept the rest, managing ultimately to steal more than $100,000, with over $50,000 stolen from the American Red Cross alone. During opening statements, defendant pleaded guilty to the top count, Grand Larceny in the Second Degree, and was sentenced to six to twelve years in prison.
    • Lead counsel in case where defendant Kendall claimed his 13th son Wilfred, an undocumented Guyanese immigrant, died in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, and fraudulently collected more than $200,000 in World Trade Center disaster relief. In fact, Wilfred Kendall never existed. After a six-week, twenty-five witness jury trial, defendant was convicted of all counts and was sentenced to 11 to 33 years in prison, the longest sentence of any World Trade Center defendant.   
    • Lead counsel in case where defendants, who were tied to organized crime, ran an escort service catering to VIP clients that accepted credit cards. In order to withdraw proceeds from the credit card accounts, defendants wrote checks to fictional film noir detectives and cashed them at corrupt check cashing stores around the city. Defendants pleaded guilty to Money Laundering in the Second Degree, were sentenced to  imprisonment, and paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines and forfeiture.
    • Lead counsel in case for a First Degree Assault conviction for an unprovoked attack on an undercover police officer with a baseball bat. Attack left officer permanently disfigured with loss of use of arm.  
    • Lead counsel in case for a robbery/burglary where victim was deaf and elderly and only lip-read Spanish. After a hung jury, the defendant pleaded guilty, involving imprisonment.
    • Achieved attempted murder conviction in a Domestic Violence case that involved the defendant attacking his wife with the backside of a hammer. His two young daughters witnessed the attack, and one was also hurt.
    • Achieved conviction in a Domestic Violence case that involved the defendant attacking his wife repeatedly.
    • Lead counsel in case where defendant repeatedly beat his wife and violated order of protection. He pleaded to Criminal Contempt trial in New York County and went to prison.
    • Successfully tried the first felony Criminal Contempt trial in New York County. Obtained a top-count conviction in the first felony Domestic Violence trial in New York County without the testimony of the victim.
    • Lead counsel for case where defendant went to trial for sexually abusing a nurse on the subway and was convicted of Sexual Abuse in the Third Degree.
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