The oldest count in the prosecutor’s book - and still the broadest.
Since 1872, mail fraud has been the government’s catch-all: any scheme, any envelope, any courier. Section 1341 carries twenty years - and the same soft spots every fraud theory carries: intent, materiality, loss.
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.
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.
Postal inspectors and a years-old file - we engage before the mailing counts multiply into leverage.
Attack “in furtherance,” contest the loss, group the counts - and if trial is the advantage, Schmuck gets argued to twelve people.
Mail fraud under 18 U.S.C. § 1341 requires a scheme to defraud and a mailing in furtherance of it - and the mailing can be as trivial as an invoice or a policy statement. That elasticity is why the count appears in almost every white collar indictment, and why it gets over-charged. Over-charged counts can be beaten: on intent, on materiality, and on what the mails actually furthered.
What the government must actually prove.
A knowing scheme to defraud. Specific intent to deceive. A material misrepresentation. A use of the mails in furtherance of the scheme. A business that failed is not a scheme; an aggressive pitch is not a lie. The distance between a bad outcome and a criminal intent is where these cases are won - and we make the jury walk every step of it.
The honest-services trap.
Section 1346 stretches mail fraud to “honest services” - bribery and kickback theories aimed at employees, fiduciaries, and officials. The Supreme Court keeps cutting the theory back; prosecutors keep stretching it past the case law. When the government’s theory outruns the statute, the remedy is not argument at trial - it is a motion to dismiss, filed early.
Exposure - and how it moves.
Twenty years per count, thirty when a financial institution is touched. But guidelines exposure is arithmetic, and arithmetic can be contested: loss amounts, victim counts, sophisticated-means and role enhancements all move. Engaged before charging, counsel shapes the loss narrative before the government writes it down. Engaged after, we attack it line by line.
§1341’s reach - and its limits.
Twenty years per mailing, thirty against banks or in declared disasters - and “mailing” has included FedEx and UPS since 1994. Each use of the mails is a separate count, but Schmuck requires the mailing be incident to an essential part of the scheme; routine, post-fraud paperwork has acquitted defendants. Honest-services theories after Skilling need bribes or kickbacks, full stop. The count is old, elastic, and beatable at its elements.
Reading your indictment like we do.
List every charged mailing and ask what each actually furthered - counts fall when the letter came after the money moved. Match the loss allegations against your own records before the presentence report fixes a number. And note who mailed what: third-party and victim-initiated mailings raise “in furtherance” problems prosecutors prefer juries never parse.
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.
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.
Why this firm.
Five decades of federal courtrooms. Whatever the government has charged, this firm has defended it before.
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We decline more federal matters than we accept - and every accepted case gets the whole bench.
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