Nationwide SNAP Violation Lawyers

Franklin Snap Violation Lawyers

If you’re a retailer who accepts EBT at your grocery store, then may have received a letter from the USDA. The letter is probably a SNAP violation notice, which is claiming you violated the SNAP program. The USDA will include proof to the SNAP violation letter, which will contain transactions that happened at your grocery store that the USDA claims violates one or more genres of violations.

After you get a SNAP violation letter, you should contact our legal team. It’s critical you understand, you only have 10 days to respond. If you choose to ignore, the USDA will suspend your grocery store’s ability to take EBT.

About The Program

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

This government and it’s benefits are under handled by the United States Code and the Code of Federal Regulations. The USDA FNS agency enforces the regulations and runs the program.

What does it mean to have a SNAP violation

SNAP legal violations occur when a grocery store is in violation of the rules below.

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

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

Your store submitted false information on the grocery stores application to accept EBT benefits.

Your store took money for more EBT food stamps than sale of actual food at the same time.

Your employees accepted SNAP benefits from someone who isn’t allowed to use them.

Defending against a SNAP Violation Letter

Our law firm has immense experience handling SNAP violation letters. Our team of attorneys can handle your SNAP violation process in all 3 phases of a SNAP Violation action.

Sending the violation letter is the initial step taken by the USDA to remove your EBT license. This letter may come with no warning can come at any time. The charging letter contain details about alleged violations, but most letters will outline violations, with an attachment of details. Your response to the SNAP violation letter is due within 10 days. After you hire our law firm, we handle 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 notice of violation, the USDA might still feel that your store has violated the rules. If that happens, the USDA will issue a second letter that outlines the governments legal verdict to suspend or disqualify the grocery store based on the accusations previously mentioned. You have 10 days to appeal this. If you choose not to, then you’ll be stuck with the USDA decision. After you hire our lawyers, our team the legal papers and notify the USDA we are going to appeal their decision. Our lawyers gather necessary evidence, and our team will generate an appellate brief which contains all of the legal laws, legal evidence, etc. which is needed to fix the outcome.

In the event the USDA refuses to overturn the violation claim, in the Administrative Review, our lawyers will file a Judicial review at the local Federal Court. The Judicial Appeal is like a normal 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’s a lot of rules and regulations which you have to adhere to for EBT. In most normal situations, many retail store owners have no problems adhering to them. However, the SNAP program can be tricky. SNAP handles the Electronic Benefits Transfer Card, and has limits on how the funds can be used. For example, SNAP recipients cant purchase electronic goods. If you violate the laws, you’ll get a SNAP violation letter. Penalties of violating SNAP can result in severe fines. If it’s believed you did a major SNAP violation, then you might end up with either a permanent or temporary disqualification. In most cases, store owners don’t even know the violations were even occurring. Often, unethical employees are misusing the SNAP EBT 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 retail store, you have only ten days to respond to the claims by the USDA. Failure to respond to the violations will permanently harm your store. If you don’t respond the USDA will generate a verdict even if you choose not to respond to the allegations. Without legal experience, you cannot defend your store. Hiring a SNAP violation lawyer gives you the ability to fight for your rights. Our SNAP appeals lawyers will discredit the decision of the USDA and appeal any penalties. The financial penalties imposed can expensive – to the tune of ten’s of thousands of dollars. The USDA on purpose chooses to impose large fines to curb violations. The USDA look to see if you have a store compliance policy. It has to be in writing at the store and in effect at the time the allegations were filed.

The grocery store also has to be able to prove the above mentioned policy was in existence before the allegations, and wasn’t drafted after the violation was made. The USDA typically also looks in order to see if the grocery store owners benefited from the violations, or were aware of the violation. If the managers were involved, it can lead to disqualification.

We highly recommend any store that gets a allegation 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.