In January of this year I retired from the Erie County District Attorney’s Office after working there for 28 years. Almost all of that time (26 years) was spent as a white collar prosecutor – the last 14 of which I was the bureau chief in charge of all white collar prosecutions within the Erie County DA’s Office.
AWARDS:
Award for Dedicated Service to Law Enforcement and Crime Prevention, Erie County Law Enforcement Foundation, 2014
Award for Civility and Integrity, Erie County Bar Association, 2015
Here’s more information on my career, courtesy of an article in The Buffalo News:
Prosecutor Doscher retires after 26 years with Erie County Financial Crimes Bureau
By James Staas | News Staff Reporter | January 1st, 2015
In his more than 25 years with the Erie County District Attorney’s Office, Assistant District Attorney John C. Doscher has prosecuted more than 1,000 cases, mostly white-collar crimes.
He has obtained theft convictions against nearly 60 government employees and people who handled government funds, as well as 24 people who embezzled money from church and religious organizations, and 20 lawyers who took money from clients.
The 62-year-old prosecutor retired Wednesday after 26 years with the DA’s Financial Crimes Bureau, including the last 14 years as bureau chief.
He said the job gave him an opportunity to do two important things at once: “Earn my daily bread in an honest way and serve God by keeping innocent people safe.”
Doscher’s most memorable case?
He cites his prosecution of Anthony Franjoine, a former comptroller for the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo who pleaded guilty in 1991 to stealing $1.5 million from the diocese over an eight-year period.
Franjoine returned $1 million and was sentenced to 32 months to eight years in prison.
That was one of eight convictions involving thefts of more than $1 million that the Financial Crimes Bureau has obtained since 1991.
Doscher, a Nassau County native who received his law degree from the University at Buffalo Law School in 1977, started his legal career with the Suffolk County Legal Aid Society, working primarily in Family Court, followed by two years in Mexico helping to provide food, clothing and medicine to the poor in Tijuana.
He then worked for 3½ years as a prosecutor with the Queens County District Attorney’s Office.
He joined the Erie County DA’s Office in 1986, after marrying a Buffalo woman, the former Greta Hummel, whom he met in Mexico while both were working there as volunteers with a church group helping the poor. He became part of the Financial Crimes Bureau in 1988 and took over as bureau chief on Jan. 1, 2001.
He has worked under four district attorneys here: Richard J. Arcara, Kevin Dillon, Frank Clark and Frank A. Sedita III.
During that time, Sedita said, Doscher “established himself as one of the top financial crimes prosecutors in New York.”
Sedita said Doscher has been instrumental “in recovering millions of dollars for local companies, not-for-profit organizations and the vulnerable victims of numerous schemes and dreams by local financial crime defendants.”
Doscher’s plans for retirement start with his alarm clock. “The first thing I’m going to do is turn it off,” he said.
Doscher, a foreign language hobbyist who learned German and Spanish in school and taught himself Italian and French, said he would like to learn more languages and may go back to school for that. He also would like to teach law.