The guideline is the argument, not the answer.
Most federal cases are won or lost at sentencing. Loss amounts, enhancements, role, mitigation, 5K1.1 - every lever, pulled by counsel who lives in this fight.
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.
The PSR interview, the objection window - we step in before probation’s draft becomes the court’s findings.
Object line by line, brief the variance, build the mitigation record - the range is the government’s opening position, not the judgment.
By the time a federal case reaches sentencing, the real question is the number - and the number moves. Loss calculations get contested, enhancements get defeated, roles get minimized, variances get argued, and cooperation gets valued. Six months on a $12 million Ponzi case is what that work produces. If sentencing is ahead of you, this is the moment counsel matters most.
The verdict is not the sentence.
Between conviction and judgment sits the case that decides your next decade: the presentence report, the guideline calculation, the government’s version of you. Probation interviews you once and writes for the judge. We prepare that interview like testimony and object to the PSR line by line - because unobjected errors become the law of your case.
Move the inputs, move the years.
Every guideline range is a construction: base level, enhancements, criminal history, acceptance. Each input is litigable, and two levels is often years. Then §3553(a) opens the door the table cannot close - history, character, health, family, and the person the file never shows. Six months on a $12 million Ponzi was built exactly this way.
What actually moves judges.
Not adjectives - evidence. Treatment records, employment, restitution paid before it was ordered, letters that say something specific. A mitigation file built over months reads different from one assembled the week before. Start early; the sentence is being written now.
The hearing is built weeks earlier.
Rule 32 gives fourteen days to object to the presentence report - after that, its findings tend to become the court’s. Guideline litigation happens on paper: loss memos, role briefs, criminal-history audits. Booker made the range advisory; Gall and Kimbrough armed judges to vary from it; and the Commission’s recent amendments added two-level relief for zero-point offenders and reworked status points. A sentencing lawyer who is not current on the amendment cycle is arguing last year’s book.
What we build before every sentencing.
A mitigation record with documents behind every sentence: medical and treatment files, employment verification, restitution receipts, letters that describe incidents rather than adjectives. A release plan the judge can visualize. And where the guidelines overstate the conduct, a variance theory grounded in §3553(a)’s command - sufficient, but not greater than necessary. Judges follow records, not speeches.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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