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Vermont Federal Criminal Defense
Vermont Federal Criminal Defense The Small Docket Problem The District of Vermont prosecutes fewer federal criminal cases than nearly any district in the country, and that is precisely what makes it dangerous. A defendant in the Southern District of New York is one file among hundreds. A defendant in Vermont is one among perhaps eighty. […]
read moreIRS Criminal Investigation: Tax Crime Investigation Defense
IRS Criminal Investigation: Tax Crime Investigation Defense The Conviction Rate and What It Permits An 89 percent conviction rate should end most conversations about whether to cooperate with IRS Criminal Investigation. It does not. The number, drawn from IRS-CI’s own fiscal year 2025 annual report, reflects the agency’s selectivity more than its strength: CI initiates […]
read moreDEA Investigation Defense: Responding to Drug Enforcement Agents
DEA Investigation Defense: Responding to Drug Enforcement Agents The investigation is over before you know it has begun. The agents who appear at your door are not beginning their work; they are confirming what months of database analysis, prescription monitoring, and financial review have already suggested. You do not know what they know, and that […]
read moreFBI Investigation Defense: What to Do When Contacted by FBI
Most federal prosecutions do not begin with an arrest. They begin with a conversation the defendant believed was voluntary. The business card left in a doorframe, the voicemail requesting a callback about “a matter,” the pair of agents waiting in a parking lot who assure you this will only take a moment: each of these […]
read moreFederal Drug Task Force Investigations: Multi-Agency Prosecutions
Federal Drug Task Force Investigations: Multi-Agency Prosecutions The arrest is the last thing that happens. In a federal drug task force investigation, by the time agents appear at a door, the government has already recorded the conversations, mapped the associations, catalogued the financial transactions, and constructed a prosecution theory designed to produce a conviction. The […]
read moreFederal Drug Wiretap Cases: Title III Interceptions
Federal Drug Wiretap Cases: Title III Interceptions The necessity requirement is where federal wiretap cases are won or lost, and it is the part of Title III that most defendants never hear about until the suppression deadline has passed. Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act imposes on the government a […]
read moreFederal Drug Airport Cases: TSA and DEA Interdiction
The Difference Between a Screening and a Search The distinction between a TSA screening and a law enforcement search is the distinction upon which most federal airport drug cases either survive or collapse. One is an administrative procedure conducted under statutory authority to detect weapons and explosives. The other is a Fourth Amendment event that […]
read moreWithdrawal From Conspiracy
Withdrawal From Conspiracy Withdrawal from a federal conspiracy presupposes guilt. The defendant who raises this defense concedes participation in the agreement and argues, instead, that he took affirmative steps to sever his connection to the enterprise before the conduct he now seeks to avoid reached its conclusion. The distinction matters because most defendants and, if […]
read moreFDA Misbranding Criminal
Criminal Liability for FDA Misbranding A corporate officer can be sentenced to federal prison for a violation she did not commit, did not authorize, and did not know was occurring beneath her. Under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, this outcome is not aberrational. It is the operating principle of a statute whose criminal […]
read moreIndiana Federal Crime Defense
Indiana Federal Crime Defense Most people charged with a federal crime in Indiana have already lost the case by the time they retain counsel. The government investigated for months, sometimes years, before the sealed indictment or the arrest at dawn. A defendant who contacts an attorney after being taken into custody is responding to a […]
read morePrescription Pills Without Script
Prescription Pills Without a Prescription in New York Possession of a single prescription pill without the corresponding prescription constitutes a criminal offense in New York. The statute does not distinguish between a person who purchased oxycodone from a stranger and a person who accepted a Xanax from a colleague during a difficult afternoon. Under Penal […]
read moreFirst Appearance Federal Court
First Appearance in Federal Court The pretrial services report will reach the magistrate before you do. That document, assembled from an interview most defendants regard as routine, contains the court’s first and often most durable impression of who you are, what the government believes you have done, and whether you can be trusted to return. […]
read moreDetention Hearing Strategy
Detention Hearing Strategy: Preparation, Presumptions, and the Seventy-Two Hours That Determine Everything Most defendants are detained because their attorneys treated the hearing as an argument rather than a presentation. The distinction is not minor. An argument responds to the government’s case. A presentation constructs an alternative reality in which release is the only rational conclusion, […]
read moreTrucking Company Federal Violations
When FMCSA Comes for the Owner The owner of a trucking company does not go to federal prison for a brake violation. He goes to prison for what the brake violation permitted to happen, and for the paper trail that proves he could have prevented it. That distinction, between the violation itself and the architecture […]
read moreFederal Sentencing Guidelines for COVID Loan Fraud
Federal Sentencing Guidelines for COVID Loan Fraud The sentence you receive for PPP fraud is not determined by the money you received. It is determined by the money you requested. Under USSG §2B1.1, the federal guideline governing fraud and theft offenses, courts apply the greater of actual loss or intended loss when calculating a defendant’s […]
read moreFINRA Wells Notice Explained
FINRA Wells Notice Explained The Disclosure Obligation The Wells Notice creates a record before it creates a case. For a registered representative, the written confirmation from FINRA that formal disciplinary action is under consideration triggers a Form U4 amendment, which populates BrokerCheck, which becomes visible to clients, prospective employers, and anyone with a browser and […]
read moreHow to Respond to FINRA 8210 Request
How to Respond to a FINRA Rule 8210 Request The letter arrives, and the career you have constructed over a decade or two decades becomes, in a legal sense, conditional. A FINRA Rule 8210 request is not a courtesy. It is a demand issued under authority broad enough to compel your testimony, your documents, and […]
read moreFINRA vs. SEC Investigation
FINRA vs. SEC Investigation: What Securities Professionals Must Understand Before Responding The letter arrives, and the professional who receives it has already lost something, though what exactly depends on decisions that have not yet been made. Whether the envelope contains a FINRA Rule 8210 request or an SEC subpoena, the recipient is now operating inside […]
read moreCan FINRA Bar Me From the Industry?
Can FINRA Bar Me From the Industry? The bar is permanent. Under FINRA Rule 8310 and Section 15A of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority possesses the authority to expel an individual from associating with any member firm, in any capacity, without a defined endpoint. A censure fades. A fine […]
read moreWill Cooperating With the Feds Reduce My Sentence?
Will Cooperating With the Feds Reduce My Sentence? Cooperation with federal authorities reduces sentences in roughly the same way that confession reduces guilt: conditionally, incompletely, and only when the institution receiving it determines that the offering was sufficient. The question is not whether cooperation can reduce a federal sentence. It can. Under Section 5K1.1 of […]
read moreCan I Cooperate Without Testifying Against Others?
Can I Cooperate Without Testifying Against Others? The question assumes a binary that does not exist in federal practice. Cooperation is not a single act performed on a single afternoon. It is a range of conduct, graduated by risk, measured by the government’s assessment of what you provided and whether anyone was prosecuted because of […]
read moreWhat If I'm Afraid to Testify Against Co-Defendants?
What If I Am Afraid to Testify Against Co-Defendants? The fear is not irrational. In multi-defendant criminal cases, the decision to cooperate with the government and provide testimony against a co-defendant carries consequences that no proffer agreement fully discloses and no prosecutor fully acknowledges. One does not arrive at this crossroads by accident. The question […]
read moreWhat Happens Inside a Federal Grand Jury Room?
What Happens Inside a Federal Grand Jury Room? The federal grand jury room is the one proceeding in American criminal law where the government speaks and no one is permitted to answer. Sixteen to twenty-three citizens sit in that room for months at a time, hearing case after case, and the person whose liberty is […]
read moreWhat Are SEC Penalties?
What Are SEC Penalties? The penalty is not the point. The penalty is what remains after the Securities and Exchange Commission has already accomplished its actual objective: the investigation, the subpoena, the eighteen months of document production that consumed your general counsel’s calendar and convinced your board that something had gone wrong whether or not […]
read moreCooperation in Federal Drug Conspiracy Cases
Cooperation in Federal Drug Conspiracy Cases The Proffer Session Cooperation in a federal drug conspiracy case begins before the defendant has decided to cooperate. It begins in a room at the United States Attorney’s office, with a proffer agreement on the table and a pair of federal agents who already know most of what the […]
read moreProffer Agreements in Healthcare Fraud Cases
Proffer Agreements in Healthcare Fraud Cases The proffer agreement is the government’s most efficient instrument for converting a defendant into a witness, and in healthcare fraud cases, it operates with a precision that most defendants do not appreciate until the session has concluded. Federal prosecutors do not extend proffer invitations because they are curious about […]
read moreCooperation in RICO and Organized Crime Cases
Cooperation in RICO and Organized Crime Cases The cooperator in a federal RICO prosecution does not exchange information for freedom. The exchange is more intimate and less reversible than that: a former life, dismantled in its entirety, for the possibility of a shorter sentence. Not the certainty. The distinction matters more than most defendants appreciate […]
read moreCooperating in a Federal Fraud Investigation
Cooperating in a Federal Fraud Investigation Cooperation is the single most consequential decision a defendant or target will make in a federal fraud case, and it is almost always made too late or for the wrong reasons. The word itself carries a suggestion of reasonableness, of working together toward resolution. What it means in practice […]
read more18 U.S.C. § 1001: Why Lying to Federal Agents Is a Crime
18 U.S.C. § 1001: Why Lying to Federal Agents Is a Crime The statute that prosecutes lying to federal agents has ended more careers than the crimes it was designed to investigate. Martha Stewart did not go to prison for insider trading. Michael Flynn did not plead guilty to anything involving foreign policy. Both were […]
read moreThe Right to Remain Silent in Federal Investigations
The Right to Remain Silent in Federal Investigations Silence, in a federal investigation, is not a condition one falls into. It is a position one must claim aloud, with precise language, at a precise moment, or it ceases to exist as a constitutional protection at all. The Supreme Court made this clear in Salinas v. […]
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