Careers survive investigations that start with the right counsel.
Embezzlement, bribery, corruption, fraud - charges aimed at professionals who have never seen a courtroom. What you do in the first week shapes the next decade.
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.
White collar defendants usually learn they are targets long after the investigation began - a subpoena, an interview request, a knock. Everything said or produced from that moment shapes the endgame. We step between you and the government, engage prosecutors pre-indictment, and defend the case with the record, not rhetoric.
You will know they are looking before they knock.
White-collar cases telegraph themselves: a grand jury subpoena to your employer, colleagues lawyering up, an auditor asking new questions. That window is the most valuable real estate in the case. Counsel engaged inside it shapes interviews, protects privilege, and sometimes ends the inquiry as a witness matter - not a defendant one.
Boardroom cases, loss-table sentences.
Executives get sentenced on §2B1.1 like everyone else - loss, victims, sophistication, abuse of trust. The difference is the record we can build: restitution, remediation, a career of compliance. The table sets the government’s opening number; §3553(a) is where judges actually sentence.
Complexity favors the defense.
The government must turn a thousand gray business judgments into one black-and-white lie. Advice of counsel, reliance on accountants, delegated processes, and good-faith interpretation defeat willfulness. The more complicated the deal, the harder their story gets - and we make them tell all of it.
The modern enforcement stack.
A white-collar file rarely holds one statute: wire fraud anchors it, then §1001 statements, obstruction, laundering, and tax counts orbit. Parallel proceedings multiply it - SEC, IRS, agency inspectors general, suspension and debarment, licensing boards - each with different privileges and discovery rules feeding the same prosecutors. Corporate cooperation policies decide who the company serves up; executives need counsel whose loyalty is not shared with the entity.
When the company’s lawyers ask for “a quick interview”.
Corporate counsel represents the corporation - the Upjohn warning means your interview belongs to the company, and the company can hand it to DOJ. Request your own counsel before any interview; the company or its insurance often pays for it. Preserve your own copies of what you wrote and relied on while access lasts. The first days of an internal investigation decide who ends up the government’s witness and who ends up its target.
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 subpoena to the company, colleagues lawyering up - we engage while you are still a witness, and work to keep it that way.
Assert privilege, contest the loss, brief advice-of-counsel - and if trial is the advantage, complexity becomes the defense’s friend.
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.
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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