Nationwide SNAP Violation Lawyers

Lawrence Snap Violation Lawyers

If you’re a retailer who accepts EBT at your grocery store, then you might have gotten a official warning from the USDA. The notification is most likely a SNAP violation letter, which is claiming you are in violation of the SNAP program. The government will attach a number of pages to the SNAP violation letter, which will contain transactions which happened at your store that the government claims violates one or more categories of violations.

After you get a SNAP violation notice, you should contact our law firm. Remember, you have only ten days to respond to the letter. If you choose to ignore, the government will suspend your stores ability to take EBT.

About The SNAP Program

The SNAP program helps families with funds to buy food each month. These benefits are given with an EBT card. The SNAP benefits on the EBT card cannot legally be used for general use, and they can’t be used for fraudulent cash back transactions. The EBT cards took the place of food stamps in the 1990’s and are issued in the state where the recipient lives. The program is operated on a nationwide level by the federal government.

The SNAP federal and it’s parameters 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 does it mean to have a SNAP violation

Snap violations occur when a retail store is in violation of the rules below.

The grocery store took part intrafficking SNAP benefits. Examples of this is fraudulently accepting benefits, or theft of the benefits.

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

The store submitted incorrect information on the retail stores application to accept EBT benefits.

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

The employees of the store took SNAP benefits from someone who isn’t eligible to use the benefits.

How to defend your store against a SNAP violation

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

Sending the letter is the initial step which is taken by the USDA USDA to remove your EBT license. This letter may come with, or without, prior warnings can come at any time. The SNAP violation letter contain details about alleged violations, but most of them will mention violations, have evidence attached proving the violations. You have only 10 days to respond. After 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 SNAP violation letter, the USDA may still decide that your store has violated the rules. If this happens, the USDA will 100% issue another letter that specifically states the agencies legal verdict to suspend or disqualify the store based on the alleged violations. Like before, you have ten days to appeal this verdict. If you don’t, you’ll be stuck with the USDA decision. After you hire our firm, our team the legal papers and notify the government appeal the decision. We’ll gather necessary evidence, and we will draft generate an appellate brief which contains all of the case law, legal evidence, etc. which is necessary to fix the outcome.

If the USDA refuses to overturn the legal decision, in the Administrative Review, we’ll file a Judicial review at the local Federal District Court. This process is like a normal court case, where you’ll be able to do discovery, file motions, and have a trial. We can handle these cases in all 50 states.

SNAP Violations

As a grocery 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, SNAP can be tricky. SNAP handles the Electronic Benefits Transfer Card, and has limitations. For example, people getting SNAP benefits cant buy electronic goods. As a retailer, if you violate the laws, you’ll probably get a SNAP violation letter. Snap violation penalties can include fines and penalties. If it’s believed you did a major violation, then you might end up with a temporary or permanent disqualification. In many situations, store owners didn’t even know SNAP violations are even happening. Often, dishonest employees are misusing the SNAP EBT program. It’s helpful to speak with a SNAP violation lawyer in order to ensure sure you don’t have your benefits revoked.

When a SNAP violation letter is presented to your retail store, you only have 10 days to respond to the allegations. Your failure to respond to the allegations will permanently crush your store. If you don’t respond the USDA will make a verdict even if you choose not to respond to the allegations. Without legal experience, you cannot defend your store. Retaining a SNAP violation lawyer gives you a fighting change. Our SNAP appeals lawyers will fight the findings of the USDA and fight any penalties. The fines imposed can expensive – to the tune of ten’s of thousands of dollars. The USDA purposefully chooses to impose huge fines to in order to curb future violations. The USDA look to see if you have a store compliance policy. The policy has to be in writing and in effect at the time the violations were filed.

The store owner also has to be able to prove the compliance policy was in place before the charge, and was not drafted after the violation letter. The USDA typically also looks in order to see if the retail store owners benefited from the violations, or if the business owners were aware of the fraud. If the management was involved it can lead to disqualification.

We highly recommend any grocery store owner that receives a allegation 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.