Nationwide SNAP Violation Lawyers

Buffalo Grove Snap Violation Lawyers

If you accept EBT at your grocery store, then may have received a official notice from the USDA. This notification is most likely a SNAP violation notice, which is alleging you violated the SNAP program. The government will attach a number of pages to the SNAP violation notice, which will contain records of transactions which occurred at your grocery store that the USDA is saying is in violation of one or more genres of violations.

After you get a SNAP violation notice, you should definitely speak to our our law firm. Remember, you have only ten days to respond to the letter. If you choose to ignore, the government will terminate/suspend your grocery store’s ability to accept EBT payments.

About The Program

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

The program and it’s benefits 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 happen if and when a store violates any of the rules below.

The store took part inthe trafficking of SNAP benefits. Examples of this is fraudulently accepting taking the benefits, or stealing the benefits.

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

Your store submitted incorrect info on your retail stores application to accept EBT benefits.

Your grocery store redeemed more EBT food stamps than actual food sales at the same time.

Your employees accepted SNAP benefits from someone who shouldn’t be allowed to use the benefits.

How to defend your store against a SNAP violation

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

Sending the letter is the first step taken by the USDA to take away your EBT license. This letter may come with no warning can come at any time. The charging letter will have allegations in it, but most of them will detail violations, and have attached documents detailing the violations. Your response to the SNAP violation letter is due within 10 days. Once you hire Spodek Law Group, our lawyers take into their hands all of the communicationswith the USDA and for compiling all the necessary evidence, and drafting a response to the USDA.

Once the USDA reviews your answer to the notice of violation, the USDA might still feel that a violation has occurred. If this happens, they’ll will definitely send another letter that outlines their legal verdict to suspend or disqualify the grocery store based on the allegations set forth. Like before, you have ten days to appeal this decision. If you don’t, you’ll be unable to protest the USDA decision. After you hire our lawyers, we’ll file the legal papers to notify the government we are going to appeal their decision. Our lawyers gather necessary evidence, and our team will generate the necessary appeals briefs containing all of the legal laws, evidence, etc. which is needed to change the outcome of the violations.

In the event the USDA refuses to overturn the violation claim, in the Administrative Review, we will file a Judicial review at the local Federal District Court. This process is like a normal case, where you’ll be able to do discovery, file motions, and have a trial. Our lawyers can handle these cases in all 50 states.

SNAP Violations

As a food store retailer, there’s a lot of rules and regulations have to obey in order to accept EBT. In most cases, many grocery store owners have no issues adhering to them. However, USDA’s SNAP program can be tricky. SNAP handles the Electronic Benefits Transfer Card, and has limitations. For example, SNAP recipients cant purchase electronic goods. If you violate the laws, you’ll probably get a SNAP violation letter. Penalties of violating SNAP can result in fines, and penalties. If it’s believed you did a serious violation, then you may end up with a temporary or permanent disqualification. In many situations, owners of grocery stores don’t even know SNAP violations were even occurring. In many situations, unethical employees are misusing the SNAP program. It’s helpful to discuss your case with a SNAP violation appeals lawyer in order to make sure you don’t have your benefits revoked.

When a SNAP violation letter is delivered to your grocery store, you have only 10 days to respond to the violations. Failure to respond will permanently crush your store. If you don’t respond 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. Hiring a SNAP violation lawyer gives you a fighting change. Our SNAP appeals lawyers can discredit the findings of the USDA and fight any decision. The penalties imposed can be huge – to the tune of ten’s of thousands of dollars. The USDA on purpose chooses to impose large fines to in order to curb future violations. The USDA will typically look to see if you have a compliance policy in place. It must be in writing and the policy must be at the time the allegations were filed.

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

We highly recommend any store that gets a allegation 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.