Received an FBI Target Letter — What Should I Do Now?

The letter has already been sent; what happens next is the only question that matters.

A target letter from the Federal Bureau of Investigation is not a courtesy. It is a notification, issued at the discretion of the prosecuting attorney’s office, that a federal grand jury has gathered sufficient evidence to regard you as a likely defendant. The word “target” carries a defined meaning inside the Department of Justice: you are not a witness, you are not a subject with peripheral exposure. You are the person toward whom the investigation has been directed.

Most people read the letter twice and then call someone who is not a lawyer. That instinct, however understandable, is the first of several errors that compress whatever advantage the timeline still permits.

The Hours Immediately Following Receipt

Read the letter once more, carefully, and set it down. Do not discuss its contents with family members, colleagues, business partners, or anyone who might later be called to testify. Federal investigators understand that recipients speak. Recorded conversations, intercepted messages, and cooperating witnesses are instruments already in use before the letter arrived at your door. Silence is not guilt. It is procedure.

Contact a federal criminal defense attorney before the business day ends. Not a general practitioner. Not a civil litigator. A lawyer who has appeared in federal court, who understands grand jury mechanics, and who has navigated the specific terrain of whatever area the letter identifies: fraud, tax matters, money laundering, public corruption, whatever the envelope implies without yet stating.

The call I receive on the day the letter arrives is a different conversation than the call I receive ninety days later. The first has options. The second has fewer.

That distinction is not rhetorical. Pre-indictment intervention, the process by which counsel engages the prosecuting attorney’s office before formal charges are filed, is a genuine mechanism with real outcomes. It produces declinations. It produces cooperation agreements that precede rather than follow indictment. It produces resolutions that never become public record. None of those outcomes survive delay.

What the Letter Tells You and What It Does Not

A target letter will typically identify the general subject matter of the investigation and cite the federal statutes under consideration. It will advise you of your Fifth Amendment right to decline to testify before the grand jury. It may invite you to appear voluntarily or to contact the assigned prosecutor.

What it will not tell you is the full scope of the evidence assembled. It will not disclose the identity of cooperating witnesses. It will not reveal the theory of prosecution, the documents already in government possession, or the conversations that have been recorded. The letter is, in this sense, structurally asymmetrical: it informs you that the government knows something without disclosing what.

Your attorney’s first task is to close that gap as much as the government will permit.

The Decision to Appear Before the Grand Jury

The letter may indicate that you have been invited to testify. This is not an invitation in any ordinary sense. Grand jury testimony occurs without a judge present. Your attorney cannot accompany you into the room. Prosecutors may question you on matters that extend well beyond what the letter described, and any inconsistency between your testimony and other evidence in the government’s possession may itself become the basis for additional charges.

In nine of the ten situations I have observed, a target does not testify. There are exceptions, though in practice they tend to confirm the rule. The Fifth Amendment exists precisely for this circumstance, and invoking it before a grand jury carries no evidentiary weight at trial. Your attorney will advise you on which side of that line your situation falls.

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Featured on Netflix's "Inventing Anna," Todd Spodek brings decades of high-stakes criminal defense experience. His aggressive approach has secured dismissals and acquittals in cases others deemed unwinnable.

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One Principle That Does Not Vary

Documents, communications, financial records, emails, text messages, anything that touches the subject matter of the investigation must be preserved immediately and completely. Do not delete. Do not alter. Do not ask an employee or associate to manage records “going forward” in a manner that results in destruction. Obstruction charges have been brought against individuals whose underlying conduct was defensible. The cover became the crime.

Retain what you have. Touch nothing. Let counsel direct the response.

The first consultation is not a commitment to a particular path. It is a diagnosis of where the matter stands and what the available roads look like from here. That conversation is the one to have today.