this illegal service, and the gravity of the illegal conduct." On May 21, 2020, Berman charged Muge Ma, a Chinese national living in New York, with trying to steal $20 million in government-backed Covid relief loans. Ma claimed that he had hundreds of employees; the charges say he employed only himself. Berman said: "Small businesses are facing uncertainty and unprecedented challenges, the least of which should be opportunists attempting to loot the federal funds meant to assist them." On May 22, 2020, Berman announced fraud charges against movie producer William Sadleir, who founded Aviron Pictures. He was charged with siphoning off more than $20 million from his production company and putting more than $14 million of it into his mansion. He is also charged with lying to his investor, a New York-based fund. Berman stated: "Thanks to the dedicated work of our law-enforcement partners at the FBI, Sadleir will be held accountable for his behind-the-scenes misdeeds." On June 12, 2020, Berman announced the unsealing of a complaint against Inigo Philbrick, an art dealer with galleries in London and Miami, charged with defrauding a client of over $20 million. Berman said: "You can't sell more than 100 percent ownership in a single piece of art, which Philbrick allegedly did, among other scams. When his schemes began to unravel, Philbrick allegedly fled the country. Now he is in U.S custody and facing justice." 2020 ouster In June 2020, CNN reported that Trump had been thinking about removing Berman from his position for two years. Under Berman, the SDNY investigated and prosecuted Trump's longtime personal attorney and "fixer" Michael Cohen in 2018. Trump also felt Berman's investigation of his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, was an effort to damage him politically. That investigation of Giuliani's activities in Ukraine became publicly known in October 2019, and later was reported to include a broad range of potential crimes by Giuliani or his associates. In May 2021, the SDNY publicly disclosed in a court filing that in November 2019 it covertly obtained search warrants for Giuliani's iCloud account, and for that of his and Trump's associate, Victoria Toensing, as part of the investigation. In June 2020, the SDNY was also two months from indicting former Trump advisor Steve Bannon on fraud charges relating to fundraising for the Trump wall. In a late-night news release on June 19, 2020, Attorney General William Barr announced that Berman would step