A store, a card reader, and a federal case.
Retailer and recipient prosecutions built on transaction data - patterns read as fraud. The data has other explanations, and we make them heard.
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 FNS charge letter with a ten-day clock - we answer both tracks before the store is gone.
Rebuild the redemption math from invoices, contest the analytics, hold the government to its undercover buys - and try intent when trial serves you.
SNAP and EBT cases are charged from spreadsheets: transaction patterns an algorithm flagged as trafficking. Small grocers and recipients face disqualification, restitution, and prison over data that has innocent explanations - cash-heavy neighborhoods, large families, informal credit. We put the context back into the numbers and defend the license along with the case.
USDA watched the register for a year.
Retailer cases start with EBT transaction data: even-dollar swipes, volume spikes, redemptions out of proportion to inventory. Undercover exchanges follow, then the seizure of store accounts. The data model has innocent explanations - cultural shopping patterns, cash-poor neighborhoods - the government never models.
Redemption totals are not fraud totals.
Prosecutors charge the store’s entire redemption volume as loss; the honest groceries inside that number are yours to prove and worth years. Inventory records, wholesale invoices, and customer patterns rebuild the real figure. Forfeiture of the store and license follows the same math - one fight, three stakes.
Employees, evidence, and the store you actually ran.
An owner is not guilty because a clerk swiped for cash - knowledge and participation must be proved. Trafficking requires intent, not sloppy bookkeeping in a cash business. Undercover buys prove those transactions only; we hold the government to the ones they actually made.
§2024, trafficking, and the store’s life.
SNAP trafficking under 7 U.S.C. §2024 runs to twenty years for amounts over $5,000, alongside wire fraud and §641. The FNS administrative track - permanent disqualification, civil money penalties - moves faster than the criminal case and on a lower standard; both must be defended at once or the store dies before trial. EBT analytics (even-dollar ratios, redemption-to-inventory gaps) are the government’s case - and they are statistics, and statistics have assumptions.
Keep the store defensible.
Preserve register tapes, wholesale invoices, and delivery records - the inventory that explains redemptions is the defense. Retrain and document staff policy on EBT the same week; violations continuing after notice are what turn owners into defendants. Respond to the FNS charge letter through counsel and on time: ten days, and silence is disqualification.
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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