Orange County Business Journal
By Rick Reiff
July 20, 2009

With federal prosecutors in OC taking on Broadcom and Mike Carona, and local defense lawyers jetting around the country on high-profile cases, it’s easy to forget that not so long ago, many considered the county a legal backwater. Former chief Wayne Gross says when he joined the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Santa Ana in the early 1990s, major federal cases here were usually hashed out by prosecutors commuting from L.A. and big-name defense lawyers who flew in, “sort of like what happened in the famous Scopes trial, where Bryan and Darrow traveled from great distances to Tennessee to do battle.” But Gross prosecuted the Katarina Witt stalker case and the UCI fertility scandal, and in 2004 his office exported a team to Houston to help with Enron. Most recently it has handled Broadcom, “the largest (stock) backdating case in this country” and Carona, “the then-most powerful local law enforcement figure.” Gross now is on the other side as a defense lawyer. He’s representing a member of the Keuylian family that ran (.amborghini Orange County- but not Vik Keuylian, who is awaiting sentencing for wire fraud (Mk is being represented by Craig Wilke, a one-time OC public defender.) Gross recently was in Florida on behalf of actor Wesley Snipes, who got sentenced to three years on tax violations…Speaking of sentences, Gross has spent more than a year as Mickadeit’s roommate…HomeAid is celebrating the 20th year of its founding in OC, says cofounder Julie Brinkerhoff-David, of Tustin landscape architect Lifescapes International. OCer and HomeAid CEO Jeff Slavin was recently inducted into the California Building Industry Foundation Hall of Fame. Julie and hubbie Don Jacobs, president of Irvine architectural firm JZMK Partners, were inducted last year.