Nationwide SNAP Violation Lawyers

Fremont Snap Violation Lawyers

If you accept EBT at your retail store, then may have gotten a official notice from the USDA. The notification is most likely a SNAP violation letter, which is alleging you are in violation of the SNAP program. The USDA will include proof to the SNAP violation notice, which will have records of transactions which happened at your retail store that the government is saying violates one or more genres of violations.

After you get a SNAP violation letter, you must speak to our our law firm. It’s critical you understand, you only have 10 days to respond. If you choose to ignore, the USDA will suspend your stores privilege to accept EBT.

About The Program

This program provides families with get food each month. The SNAP program benefits are distributed with an EBT card. The benefits on the card are not for general usage, and they cannot be used for cash back services. The EBT cards took the place of food stamps in the 1990’s and the card is issued in the state where the consumer lives. This program is run on a national level by the government.

The 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 counts as a SNAP violation

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

The grocery store is accused ofthe trafficking of SNAP benefits. This can mean fraudulently accepting benefits, or stealing the benefits.

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

Your store submitted incorrect info on your store’s application to accept EBT benefits.

Your store took money for more coupons than food sales over the same period.

The employees of the store took 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 appeals letters. We can handle your SNAP violation process in all phases of a SNAP Violation action.

The charging letter is the first step which is going to be taken by USDA to take away your right to take EBT benefits. The letter can come with, or without, prior warnings and can happen at any time. The SNAP violation letter will contain allegations, but most of them will lay out violations, and have attached documents detailing the violations. Your response to the SNAP violation letter is due within 10 days. Once you hire our law firm, our lawyers handle 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 decide that your store has violated the rules. If this happens, the USDA will 100% issue another letter which outlines their legal verdict to suspend or disqualify the grocery store based on the alleged violations. You have 10 days to appeal this. If you don’t, then you’ll be unable to protest the USDA decision. Once you hire our lawyers, we’ll file the appeal and notify the government we are going to appeal their decision. Our lawyers collect necessary evidence, and we will draft generate an appellate brief containing all of the case law, legal evidence, etc. which is needed to fix the outcome.

If the USDA refuses to overturn the decision, in the Administrative Review, our lawyers will file a Judicial review at the local Federal Court. The Judicial Appeal is like a normal court case, where you’ll have to do standard processes like 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 which you have to adhere to for EBT. In most cases, many grocery 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. Snap violation penalties can result in fines, and penalties. If it’s believed you did a major SNAP violation, then you may end up with a temporary or permanent disqualification. In most cases, store owners don’t know the violations are even happening. Often, it’s dishonest employees who are misusing the SNAP program. It’s helpful to speak with a SNAP violation appeals lawyer in order to make sure you don’t have your benefits revoked.

When a charge letter is delivered to your grocery store, you have only 10 days to respond to the claims by the USDA. Failure to respond to the allegations will permanently harm your store. If you don’t respond the USDA will deliver a verdict even though you choose not to 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 decision of the USDA and appeal any decision. The penalties imposed can be huge – to the tune of ten’s of thousands of dollars. The USDA on purpose does large fines to in order to curb future violations. The USDA look to see if you have a store compliance policy. It must be in writing at the store and the policy must be at the time the violations were filed.

The retailer also has to 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 see 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.

It’s highly recommended any store that receives a violation letter consult 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.