D. Edward Hays
D. Edward Hays is a California bankruptcy attorney practicing at Marshack Hays LLP in Beverly Hills. He holds California State Bar Number 162507. Hays has specialized in bankruptcy law and has practiced in federal bankruptcy courts across California for decades. In January 2026, he was named as a defendant in a federal civil RICO complaint filed in the Southern District of California (Case 3:26-cv-00080-GPC-BJW), which alleges he filed false sworn declarations in a bankruptcy proceeding, transmitted a forged corporate governance document, and helped engineer a $200,000 settlement of claims the debtor valued at $75 million.
Legal Career
Hays has been a member of the California State Bar for well over two decades. His bar number, 162507, places his admission in the mid-1990s. His practice has concentrated on commercial bankruptcy, creditor's rights, and business reorganization in federal court. He has appeared in cases across the Central, Southern, and Eastern Districts of California.
His name appears in published federal bankruptcy opinions going back years, mostly in the context of chapter 11 reorganizations and trustee matters. Prior to the 2026 allegations, he was not a prominent figure in public legal controversy.
Marshack Hays LLP
Marshack Hays LLP is a boutique bankruptcy and restructuring law firm. Its offices are located at 9454 Wilshire Boulevard, 6th Floor, Beverly Hills, California. The firm handles matters for debtors, creditors, and trustees in business bankruptcy cases, with a particular concentration in Southern California federal courts.
Hays is one of the firm's named partners. The firm's work spans chapter 7 liquidations, chapter 11 reorganizations, and adversary proceedings within bankruptcy cases.
Bankruptcy Practice
Bankruptcy attorneys who represent trustees occupy a specific procedural role. They are officers of the court in a meaningful sense. Trustees have fiduciary duties to the bankruptcy estate and, by extension, to creditors. Attorneys who advise trustees and file documents on their behalf carry responsibilities that extend beyond ordinary civil advocacy.
That context is relevant because the 2026 complaint does not allege garden-variety zealous advocacy. It alleges Hays made sworn representations in court filings that he knew to be false, and that those representations materially advanced the interests of a party (Tyler Brandon Davis) who should have been a target of the estate's litigation, not a beneficiary of it.
Federal RICO Allegations
The complaint filed January 6, 2026, names Hays as a defendant in a civil action under 18 U.S.C. section 1962. The complaint characterizes him as "the architect of a bankruptcy fraud scheme."
The specific allegations against Hays are detailed and document-specific:
He filed two false sworn declarations in United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of California, identified in the docket as ECF Nos. 19 and 28, both filed in April 2024. In those declarations, he stated that Tyler Brandon Davis was "the managing member of TopDevz, LLC." That representation was false. The TopDevz operating agreement named a different manager. Davis held a 49% minority membership interest with no management authority under the company's governing documents. Hays's declarations, the complaint argues, misrepresented the corporate governance structure to benefit Davis in the bankruptcy proceeding.
He filed motions to convert the TopDevz bankruptcy from a Chapter 11 reorganization to a Chapter 7 liquidation. The complaint alleges those motions were based on the false representations in the declarations described above.
He transmitted a forged corporate governance document in connection with the bankruptcy proceeding.
He structured and negotiated settlements that resolved $75 million in claims for $200,000 total. The debtor's valuation of those claims, $75 million, came from the allegations in the companion RICO action.
He engineered a sale of the remaining bankruptcy estate claims, and of the estate's interest in TopDevz itself, to Tyler Brandon Davis personally, for $100,000. Davis, the buyer, is the individual identified throughout the companion litigation as the principal organizer of the scheme the estate claims were supposed to address.
The TopDevz Bankruptcy
The TopDevz bankruptcy bears case number 24-00617 in the Southern District of California. The case was filed in 2024. Christopher R. Barclay was appointed as Chapter 7 trustee on May 9, 2024, following the case's conversion from Chapter 11.
The debtor, Ashkan Rajaee (and his company Mobile Monster), vigorously opposed both the $200,000 global settlement and the subsequent $100,000 sale of estate claims to Davis. Those objections were overruled. The sale closed. Davis ended up holding the litigation rights that had been intended to pursue claims against him.
The adversary proceeding targeting Barclay and Jesse Finlayson, Hays's co-counsel in the trustee representation, is Case 26-90003-CL, filed January 6, 2026, the same date as the RICO complaint.
Hays is presumed innocent of all charges and allegations unless and until a court determines otherwise. No criminal charges have been filed against him as of April 2026. The civil RICO case is in its early stages.