Fort Worth SNAP Violation Attorneys.

Throughout the 19th century and the first part of the 20th in the United States, there was a great progressive drive to permanently and totally eradicate extreme poverty from the country. The first attempts at providing for full food security across the population, regardless of socioeconomic status, was introduced in the late 1930s by the Roosevelt Administration.

But it wasn't until the presidency of Lyndon Johnson that the modern food security program, known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program began to take shape. This system has succeeded wildly, completely eliminating hunger as a major problem in the United States. Today, over 40 million Americans rely on the program to make their nutritional ends meet. Among these are tens of millions of disadvantaged children who, without the SNAP program, would likely end up bearing the horrible effects of childhood undernourishment.

While the program has been able to achieve nearly all the goals those who originally established it laid out, it was beset by widespread fraud in its early days. For the first ten years of the national food assistance program, it has been estimated that up to ten percent of all expenditures on the program were consumed by fraud, waste and abuse. This figure was unacceptably high and threatened the existence of the taxpayer-funded program.

This led to the formation of a special enforcement arm within the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which is the agency responsible for managing the SNAP program. The newly formed unit, called the Food and Nutrition Service, was tasked with investigating all suspected cases of fraud, abuse and waste within the SNAP program. Within just a few years of its establishment, fraud across the program began to drop precipitously. Today, the FNS employs more than 100 full-time investigators, auditors and lawyers whose sole job is discovering and eradicating fraud from within the program.

This effort has been enormously successful. It is estimated that now, for every dollar spent by SNAP beneficiaries at the retail level, only one cent of every dollar is consumed by fraud or abuse. This represents a dramatic decline in the level of fraud. But there has also been some collateral damage that has come with this vigorous enforcement approach.

Currently, each year in the United States, some 15,000 SNAP-eligible store owners are investigated for fraudulent activity of one kind or another. Of these cases, at least 5,000 are sanctioned in some form, and around 500 store owners will actually be sentenced to jail time as the result of EBT or other SNAP transactions that improperly took place at their places of business.

A good lawyer can get you out of a jam with the USDA

One of the biggest mistakes that SNAP-eligible store owners who are under investigation by the USDA make is not taking the process nearly as seriously as they should. If you receive a letter from the USDA detailing accusations of SNAP violations, the first move that you should make is to call a competent and experienced lawyer to get on your side. The laws and regulations governing the SNAP program are highly complex and varied, making this a unique and challenging area of the law.

Getting a good lawyer on your side early in the process who is willing to fight for your rights as a business owner can help tilt the odds in your favor, maximizing the chances of a favorable resolution to your case. Lawyers with the relevant experience and knowledge in this area of legal practice will be able to negotiate favorable settlements with the USDA on your behalf. The truth is that the USDA bureaucrats rarely want to waste a great deal of their time on a single case. This is doubly true for actual prosecutors and the court system, particularly where there has clearly been no intent to do wrong on the part of the owner of the store.

Our lawyers have decades of experience and have handled hundreds of SNAP violation cases. We can almost always negotiate a settlement that will avoid a store being barred from accepting food stamps or the owner going to jail. If you have been targeted by the USDA for alleged SNAP violations, give us a call today. The right lawyer fighting on your side can make all the difference.

Facing a SNAP charge letter or disqualification? Start with our full guide: USDA SNAP Violation Lawyers for Retail Stores, or call 212-300-5196 for an attorney, 24/7.