Rare chance to hear from a formal federal persecutor

I occasionally receive emails from public relations firms that have lawyer clients. In most cases, the email explains the lawyer's expertise and invites me to speak with the lawyer about some subject I have written about here at the blog. The idea, I assume, is that the clients want more media in places such as The Post's website. It's only rarely helpful for me, as I usually write about legal issues that I know relatively well without help from an outside lawyer. But it's pretty harmless.

With that said, an email I received last week struck me as remarkable. It began:

Orin,

I caught your coverage of Marcus Hutchins' arrest for helping to create the "Kronos Banking trojan" malware and selling it on the AlphaBay Market. As you know, he has been charged in a five-count indictment in the Eastern District of Wisconsin and faces a possible lengthy prison sentence.

Would you be interested in talking to XXXX XXXXXXX, a XXXXX XXXXXX Cybersecurity & Data Privacy attorney and formal federal persecutor, on this matter?

I have crossed out the lawyer and firm names just in case the description might be a mistake. But if it isn't a mistake, I wonder, why advertise that? Sure, it's a widely recognized credential to be a former federal prosecutor. But would you really want to boast about being a persecutor? And if you're a persecutor, isn't it cooler to be a low-key informal persecutor than an uptight formal one?

I guess it's still more prestigious, in the legal world, than being a formal state persecutor. But still.