Scheer, Anthony G.

Tony Scheer is an accomplished and respected trial lawyer who focuses his practice in the areas of criminal defense and whistleblower litigation. He is a Board Certified Specialist in the areas of State and Federal Criminal Law and has handled several high profile cases. These include some notorious violent crimes and the federal prosecution of a prominent member of the Charlotte business community who was acquitted at trial. He represents the accused in courts throughout North Carolina and elsewhere around the United States. Mr. Scheer is also one of only a very few lawyers in North Carolina who maintains an active practice in representing people who blow the whistle on fraud against the Government under the Federal False Claims Act (the FCA).

Professional
Mr. Scheer graduated from Duke University (with honors) in 1979. He owned and managed a water sports store in Durham, North Carolina for several years after college. As a certified scuba instructor, Tony trained several hundred people to dive and led dive expeditions all over the Western Hemisphere. After selling his interest in the store in 1987, he became the first full-time marketing representative for the Divers Alert Network a non-profit which has become the world's leading scuba safety organization. In 1989 at the age of 32, Tony fulfilled a long-time desire and returned to school to study the law.

Tony graduated with honors from the University of North Carolina School of Law in 1992. He was a member of The Law Review and concentrated his studies in the areas of criminal and administrative law. In 1992 and 1993, he was a law clerk in the Federal Courts for the Eastern District of Virginia. There, he gained valuable experience in a wide array of federal law and had the opportunity to see the system from a judge's perspective.

In 1993, Mr. Scheer moved to Charlotte, N.C. and became a prosecutor in the District Attorney's Office. He spent approximately one year handling misdemeanor offenses (from traffic tickets and DWI to domestic assault and gun crimes). After a tour of duty on the felony prosecution team, he spent the final two and a half years of his career as a DA prosecuting exclusively violent felonies such as robbery, rape, and murder.

Mr. Scheer joined the law firm of Rawls & Dickinson in 1997 and became a partner in 2001.  In the early years, Tony handled all crimes from traffic offenses to murder. His criminal practice is now almost exclusively felonies in the State and Federal Courts. He has extensive training and experience in forensic evidence (including DNA, fingerprint, firearms and toolmark identification, blood spatter, forensic accounting, and other disciplines). Mr. Scheer began representing whistleblowers under the FCA in 2003. It is a practice area which is naturally complemented by his federal defense work. In exposing fraud against the Government, his clients have been responsible for the recovery of over two million dollars of the taxpayers' money. In 2011, Mr. Scheer joined Eben Rawls, Mark Foster and Amanda Mingo to form the law firm of Rawls, Scheer, Foster & Mingo, PLLC.

Personal
Mr. Scheer was married in 1998. He and his wife have three boys. In those rare moments when defending people accused of crime (and keeping track of those boys) are not consuming his attentions, he is an avid scuba diver and water sports enthusiast.

Areas of Practice:

Federal Law
State Law
Whistleblower Law

Certification/Specialties:

Board Certified in North Carolina and Federal Criminal Law

Professional Honors:

North Carolina Superlawyers - 2007, 2008, 2009

Business North Carolina Legal Elite - 2009

Bar Admissions:

North Carolina
U.S. District Court Eastern District of North Carolina
U.S. District Court Western District of North Carolina
U.S. District Court Middle District of North Carolina
U.S. Court of Appeals for 4^th Circuit
U.S. Supreme Court
U.S. District Court Southern District of New York (pro hac vice)
U.S. District Court Northern District of Georgia (pro hac vice)
U.S. District Court for District of South Carolina (pro hac vice)

Education:

University of North Carolina School of Law, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1992
Honors: With Honors
Law Review: UNC Law Review, 1992 - 1993

Duke University, 1979
B.A.
Honors: Cum Laude
Major: Biology

Published Works:

"A Search by Any Other Name: Fourth Amendment Implications of a Private Citizen's Actions, 69 N.C.L.Rev. Vol. 6, 1991

Professional Associations and Memberships:

North Carolina Academy of Trial Lawyers, 1997 - Present
Member

National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, 1997 - Present
Member

American Bar Association, 2000 - Present
Member

Mecklenburg County Drug Treatment Court Board, 1997 - Present

Criminal Justice Partnership Advisory Board, 1997 - 2004

Board of Directors of Summit House, 2004 - 2007

Board of Directors of Justice Initiatives, Inc., 2004 - Present

Past Employment Positions:

Honorable Henry C. Morgan, Jr., United States District Judge, Law Clerk
United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia
District Attorney's Office for the 26th Prosecutorial District of North Carolina (Charlotte), Assistant District Attorney, 1993 - 1997
Mecklenburg County Domestic Violence Court, Founding prosecutor