We won a complete acquittal in a $26M laundering trial.
Laundering counts attach to almost any financial case - and multiply the exposure. They also demand proof of knowledge and design that the government often does not have.
Netflix told the story. The defense was ours.
When Shonda Rhimes built Inventing Anna, the defense at its center was Todd Spodek’s - argued for the so-called fake heiress in a Manhattan courtroom long before Arian Moayed of Succession played him on screen. What 320 million hours of viewers watched is the method every client of this firm gets, in every federal district.
The record, dated and sourced.
Money laundering charges turn transactions into narratives: that money moved to conceal its source. The government must prove you knew the funds were criminal proceeds and moved them by design. In a $26 million laundering trial, our defense produced a complete acquittal. The transactions tell a different story when the defense knows how to read them.
They follow the money backwards.
IRS-CI builds laundering cases in reverse: start at a clean asset, walk the transfers back, and call the path concealment. Structuring alerts and SARs seed the file years early. The tracing looks mechanical, but every hop in the chain is an inference - and inferences get cross-examined.
The value of the funds is the range.
§2S1.1 runs on the money moved, not money earned - and the government counts gross flows, double-counts transfers, and calls it value. Untangling the flows cuts brackets. A §1956 conviction adds levels a §1957 plea avoids; the statute of conviction is itself a sentencing argument.
Proceeds, knowledge, design.
The government must prove the funds were criminal proceeds, that you knew, and that the transaction was designed to conceal. Commingled accounts defeat tracing; ordinary banking defeats design; and “proceeds” has limits the case law still polices. Three elements, three defenses.
§1956, §1957, and the ten-thousand-dollar line.
Concealment laundering carries twenty years; §1957’s “spending” offense - any transaction over $10,000 in criminal proceeds - carries ten with no concealment element at all. The guideline adds levels for §1956 convictions and for volume, which is why plea negotiations here are statute-shopping. Cuellar requires proof that concealment was the transaction’s purpose, not merely its effect; Santos still polices “proceeds” against gross receipts. Elements, not vibes.
While accounts are frozen.
Do not move money between accounts to “consolidate” - post-freeze transfers become new counts. Assemble the legitimate-source documentation now: sales records, loans, gifts, inheritances, with dates. Release of untainted funds for living expenses and counsel is a motion we file early under Luis; the government prefers you defended on the budget it left you.
Know who is on the other side.
The first 72 hours decide the next 72 weeks.
No interviews, no consents, no explaining, no deleting. The words said in hour zero are the exhibits at trial. Write down what was asked and by whom - then stop.
Privilege attaches, facts get mapped while memory is fresh, documents get preserved the right way, and nobody in your orbit talks to agents unrepresented again.
We contact the government as your counsel: target, subject, or witness gets confirmed, deadlines get calendared, and the defense - not the investigation - sets the tempo.
How your case unfolds.
THE FULL PROCESS →Risk-free, in person or by phone. Ask anything, for as long as it takes. Strategy starts the same day.
Frozen accounts and a tracing memo - we engage early and move under Luis to free the untainted funds that pay for the fight.
Cross the tracing, brief Cuellar on purpose, shop the statute of conviction - and try knowledge when trial is the advantage.
Todd A. Spodek is a second-generation trial lawyer whose defense of Anna Delvey became Netflix's Inventing Anna. He appears on Fox News and CNN as a legal analyst, authored "My Advice to Diddy" in The Spectator, and is quoted by the Associated Press when the biggest federal cases break. The record behind the profile: a complete acquittal in a $26M money-laundering trial, RICO charges carrying a 10-year minimum dismissed, and 6 months on a $12M Ponzi case.
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Five decades of federal courtrooms. Whatever the government has charged, this firm has defended it before.
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