What happens if I ignore a SNAP charge letter?
7 CFR 278.6(b)(1)
We owe loyalty to only you.
When you’re looking online, you have multiple options. There are so many firms advertising SNAP defense. Thankfully, your search is over. Spodek Law Group P.C. offers premier white-glove service and we’re unafraid of fighting. Unlike firms that are more focused on their relationship with the agency than with you, we owe loyalty to only YOU. Your store, your family, your license.
One reason our firm has such a high success rate is that we’re selective about who we work with. If we’re choosing to work with you, it’s because we think we can make a positive impact. That’s vastly different from firms that take on any client willing to pay. When you reach out, you start with a risk-free consultation - and you can ask us anything you want, regardless of how long it takes.
If there’s a way to keep your store in the program, we’ll find it. That’s the whole job.
Owners ignore charge letters for understandable reasons. The letter looks like a form, the allegation feels absurd, and ten days isn’t enough time to find a lawyer while running a store. What the letter doesn’t say clearly is that it’s the only stage where you control the record.
What the agency does with silence
Under 7 CFR 278.6(c) the regional office reviews the charge letter, your response, and anything else in its file, then issues a determination. When there’s no response, the file is the government’s alone: the transaction printout, the investigator memoranda, and nothing about your customers, your invoices or your inventory. The most probable explanation becomes the only explanation on offer.
The part that can’t be undone
In a trafficking case there’s a second, permanent consequence. The civil money penalty in lieu of permanent disqualification must be requested in writing within the same ten days, and 278.6(b)(2)(iii) makes a firm that fails to ask ineligible for the penalty - not later, not on review, not in court. That single omission has closed more stores than any allegation in the attachment.
What is left afterwards
Once the determination arrives you have ten days to request administrative review under 7 CFR 279, where new evidence is allowed, and thirty days after the final agency decision to file suit under 7 U.S.C. 2023, where review is de novo. Those doors are real and they’re narrower. Even at day nine of the original window, there’s a version of the response worth filing.
When the biggest cases break, we get the call. That same team answers your ten days.
When the networks need a federal file explained in plain English, they call us.
This bench answers its own phone. Put it on your case.
Tell us what happened. Eight fields, two minutes - and a lawyer reads it today.
Read us the first line of the letter. We’ll tell you what day you’re on.
Bring the envelope, the attachment, and your invoices if you have them. If you don’t have them, bring the letter. The consultation is risk-free, it stays between us, and it happens today - ask us anything, regardless of how long it takes.