The Principals
Thomas D. Thacher II
President & Chief Executive Officer
Prior to founding Thacher Associates in 1996, Thomas (Toby) Thacher had more than 20 years experience in both civil and criminal law. Immediately before founding the company, he served as vice president and inspector general of the New York City School Construction Authority. While in that position, he helped bring about fundamental reforms that saved the Authority tens of millions of dollars.
Mr. Thacher also served as the first executive director of the Construction Industry Strike Force (CISF) created by New York Governor Mario Cuomo to investigate and prosecute corruption and racketeering in New York's construction industry. Mr. Thacher and his team of more than 100 attorneys, investigators, accountants and analysts conducted a massive investigation of the industry that resulted in the successful prosecution of scores of significant construction industry operatives and the publication of a seminal study of corruption and racketeering in the construction industry. Prior to his appointment to CISF, Mr. Thacher served as assistant deputy attorney general in the New York State Organized Crime Task Force and assistant district attorney in New York County.
Mr. Thacher is a leading expert in the design of integrity-risk and corruption control programs and in managing investigation of fraud, bribery and corruption. He has lectured and written extensively on these subjects.
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Joseph A. DeLuca
Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer
Just prior to founding Thacher Associates, Mr. DeLuca served as assistant inspector general and chief of operations for the New York City School Construction Authority. The program created by Mr. Thacher and Mr. DeLuca to protect the multi-billion-dollar school construction industry was hailed by the media, the government, and the Kennedy School at Harvard University as a model to be replicated in both the public and private sectors.
Mr. DeLuca also spent ten years as the chief of operations of the Construction Industry Strike Force and as chief of analysis for the New York State Organized Crime Task Force. Prior to that he was a member of the colonel's special staff section of the New Jersey State Police.
Mr. DeLuca is recognized as a leading expert on organized crime and racketeering, with specialized knowledge in the construction and carting industries in New York City. He has lectured around the world on topics of procurement fraud and organized crime.
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Edwin H. Stier was a federal and New Jersey state prosecutor for more than 17 years before entering private practice in 1982. While a prosecutor, he specialized in highly complex white-collar crime, organized crime, and corruption matters. He has served as an assistant U.S. attorney in New Jersey and as chief of the Criminal Division of the U.S. Attorney's Office.
In 1969, as a result of nationally publicized scandals in New Jersey, Mr. Stier was appointed to lead New Jersey's effort to attack organized crime and corruption on a statewide basis. In that position, he organized the first state grand jury in the country and implemented other innovative legislative initiatives, including court-authorized electronic surveillance, moving New Jersey into the forefront of the nation's law enforcement community. In its first six years of operation, that program successfully prosecuted scores of racketeers and corrupt public officials. During his last five years of government service, Mr. Stier served as director of the New Jersey Division of Criminal Justice, the nation's largest and most powerful state-level prosecutorial agency.
After leaving public office, Mr. Stier adapted investigative procedures he developed during his years in government service to non-criminal investigations that require high standards of thoroughness and precision. In early 1983, to implement its commitment to public accountability, GPU Nuclear Corporation retained Mr. Stier to conduct a series of investigations at its Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station. Those investigations formed the basis upon which the Nuclear Regulatory Commission determined it had sufficient confidence in the integrity of GPU to permit the restart of the undamaged reactor at that facility.
Since that time, Mr. Stier has conducted and supervised investigations for businesses throughout the country, both at the helm of his investigative law firm, Stier Anderson, LLC, and, since 2007, with Thacher Associates. The issues covered by those investigations have ranged from potentially criminal conduct by high-level management personnel to regulatory and procedural violations. As a result of his experience, Mr. Stier has been called upon frequently to speak and write about the techniques and procedures for conducting internal corporate investigations and to testify as an expert regarding these matters.
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