Inside a $5.7 Billion Antitrust Trainwreck

Keila Ravelo and her husband, Melvin Feliz, were asleep in their prairie-style home in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., three days before Christmas 2014 when 20 federal agents charged through the front door with guns drawn. The show of force met no resistance. Ravelo and Feliz submitted to being handcuffed and were driven away in unmarked government sedans.

Ravelo, 50, had never been arrested before. A partner with the elite New York corporate law firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher, she’d built a successful career as a litigator, primarily representing MasterCard against waves of price-fixing lawsuits filed by retailers. In one credit card case, she helped negotiate a $5.7 billion truce—the largest settlement of an antitrust class action in the world. Earning more than $2 million a year, she favored Hermès handbags and diamond jewelry. She owned a Bentley Continental Flying Spur sedan and sent her teenage sons to a high-priced boarding school in Florida. Feliz, 49, had a varied past that included stints in real estate, paralegal work, and narcotics trafficking.