After graduating from Duke University in 1993, Mike Zummer served in the Marine Corps as an infantry officer for four years. He then investigated white collar crime as an FBI special agent in New Orleans, Louisiana. In four years, he was the lead agent on cases resulting in twenty-one convictions. Nine of those convictions were from his investigation of a $23,000,000 international fraud and money laundering conspiracy that victimized more than six hundred people, many of whom had lost their life savings. The pleas for help from several of the mostly elderly victims motivated Mike to chase the scam artists overseas, including escorting one defendant back to the U.S. from Azerbaijan to face justice.

Feeling that he could do more with a law degree, Mike left the FBI for Stanford Law School. During his time there, he volunteered to serve a tour in Iraq with the Marines. After graduating from Stanford in 2007, he clerked for a U.S. Court of Appeals judge in New Orleans before returning to the FBI to investigate public corruption for eight years. One case against a sexual predator district attorney changed his life, especially after he decided to report wrongdoing within his own agency and the U.S. Department of Justice. See 'She Just Said She Wanted To Be Believed' - The Appeal. Mike likes to say, “I thought I was good at fighting corruption—until I found it in my own Department. Then I became an expert.”

The FBI retaliated against Mike to conceal its own corruption. See Suspended FBI agent accuses bureau of retaliation, violating his rights in Harry Morel case | Courts | nola.com. However, before trying to silence him, the FBI had selected Mike nine times to teach classes on combating public corruption to investigators, prosecutors, judges, and legislators from eighteen different countries on four continents. Mike’s investigations resulted in ten public corruption convictions including an elected sheriff and an elected district attorney. The agency went so far as to give him a permanent pay raise for his public corruption work and he was honored with two New Orleans Metropolitan Crime Commission Excellence in Law Enforcement awards.

Mike lives in New Orleans, Louisiana.