Kleinberg, muted prosecutor with a sharp calculus, dies
NEW YORK — Charles Kleinberg earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mathematics, which may explain why, in nearly 40 years as a federal prosecutor, his examination of hostile witnesses and negotiations with defense lawyers were meticulous and calculating.
Typically, his precision and professorial demeanor would prove to juries and judges, and sometimes even to the opposing lawyers themselves, that the government’s evidence added up perfectly.
Kleinberg died May 22 in a Brooklyn hospital. He was 71. The cause was the new Coronavirus, said his wife, Judith Adams Eschweiler.
“Charley’s trademark approach was prosecuting wrongdoers while simultaneously or subsequently suing the stuffing out of their corporate alter egos,” Richard P. Donoghue, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in an email.
In one case, Kleinberg and several colleagues in the Eastern District reached a $2 billion settlement in 2018 with Barclays Capital, which had been accused of misleading investors in deals backed by overvalued subprime home mortgages. He was also involved in the insider trading investigation of Michael Lohan, the father of actress Lindsay Lohan, and the prosecution of Local 1 of the International Union of Elevator Constructors for racketeering.
Perhaps Kleinberg’s most prominent court appearance came in 2012 in the prosecution of Cecilia Chang, a dean at St. John’s University in Queens, on charges involving fraud and embezzlement.
Chang was accused of exploiting her position to dispense honorary degrees as patronage and to recruit scholarship students from overseas, promising them a free education but then forcing them to clean her seven-bedroom home in Jamaica Estates, Queens, to hand-wash her laundry and to shuttle cases of liquor to her room at the Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut.
Against the advice of her lawyers, she testified in her own defense, which exposed her to hours of withering cross-examination by Kleinberg.
The case ended in a mistrial after Chang killed herself.
Charles Steven Kleinberg was born Dec. 8, 1948, in Brooklyn to Sam Kleinberg, a manager for the S. Klein department store, and Doris (Cohen) Kleinberg.
After graduating from Samuel J. Tilden High School, he earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Brooklyn College in 1969 and a master’s in math as a Woodrow Wilson Fellow at Yale University. But he realized he was more interested in politics and government, so he enrolled in the New York University School of Law and graduated first in his class in 1976.