Nationwide SNAP Violation Lawyers

Coral Springs Snap Violation Lawyers

If you’re a retailer who accepts EBT at your retail store, then may have received a official notice from the USDA. The notification is most likely a SNAP violation letter, which is stating you have violated the SNAP program. The USDA will attach a number of pages to the SNAP violation letter, and it will have transactions which occurred at your store that the USDA is saying violates one or more genres of violations.

After you get a SNAP violation letter, you must contact our legal team. It’s critical you understand, you only have 10 days to respond. If you don’t respond, the USDA will suspend your grocery store’s ability to accept EBT.

About The Program

The SNAP program helps families with a certain amount of money each month. These benefits are distributed to consumers with an EBT card. The benefits on the EBT card cannot legally be used for general usage, and they cannot be used for cash back services. The cards took over for food stamps in the 1990’s and the card is issued by each state individually which the SNAP participant lives. The SNAP program is run on a nationwide level by the federal government.

The SNAP program and the benefits that come with it 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 counts as a SNAP violation

Snap violations occur if and when a grocery store violates any of the rules below.

The grocery store was involved intrafficking SNAP benefits. This can mean fraudulently accepting benefits, or theft of the benefits.

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

The store submitted false information on your grocery stores application to accept EBT benefits.

The grocery store took money for more coupons than food sales at the same time.

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

Defending against a SNAP Violation Letter

Our law firm has experience managing SNAP appeals letters. Our team of attorneys can handle your SNAP Violation appeal in all 3 phases of a SNAP Violation action.

Sending the violation letter is the initial step taken by the USDA to take away your EBT license. The letter can come with no warning and can appear at any time. The SNAP violation letter has a variety of allegations, but most of them will detail serious allegations, have evidence attached proving the violations. You have only 10 days to respond. 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 violation letter, the USDA may still decide that a violation has occurred. If this happens, they’ll will 100% issue a second letter that outlines their decision to suspend or disqualify the grocery store based on the alleged violations. You have 10 days to appeal this. If you choose not to, you’ll be unable to protest the USDA decision. After you hire our lawyers, our team the legal papers to notify the government appeal the decision. We’ll gather necessary evidence, and our team will generate an appellate brief containing all of the legal laws, legal evidence, etc. which is necessary to change the outcome of the violations.

In the event the USDA refuses to change the violation claim, in the Administrative Review, our lawyers will 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 attorneys can handle these cases in all 50 states.

SNAP Violations

As a food store retailer, there are many laws 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 get electronic goods. If, and when, you violate the laws, you’ll get a SNAP violation letter. Penalties of violating SNAP can include fines and penalties. If it’s believed you did a major violation, then you may end up with either a permanent or temporary disqualification. In many situations, owners of grocery stores didn’t even know the violations were even happening. In many situations, unethical employees are misusing the SNAP EBT program. It’s helpful to speak with a SNAP violation appeals lawyer in order to ensure sure you don’t have your benefits revoked.

When a charge letter is delivered to your store, you have only ten days to respond to the violations. Your failure to respond to the allegations will permanently crush your store. If you don’t respond the USDA will deliver 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 lawyers can discredit the findings of the USDA and appeal any penalties. The financial penalties imposed can be huge – to the tune of ten’s of thousands of dollars. The USDA purposefully imposes huge fines to in order to curb future violations. The USDA look to see if you have a store compliance policy. The policy must be in writing and in effect at the time the allegations were filed.

The grocery store must be able to prove the compliance policy was in existence before the allegations, and was not drafted after the violation letter. The USDA typically also looks in order to see if the grocery store owners benefited in any way from the fraud, or were aware of the violation. If the management was involved it can lead to disqualification.

We highly recommend any grocery store owner that receives a violation letter speak to with a SNAP violation attorney. Choosing not to respond 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.