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29 Sep 25

Chicago White Collar Crime Federal Criminal Defense Lawyer

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Last Updated on: 30th September 2025, 09:48 pm




Chicago White Collar Crime Federal Lawyer | Spodek Law Group


Chicago White Collar Crime Federal Lawyer

If you’re on our website, it’s because you’re staring down a federal white collar case that could change the rest of your life – and you want the best lawyer to protect you. Let’s be candid: there’s no sugar coating what you’re up against. At Spodek Law Group, we know the criminal justice system in Chicago federal court is brutal when it comes to white collar defendants. Your name, your family, your business – all of it is on the line. We’ve been doing this for decades, and we’ve seen careers, reputations, even marriages, destroyed by a single indictment. And we’ve also saved people from disaster when everyone else thought it was hopeless.

Here in Chicago, federal prosecutors from the Northern District of Illinois are filing new indictments literally every week. IRS-CI agents knocking on doors about tax fraud, FBI task forces targeting investment schemes, HHS-OIG running investigations into healthcare billing, SEC filing parallel cases for securities fraud. These aren’t far away, they’re happening just a few blocks across from the Dirksen Federal Courthouse. This isn’t hype – it’s the daily reality of federal criminal defense. So if you think prosecutors are going to give you a break out of sympathy, you’re dreaming. What they want are convictions, headlines, and numbers they can brag about back to Washington.

What Are Federal White Collar Crime Charges?

White collar basically means financial allegations, but under federal statutes it covers an enormous universe of conduct. Wire Fraud (18 U.S.C. § 1343). Mail Fraud (18 U.S.C. § 1341). Healthcare Fraud (18 U.S.C. § 1347). Conspiracy to Commit Fraud (18 U.S.C. § 1349). Bank Fraud (18 U.S.C. § 1344). Securities Fraud, which federal prosecutors often charge under 15 U.S.C. § 78j. False Statements to Federal Agents (18 U.S.C. § 1001). Embezzlement of government funds (18 U.S.C. § 641). The list is endless.

Why federal? Because the government claims jurisdiction anytime something touches interstate commerce, emails cross state lines, money flows through federally insured banks, or when defrauding federal programs like Medicare. Once those words are in play – interstate, bank, federal program – you’re no longer in local Cook County court, you’re in the Northern District where Assistant U.S. Attorneys have endless resources, FBI, IRS, HHS at their disposal, and the U.S. Code at their back.

Common Federal White Collar Crimes Prosecuted in Chicago

  • Healthcare Fraud: Medicare billing, Medicaid kickbacks, physician upcoding. A lot of Chicago investigations originate from whistleblowers inside medical practices, then expand into sprawling HHS-OIG audits and charges in federal court.
  • Wire Fraud / Mail Fraud: These statutes are catch-alls – one email, one text message, one bank transfer, and suddenly it’s wire fraud. Prosecutors use these statutes because they’re flexible and easy to prove to juries in Chicago.
  • PPP Loan Fraud: From 2020 on, PPP indictments haven’t slowed down. Business owners in Illinois accused of lying about payroll, inflating numbers, or pocketing funds for personal use have all ended up in the Dirksen Courthouse in front of a federal judge.
  • Bank Fraud and Securities Fraud: Insider trading investigations, Ponzi-like investment scams, fraudulent mortgage paperwork – Chicago has seen it all, with SEC and FBI often running joint operations.
  • Government Contract Fraud: Lying to secure federal contracts, submitting false invoices, paying bribes. These cases often tie into Defense Department work or infrastructure projects in Illinois, and prosecutors treat them like serious corruption cases.

How Do Federal White Collar Crime Cases Work?

Look, here’s the difficult thing: you might not even realize you’re in trouble until it’s already too late. These aren’t state police officers giving you a speeding ticket. These are FBI agents with sealed indictments, search warrants, and wiretaps. The investigations go on quietly for months—sometimes even years—while agents pull thousands of your emails, bank records, witness interviews. You don’t get the benefit of the doubt. You get blindsided.

We have seen countless Chicago cases start with a “simple subpoena” and end with 20 agents raiding an office at 6 AM. And once the grand jury hands down even a single count indictment, the machine starts rolling: discovery is massive, motion practice is lengthy, and the government uses the federal sentencing guidelines to box you into harsh exposure. Offense levels calculated based on “loss amounts,” “sophisticated means,” “abuse of trust”—all enhancements built to stack time. Judges in the Northern District of Illinois apply these rules without hesitation. You have to know how they work if you want to survive inside this system.

Penalties and Sentencing in Federal White Collar Crimes

The penalties are crushing. Restitution orders in millions. Asset forfeitures. Mandatory fines. Prison sentences that might start at a few months if you’re lucky—or decades if you’re accused of running a multi-million dollar fraud conspiracy. And even when prison isn’t ordered, restitution hangs over you forever, you can’t get a professional license back, you lose the ability to work in your industry. You’ll spend years rebuilding.

I’ll be straight with you about white collar crime cases: the law is stacked against defendants. Judges don’t like people accused of defrauding others financially, especially when the “victims” are elderly, or when it’s tax dollars out of Medicare. That’s how the narrative gets told. And prosecutors don’t care if you had good intentions—they argue “loss” and that’s all they need. We’ve handled white collar crime cases that dragged on for years with billions of records… look, the point is we win even when nobody believes it’s possible.

One example: everyone knows Todd Spodek was the lawyer in the Anna Delvey case, immortalized on Netflix. The reality wasn’t glamour. It was years of navigating fraud accusations, negotiating with prosecutors, cross-examining witnesses, dissecting hotel ledgers and financial statements line by line. That’s what Chicago defendants face every day—in healthcare cases, PPP investigations, wire fraud trials. The risk feels overwhelming because it is. But we’ve been there before, and we know how to pull cases out of the fire.

Why You Need a Specialized Federal White Collar Crime Attorney in Chicago

Not every lawyer belongs in federal court. A lawyer who spends his week in state court on DUI cases doesn’t suddenly morph into a white collar federal defense expert. Federal criminal law has its own rules, deadlines, procedures, and culture. You need a lawyer who lives and breathes inside the Dirksen Federal Building, who knows how the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Chicago operates, how the jury pool here sees executives and business owners, and what each judge in the Northern District tends to do at sentencing.

We’ve built relationships here. We’ve stood in front of Judge Leinenweber, Judge Kendall, Judge Tharp, Judge Coleman, argued motions, fought government evidence, survived multi-week fraud trials. When prosecutors bring IRS-CI agents to the stand, we know how to cross-examine them. When the FBI’s forensic accountants dump spreadsheets of “suspicious transactions,” we know how to challenge the math. And when the government plays recordings of your emails, we humanize you to jurors who might otherwise see only numbers on a page. That’s the job. And that’s what we do every single day.

Frequently Asked Client Concerns in Chicago White Collar Cases

How much does a federal white collar crime lawyer cost in Chicago?

There isn’t a single flat answer. Some lawyers oversimplify it. The truth is this: cases differ. A single-defendant tax case under 26 U.S.C. § 7201 is not the same thing as a multi-defendant healthcare fraud with 50 boxes of documents. Trial preparation takes enormous resources. Negotiating a plea requires deep guidelines knowledge. Our fees reflect the workload, but every dollar is an investment in your protection. Honestly, the cost of hiring someone inexperienced, or just the the wrong team, is always higher than the cost of trusting professionals like us.

Can I avoid prison in a Chicago federal white collar case?

Sometimes yes, sometimes no, that’s the plain truth. We’ve had clients walk out with probation, home confinement, community service. We’ve also had clients facing mandatory minimums we couldn’t completely get rid of but we still cut the guideline sentence down dramatically. Everything depends on timing, mitigation, negotiation, whether cooperation is possible, and the federal statutes at issue. But if anyone promises you “no jail time” before even seeing discovery – run, because that’s a lie. We fight to keep clients out, but we’re honest about exposure.

What if I’m only under investigation?

This is the critical stage when a defense attorney makes the biggest impact. If you’ve just heard from FBI, IRS-CI, or HHS-OIG, or if you’ve received a “target letter” from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, pick up the phone now. Early intervention is where cases get stopped before indictments. Sometimes we meet with prosecutors to explain why an indictment shouldn’t issue; sometimes we use that time to negotiate narrow cooperation or immunity. Waiting until after indictment takes away half your leverage.

Why Spodek Law Group? Our Federal White Collar Crime Defense Approach

Spodek Law Group is not a factory law firm. We don’t churn cases. We build them. Our loyalty is only to our client. We have a rock star team with more than 50 years of combined experience in state and federal court. The cases we get called on are usually the ugliest – the unwinnable ones. And yet time and again, we’ve delivered results other lawyers couldn’t even dream of. We fight tooth and nail, and when people come to us saying “it’s over,” well, it’s not over.

Our approach is customized. If we have to dissect millions of financial transactions line by line to prove loss numbers are inflated, we do it. If the key is expert forensic accounting testimony, we find the right expert. If the strategy is humanizing our client before Judge Durkin, showing the family members, the reality behind the headlines—then we focus there. A federal white collar defense isn’t a one-script game. Every detail counts, every strategy matters.

Todd Spodek knows this better than anyone—his work in the Anna Delvey trial got Netflix attention, but behind the drama, the real skill was in narrating a story for the jury when the government had all the numbers, the paper, the “hard evidence.” That same tenacity, that skill of shifting the narrative, is what we bring to Chicago federal defendants accused of PPP fraud, embezzlement, investment fraud, or health care fraud. We negotiate when it benefits our clients, we litigate fiercely when we have to, and when it’s time for trial, we don’t blink.

If you’re facing a federal white collar case in Chicago – or if you even think agents might be circling – pick up the phone. Don’t wait until indictment. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking “if I stay quiet, maybe it disappears.” It won’t. You need to hire a law firm that gets it, that lives the culture of federal courtrooms, that knows the Northern District prosecutors and understands how to dismantle federal statutes applied against you. Protect your freedom, protect your future, contact Spodek Law Group today and let’s get to work.

Contact Spodek Law Group now. Protect your life, your career, everything at stake—before the government takes it away.