Theodore “Ted” Poulos has over 35 years of experience as a trial lawyer, focusing his practice on federal white-collar criminal defense matters and complex business litigation. He has tried dozens of criminal and civil cases in federal and state courts around the country. A former Assistant United States Attorney, Mr. Poulos brings impeccable, seasoned judgment and investigative skills to each client, enabling him to identify the key issues, uncover and recognize the import and effect of each piece of evidence, and to properly assess the strengths and weaknesses of any case, civil or criminal, regardless of its complexity.
He has guided well over 100 clients through the harrowing experience of a federal criminal prosecution and hundreds more involved in criminal investigations. Mr. Poulos knows what is possible, and just as importantly, what is not. He has a well-established record of achieving the best possible results for his clients.
Mr. Poulos is a Fellow in the American College of Trial Lawyers, an honor granted by invitation only, and only to the most highly qualified trial lawyers—representing less than one percent of the profession in the United States and Canada. For many years Mr. Poulos has been recognized in numerous publications, such as Chambers & Partners, Super Lawyers and many others, as one of the most highly skilled and highly regarded white-collar criminal defense attorneys in the Midwest. In June 2025, Forbes named Mr. Poulos the best lawyer in Illinois for white-collar defense. And for nearly three decades, his peers have given Mr. Poulos an AV rating in Martindale-Hubble, the highest rating possible.
Mr. Poulos handles all aspects of federal and state criminal prosecutions, representing witnesses, targets, and defendants from the investigative phase through trial, and, if necessary, sentencing and appeals. While his primary focus is the representation of individuals, Mr. Poulos also has extensive experience counseling corporations and closely-held businesses, municipalities, and labor unions and assisting in-house counsel and management in conducting internal investigations and responding to governmental investigations.
Mr. Poulos’s clients have included companies in a wide variety of industries. His clients have included high-level corporate executives in banking, healthcare, construction, the auto industry, aerospace, debt collection, pharmaceuticals, construction, lobbying, physicians, lawyers, small and mid-size businesses and their owners, labor leaders and unions, and public officials, among others, in investigations and prosecutions concerning public corruption, securities fraud, bank fraud, mail and wire fraud, the Medicare/Medicaid Anti-Kickback Statute and health care fraud, defense contractor fraud, environmental offenses, price fixing and bid rigging, perjury, bribery and tax offenses.
Mr. Poulos’s success and reputation has led clients—whether witnesses, subjects, targets or defendants—to count on Ted to represent and guide them in almost every major high-profile case in Chicago over the past twenty-five years, including in investigations and prosecutions relating to former Illinois Governors George Ryan and Rod Blagojevich, the former Speaker of the House of Representatives Michael Madigan, the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Outcome Health, the prosecutions of executives and physicians at Sacred Heart Hospital, the collapse of Sentinel Management Group, the former CFO of Boeing, and numerous public and corporate officials.
Mr. Poulos has obtained acquittals and/or dismissal of charges in numerous trials involving charges of financial fraud, healthcare fraud, bribery of public officials, bid rigging and price fixing in the dairy industry and in connection with government contracts, and alleged violations of the Medicare Anti-Kickback statute. In U.S. v. Novak, et al., for example, Mr. Poulos defended a physician with contracts at Sacred Heart Hospital who was charged under the Anti-kickback statute. Mr. Poulos effectively demonstrated at trial that the doctor never referred patients to the hospital in exchange for payments under any contracts, obtaining a not guilty verdict on all counts. As reported by the Chicago Tribune, Mr. Poulos's victory was the only setback in the government's prosecution of doctors and hospital administrators from Sacred Heart Hospital.
In 2014, Mr. Poulos represented the lead defendant in the trial of a case the U.S. Attorney’s Office described as the largest financial fraud ever indicted in the Northern District of Illinois. In 2017, he represented at trial the lead defendant in a case charged as part of the largest health care fraud takedowns in the country. In 2023, he represented the former CFO of Outcome Health in the trial of what the government claimed was a $1 billion corporate fraud scheme.
Mr. Poulos has also represented and defended clients involved in investigations and enforcement actions before the SEC and CFTC, as well as the FDA and FCC. In addition, he represented law firms and attorneys in matters before the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission.
Prior to joining the Cotsirilos Firm, Mr. Poulos served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois from 1987 to 1992. He is one of a few attorneys ever to be hired by the U.S. Attorney’s Office directly out of law school. Mr. Poulos immediately distinguished himself as a federal prosecutor, earning several Special Achievement Awards from the U.S. Attorney and also being honored with the Department of Justice Director's Award for Superior Service as an Assistant U.S. Attorney.