John N. Kane Jr.

John N. Kane Jr. is the Chief of the Tax Section in the National Fraud Enforcement Division, where he oversees the Department’s criminal tax enforcement program. John previously served as the Chief of the Criminal Division’s Tax Section beginning in late 2025 when the criminal portfolio of the Tax Division transitioned into the Criminal Division.  

John served approximately twenty years in the Tax Division, first as a Trial Attorney and later as an Assistant Chief and then Chief in the Division’s Northern Criminal Enforcement Section. There he successfully prosecuted and tried a variety of tax and related financial fraud cases, including complicated tax fraud promotions, multi-defendant tax fraud conspiracies, offshore abusive trusts, as well as Ponzi and investor fraud schemes and money laundering offenses. While litigating cases, John also worked extensively on training and policy matters.  

In his two decades at the Tax Division he counseled and advised Division attorneys, law enforcement agents, and Assistant U.S. Attorneys on a variety of criminal tax and related financial fraud matters. John has received numerous awards over the years, and for his leadership in quickly transforming, at the outset of the Covid-19 pandemic, the national criminal tax referral process to an electronic-based system that allowed continuity of tax enforcement, he earned the Assistant Attorney General’s Award for Innovation.

Prior to the Tax Division, John joined the Department in 1999, serving in the Civil Division, Commercial Litigation Branch, where he tried and litigated multiple complex cases in defending the United States against billion-dollar damage claims by banks who filed suit against the Government for breach of contracts arising out of the savings and loan crisis.

Before joining the Department, John worked as an antitrust litigation associate at a law firm in Washington, D.C., and clerked for the Honorable J. Frederick Motz, then Chief Judge for the U.S. District of Maryland. He received his BA in economics from Holy Cross, his J.D. summa cum laude from Syracuse University College of Law, and a master’s in public administration from Syracuse’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.