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Mike Lynch's fraud trial lawyer Christopher Morvillo appears in haunting video just a week before yacht tragedy
In a haunting interview just a week before the Bayesian yacht tragedy, the American lawyer who worked tirelessly to get the 'British Bill Gates' Mike Lynch acquitted of fraud charges talked about devoting his career to the case.
Chris Morvillo, a former prosecutor and eminent attorney at Clifford Chance, spoke with lawyer and podcast host David Markus in an interview released days before a freak storm hit Lynch's yacht as they celebrated the acquittal.
Describing Lynch's fraud case, Morvillo admitted it had been 'a constant presence in my life in the last 12 years.'
Morvillo also revealed the legal sleight of hand that he employed to secure Lynch's acquittal in the 'complex' case, and how prosecutors made an apparent error that allowed him to use his decades of experience against them.
Chris Morvillo (left) spoke with attorney and podcast host David Markus just a week before his disappearance, where he delved into the Mike Lynch fraud trail that he said a significant portion of the rest of my life'
Morvillo was a leading attorney who won acquittal for British billionaire Mike Lynch earlier this year, and was on Lynch's yacht when it sank this week, leaving them both and four others missing
Following news of Morvillo's disappearance in the yacht tragedy on Monday, Markus told DailyMail.com that he had 'just gotten to know Chris, and I'm shaken and heartbroken by the news.'
'I know all of us in the criminal defense bar are thinking of him and his family right now,' Markus said. 'Chris was an amazing guy –– smart, charming, engaging. This is all so awful and sad.'
Lynch was accused by California prosecutors of fraudulently inflating the value of his company, Autonomy, when it was sold to Hewlett-Packard.
In his interview with Markus, Morvillo revealed that he was initially surprised to find himself on the billionaire's legal team, and said he was hired just minutes after he inquired with his own firm about taking a role in the fraud case after seeing it in the news cycle in 2012.
'I sent a note to the head of our litigation group in England saying, 'I just saw this, is there anything that we can do to help on either side', just looking for an in,' Morvillo said.
'He wrote back about 15 minutes later saying we'd just been hired.'
Morvillo said after flying to London to meet with Lynch, the wide-ranging fraud case rapidly took over his day-to-day life at his law firm.
'I spent a significant portion of the rest of my life bouncing back and forth between London and New York,' he continued. 'It covered one-third of my career.'
Morvillo's daughters Sophie and Sabrina were due to meet up with him in Italy
Morvillo (pictured with his wife Neda in 2018, who also disappeared in the yacht tragedy) said this month that the Lynch trial had been 'a constant presence in my life in the last 12 years'
The family's palatial Connecticut home
Morvillo said the case against Lynch was particularly complicated, as it wound through the US legal system for over a decade before the trial began earlier this year.
He said prosecutors essentially brought 'two separate cases' against Lynch and his co-defendant, Stephen Chamberlain.
'The proof against Mr. Chamberlain and Mike was almost unrelated,' he said. 'So, there were really two trials going on separately.
'And that just made it to be a confusing gloop of evidence that came in, and we were never really sure which defendant it was pointed at.'
While this made the trial admittedly complex, Morvillo - a former assistant US Attorney for the Southern District of New York - said the wide-ranging nature of the case was what allowed him to secure Lynch's acquittal.
'It gave us innumerable opportunities to say to the witnesses and in front of the jury, 'This had nothing to do with Mike Lynch, you never met Mike Lynch, you never talked to Mike Lynch,'' he recalled.
'The first seven witnesses the government called... had never dealt with or spoken to Mike.'
The legal sleight of hand was one of the main ways that Morvillo said he was able to win Lynch his freedom, which resulted in the billionaire inviting his legal team, as well as his family, on his doomed yacht to Sicily this week.
Mike Lynch's huge Bayesian superyacht (pictured) overturned during a severe thunderstorm on Monday morning
It comes as Italian authorities said divers (pictured Wednesday) found the bodies of two missing passengers aboard the doomed superyacht
It comes as Italian authorities revealed Wednesday that they have found the bodies of two missing passengers aboard the sunken superyacht.
Dive teams made the tragic discovery two days after Mike Lynch's Bayesian sunk after being hit by a 'black swan' storm on Monday morning.
The body of at least one person was brought ashore shortly before 3pm local time, before being placed into a waiting ambulance in the harbor of Porticello.
The remains of the pair, whose names or sex have not yet been revealed, were reportedly found in the hull of the boat behind two mattresses, with claims that one is a 'heavily built man'.
The six guests are Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah, Morgan Stanley boss Jonathan Bloomer, his wife Judy, and Morvillo and his jewelry designer wife Neda.