Guilt by agreement still has to be proven.
Conspiracy is the government’s broadest charge - one agreement, and everyone in the room owns everyone else’s conduct. The defense is to shrink the agreement down to the truth.
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.
Conspiracy counts let prosecutors charge the group and sort it out later - your exposure can rest on things other people did. But an agreement must be proven, and mere presence or association is not a crime. We separate you from the conduct of others, attack the cooperators the case is built on, and cut the conspiracy down to what the evidence actually shows.
One phone call is enough to be charged.
§846 and §371 let the government charge the network and sort it out later - your name lands in a caption because a cooperator said it belonged there. Wiretaps, pole cameras, and proffer-room testimony build the “agreement”; overt acts get inferred from ordinary life. The defense starts by shrinking the conspiracy to what you actually touched.
Charged with the network, sentenced for it too.
Conspiracy sentencing runs on relevant conduct: the government wants you to wear every co-conspirator’s drugs, dollars, and decisions. Foreseeability is the brake - what was actually within the scope of what you agreed to. We litigate scope at every stage, because it is the difference between a role and a decade.
Agreement, not association.
Knowing people who committed crimes is not a crime. The government must prove you joined the agreement - mere presence, buyer-seller relationships, and parallel conduct all fail that test. Withdrawal, variance between the charged conspiracy and the proof, and cooperator cross-examination end these cases.
Five years, or the object’s own maximum.
§371 conspiracy caps at five years - but drug conspiracies under §846 and fraud conspiracies under §1349 carry the full penalty of the object offense, mandatory minimums included. Pinkerton liability adds co-conspirators’ substantive crimes to your exposure if they were foreseeable. The government need not prove you knew every member or detail - only agreement and, under §371, a single overt act by anyone. That breadth is why conspiracy appears in four of five federal indictments.
When you learn a grand jury is asking about your circle.
Assume your calls and messages are already collected; write nothing new about the matter to anyone. Do not compare stories with friends - those conversations become obstruction counts or fresh overt acts. A proffer, if ever, comes after counsel maps who has flipped and what the government still lacks; walking in early to “clear things up” is how witnesses become defendants.
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.
A caption with your name and twelve others - we engage prosecutors on scope before the government’s story hardens, and fight release while it is still soft.
Sever the trial, shrink the agreement, cross the cooperators - and if trial is the advantage, mere association acquits.
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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