Nationwide SNAP Violation Lawyers

West Virginia Snap Violation Lawyers

If you accept EBT at your retail store, then you might have been the recipient of a a official notice from the USDA. This letter is most likely a SNAP violation letter, which is alleging you are in violation of the SNAP program. The USDA will attach a number of pages to the SNAP violation notice, and it will contain records of transactions which occurred at your grocery store which the USDA is saying is in violation of one or more groups of violations.

After you get a SNAP violation letter, you must speak to our our legal team. Remember, you have only ten days to respond to the letter. If you choose to ignore, the USDA will suspend your stores privilege to take EBT.

About The SNAP Program

The SNAP program helps families with funds to buy food each month. These benefits are distributed via an EBT card. The SNAP benefits on the card cannot legally be used for general usage, and they cannot be used for cash back services. The EBT cards took over for food stamps in the 1990’s and are issued by each state individually where the recipient lives. The SNAP program is operated on a national level by the federal government.

The SNAP government and it’s parameters are under handled by the US Code and the Code of Federal Regulations. The USDA FNS agency enforces the regulations and runs the program.

What’s a SNAP Violation

SNAP legal violations occur when a grocery store violates any of the following rules.

The retail store is accused oftrafficking SNAP benefits. This can mean fraudulently accepting benefits, or theft of the benefits.

Your grocery store accepted SNAP benefits in exchange for nonfood items like alcohol, tobacco, or other goods.

The store submitted false info on the grocery stores application to accept EBT benefits.

Your grocery store redeemed more EBT food stamps than sale of actual food over the same period.

The employees of the store accepted SNAP benefits from an unauthorized person who isn’t allowed to use the benefits.

How to defend your store against a SNAP violation

Spodek Law Group has immense experience handling SNAP violation letters. Our law firm can handle your SNAP Violation appeal in all 3 phases of a SNAP violation action.

Sending the letter is the initial step which is taken by the USDA USDA to take away your EBT license. This letter may come with, or without, prior warnings and can appear at any time. The violation letter has a variety of allegations, but most letters will mention violations, have evidence attached proving the violations. Your response to the SNAP violation letter is due within 10 days. Once you hire our law firm, we take into their hands all of the communicationswith the USDA and for compiling all the necessary evidence, and drafting a response to the USDA.

After reviewing the store’s answer to the SNAP violation letter, the USDA may still believe that your store has violated the rules. If this happens, they’ll will definitely send a second letter which outlines their decision to suspend or disqualify the grocery store based on the allegations set forth. You have 10 days to appeal this. If you don’t, you’ll be unable to protest the USDA decision. Once you hire our lawyers, our team the legal papers and notify the government appeal the decision. Our lawyers collect necessary evidence, and our team will draft the necessary appeals briefs which contains all of the case law, evidence, etc. which is necessary to overturn the decision.

In the event the USDA refuses to change the legal decision, in the Administrative Review, we’ll file a Judicial review at the local Federal District Court. This next phase is like a normal court case, where you’ll be able to do discovery, file motions, and have a trial. Our law firm can handle these cases in all 50 states.

SNAP Violations

As a grocery store retailer, there’s a lot of rules and regulations have to obey in order to accept EBT. In most normal situations, many retail store owners don’t run into problems. However, the SNAP program can be tricky. SNAP handles the Electronic Benefits Transfer Card, and has limitations. For example, SNAP recipients cant buy electronic goods. As a retailer, if you violate the laws, you’ll get a SNAP violation letter. Snap violation penalties can result in fines, and penalties. If it’s believed you did a serious SNAP violation, then you might end up with either a permanent or temporary disqualification. In many situations, store owners don’t even know SNAP violations are even occurring. Often, dishonest employees who are misusing the SNAP program. If you’re accused of a SNAP violation to discuss your case with a SNAP violation appeals lawyer in order to ensure sure you don’t have your benefits revoked.

When a SNAP violation letter is presented to your store, you have only ten days to respond to the claims by the USDA. Failure to respond will permanently crush your store. In addition, the USDA will generate a verdict even though you don’t respond to the allegations. Without legal experience, you won’t be able to retain EBT benefits. Retaining a SNAP violation lawyer gives you a fighting change. Our SNAP appeals lawyers will discredit the findings of the USDA and appeal any penalties. The penalties imposed can be huge – to the tune of ten’s of thousands of dollars. The USDA on purpose imposes huge fines to curb violations. The USDA will look to see if you have a store compliance policy in place. It must be in writing and the policy must be when the allegations were filed.

The store owner also be able to prove the compliance policy was in place before the charge, and wasn’t drafted after the violation was made. The USDA typically also looks to check if the retail store owners benefited in any way from the fraud, or if the owners were aware of the fraud. Any involvement of the management can lead to disqualification.

We highly recommend any grocery store owner that gets a violation letter speak to with a SNAP violation attorney. Failure can result in negative consequences. The USDA is required by Congress to issue a disqualification for a period of up to 5 years. This can result in huge losses which are hard to recover from.