With more than twenty-five years of public and private sector experience, Louis J. Milione returns to Guidepost Solutions as President of Global Investigations and Regulatory Compliance having just served as the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Principal Deputy Administrator from 2021 to 2023. As the DEA’s second in command, Mr. Milione led an agency of more than 10,000 public servants – including 5,000 Special Agents, 800 Intelligence Analysts and 700 Diversion Investigators – who work in DEA’s 334 offices around the globe.
From 2017 until 2021, Mr. Milione served as a Senior Managing Director with Guidepost Solution’s Monitoring, Compliance, and Investigations practice where he conducted sensitive international and domestic investigations and started the company’s Controlled Substances Act (CSA)/Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) DEA compliance practice.
While at Guidepost Solutions, Mr. Milione’s significant engagements included:
- A mining-industry corruption investigation for a publicly traded hedge fund that involved investigative activity in Uganda, the Congo, South Africa, South America, and Europe. Mr. Milione and his team successfully developed, and subsequently delivered critical witnesses and documentary evidence that proved devastating to adverse litigants in the matter.
- The assessment, evaluation, and remediation of the Controlled Substances Monitoring Program for the Nation’s largest privately held full-line wholesale drug distributor.
- An investigation into whistleblower allegations of a hostile work environment and widespread sexual harassment for a Mexico based automotive component manufacturer. Within 24 hours of engagement, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Mr. Milione and his teams deployed to seven regions in Mexico to conduct more than 70 interviews spanning a two-week period, ultimately providing outside counsel and the client sufficient evidence to take appropriate action.
- Locating, developing, and interviewing witnesses in Chad, Uganda, Senegal and elsewhere throughout Africa and Europe for a high-profile client charged in SDNY with FCPA violations.
- The pre-acquisition assessment and post-acquisition remediation of all controlled substances protocols for a publicly traded DEA registered controlled substances reverse distributor.
- A sensitive corruption investigation in Juarez, Mexico for a publicly traded energy company.
- Nationwide investigative activity on behalf of counsel representing a high-profile entrepreneur under investigation by the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Prior to joining Guidepost in 2017, Mr. Milione served for more than 20 years with the DEA overseeing global investigations and ensuring pharmaceutical regulatory compliance. From 2015-2017, he led the DEA’s Diversion Control Division as Assistant Administrator, regulating more than 1.65 million DEA registrants across the entire pharmaceutical supply chain and spearheading DEA’s domestic and international efforts to prevent, detect and investigate the diversion of pharmaceutical controlled substances.
Before leading DEA’s Diversion Control Division, Mr. Milione served as the Assistant Special Agent in Charge (ASAC) of DEA’s Bilateral Investigations Unit (BIU), which is part of DEA’s Special Operations Division. He planned and executed high risk investigations involving multi-tiered criminal networks, high-level transnational criminals, and corrupt foreign officials. For more than a decade, from his selection as a founding member of the BIU in 2002, through his promotion to, and tenure as ASAC, Mr. Milione and his teams operated throughout Africa, Asia, Latin America, Central America, and Europe, spearheading some of the Justice Department’s most sensitive and significant criminal investigations.
Mr. Milione began his DEA career in 1997 as a Special Agent in New York City and received awards throughout his career including the Service to America Justice and Law Enforcement Medal (SAMMIE) for the Viktor Bout investigation; the National Association of Police “Top Cop” award, and the Anti-Defamation League Leon and Marilyn Klinghoffer Memorial Award for the Monzer Al Kassar investigation.
A graduate of Villanova University and the Rutgers School of Law, Mr. Milione is a recognized expert on a broad range of issues, including transnational illicit networks, controlled substances compliance across the pharmaceutical supply chain, narco-terrorism, corruption, illicit financial networks and the global illicit fentanyl supply chain. He has appeared on 60 Minutes, CNN’s Declassified, Vice-HBO, multiple national media outlets, and is featured in Elaine Shannon’s book, “Hunting Leroux.”
