Nationwide SNAP Violation Lawyers

Port St. Lucie Snap Violation Lawyers

If you accept EBT at your grocery store, then may have received a notice from the USDA. This letter is most likely a SNAP violation letter, which is alleging you have violated the SNAP program. The USDA will include proof to the SNAP violation notice, which will have transactions that happened at your store that the USDA is saying violates one or more genres of violations.

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

About The Program

The SNAP program provides families with get food each month. These benefits are given with an EBT card. The funds on this card cannot legally be used for general usage, and they cannot be used for fraudulent cash back services. The cards took the place of food stamps in the 1990’s and the card is issued by each state individually where the recipient lives. The program is run on a nationwide level by the government.

The government 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’s a SNAP Violation

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

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

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

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

The grocery store redeemed more EBT food stamps than food sales during the same period.

Your employees took SNAP benefits from someone who isn’t eligible to use the benefits.

How we can help defend you against a SNAP violation notice

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

Sending the violation letter is the initial step which is taken by the USDA USDA to remove your EBT license. This comes with no warning and can appear at any time. The violation letter has a variety of allegations, but most letters will detail violations, with an attachment of details. Your response to the SNAP violation letter is due within 10 days. Once you hire Spodek Law Group, our lawyers 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 SNAP violation letter, the USDA may still believe that a violation has occurred. If that happens, they’ll will issue a second letter that specifically states their decision to suspend or disqualify the retail store based on the accusations previously mentioned. Like before, you have ten days to protest the verdict. If you don’t, you’ll be unable to protest the USDA decision. Once you hire our firm, we file the appeal to notify them we are going to appeal their decision. We’ll collect necessary evidence, and our team will generate the necessary appeals briefs which contains all of the case law, evidence, etc. which is needed to fix the outcome.

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

SNAP Violations

As a grocery store retailer, there are many laws have to obey in order to accept EBT. In most cases, many grocery store owners don’t run into problems. However, USDA’s SNAP program can be tricky. SNAP handles the Electronic Benefits Transfer Card, and has limits on how the funds can be used. For example, people getting SNAP benefits cant buy electronic goods. As a retailer, if you violate the laws, you’ll get a SNAP violation letter. Snap violation penalties can result in severe and business crushing penalties. If you conduct a serious violation, then you may end up with either a permanent or temporary disqualification. In most cases, store owners didn’t even know the violations were even happening. In many situations, unethical employees are misusing the SNAP program. It’s helpful to speak with a SNAP violation appeals lawyer in order to ensure sure you don’t have your benefits revoked.

When a charge letter is presented to your grocery store, you only have ten days to respond to the violations. Your failure to respond to the allegations will permanently harm your store. If you don’t respond the USDA will generate a verdict even if you don’t respond to the allegations. Without legal experience, you won’t be able to retain EBT benefits. Retaining a SNAP violation lawyer gives you the ability to fight for your rights. Our lawyers will challenge the findings of the USDA and appeal any penalties. The penalties imposed can expensive – to the tune of ten’s of thousands of dollars. The USDA on purpose imposes 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 at the store and the policy must be when the allegations were filed.

The retailer must 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. If the managers were involved, it can lead to disqualification.

We highly recommend any store owner that gets a 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.