FTC subpoenas vs. civil investigative demands: the key differences.
The FTC has two ways to compel you: the subpoena and the CID. They look alike, arrive alike, and are enforced alike - but what they can demand, and what your answers can be used for, differs in ways that decide strategy.
Two instruments, one agency.
FTC subpoenas issue mainly in the agency’s competition (antitrust) investigations and reach documents and testimony. Civil investigative demands - CIDs - are the consumer-protection workhorse under Section 20 of the FTC Act, and they reach further: documents and testimony, plus written interrogatory-style answers and written reports. A CID can make you compose answers; a subpoena largely makes you hand over what exists.
What your answers become.
CID answers are sworn. They are shareable within the government, and they do not evaporate when the civil matter closes - parallel criminal referrals to DOJ happen, particularly in fraud-adjacent consumer cases. The Fifth Amendment applies to individuals answering CIDs the same as anywhere: a question whose truthful answer would incriminate can be declined, and deciding which those are is counsel work, not instinct.
Responding without volunteering.
The petition-to-quash window is short and mostly a negotiation lever: real relief comes from the meet-and-confer, where scope, custodians, search terms, and timing get cut down. Written answers are drafted like testimony - precise, complete, and no wider than the question. Everything is preserved from day one, because the follow-up CID always asks about the gap.
When the civil matter is not civil.
If the conduct under investigation could read as wire fraud, the CID is a preview, not the event. This firm defends both tracks at once - the administrative response and the criminal exposure behind it - so nothing said to the FTC becomes Exhibit A at DOJ.
Reading is good. Calling is better.
Answered within 24 hours, guaranteed. Some stories are better told out loud -
212 300 5196