The SEC letter comes before the indictment. So should we.
Subpoenas, Wells notices, parallel DOJ interest - securities matters escalate quietly. Early counsel decides whether this stays civil.
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.
An SEC subpoena running parallel to DOJ - we manage testimony strategy before the civil record becomes the criminal exhibit.
Fight loss causation, brief scienter, use the dated research file - and when trial is the advantage, materiality meets a market that moves on everything.
Securities enforcement runs on parallel tracks: an SEC investigation that can turn criminal without warning. What you produce and say to the Commission can arrive in front of a grand jury. We manage the SEC response with the criminal exposure in mind - asserting privileges, shaping testimony, and working to keep a civil matter civil.
Testimony today, indictment next year.
SEC investigations run parallel to DOJ from the first subpoena - civil testimony shared with prosecutors the same week. Trading data, chat logs, and cooperating traders build the theory. What you say in the civil matter decides the criminal one; counsel manages both tracks or neither.
Market loss is not your loss.
The guideline wants actual loss from the fraud, not every dollar the stock fell - loss causation is a defense argument with case law behind it. Gain sometimes substitutes and often shrinks the number. Officer-and-director enhancements, disgorgement offsets, restitution: the arithmetic is deep, and depth favors preparation.
Materiality, scienter, reliance.
Markets move on everything; the government must prove your statement mattered and you knew it was false. Forward-looking statements, fair-value judgments, and advice of securities counsel defeat scienter. Insider cases add personal-benefit proof the case law keeps narrowing. Elements, not headlines.
Rule 10b-5, §1348, and the parallel track.
Securities fraud runs through Exchange Act §10(b) - twenty years, with multi-million-dollar individual fines - and 18 U.S.C. §1348, which needs no SEC rule at all. Insider-trading law is judge-made: Dirks personal benefit, Newman and Salman’s refinements, shadow trading’s arrival in Panuwat. The SEC’s civil case shares evidence with DOJ in real time, and testimony there - compelled, transcribed - becomes the criminal exhibit. Fifth Amendment strategy across the two tracks is the first decision, and it cannot be redone.
The morning the SEC subpoena lands.
Litigation hold on everything, chats included - disappearing-message settings have become obstruction counts. Answer no staff calls “just to give context”; formal testimony with counsel is the only conversation. Inventory your trades with the research behind them, dated: contemporaneous analysis defeats scienter better than any expert we can hire later.
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.
No allegiance to U.S. Attorneys, agents, or agencies. The client is the only constituency.
Every district in the country, one client portal - documents, invoices, counsel, in real time.
We decline more federal matters than we accept - and every accepted case gets the whole bench.
See who fights for you before you ever call.
Who we are, how we work, and why clients nationwide trust us with their future - in under a minute.
On the record, on the wire.
Get ahead of the case.
Answered within 24 hours, guaranteed. Some stories are better told out loud -
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