Nationwide SNAP Violation Lawyers

Portland Snap Violation Attorneys

The SNAP program is the single most important pillar of the anti-poverty safety net for the most disadvantaged U.S. citizens and children. The first food assistance programs, also known as food stamp programs, were started under Franklin Roosevelt’s administration. But the modern food assistance program, which is administered under the U.S. Department of Agriculture, wasn’t brought into existence until Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty.

Today, the most recent incarnation of the nation’s food safety net, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP, for short, is a multi-billion dollar means of making sure that America’s most vulnerable don’t slip into abject poverty and malnutrition. With more than 42 million Americans relying on the program to make their nutritional ends meet, no other social welfare program in the United States today has a more direct and effective impact on maintaining the U.S. population free from the most acute forms of poverty.

A fiercely protected system brings collateral damage

As a result of the SNAP program being the flagship anti-poverty program within the United States, it is fiercely protected by both the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the court systems. Unfortunately, the zealous policing of any abuses of the SNAP program often lead to innocent store owners being caught in the enforcement net.

The number of regulations and rules that stores that have been authorized to accept EBT cards, the electronic benefits cards used to distribute SNAP benefits, have been expanding in both scope and complexity. If you are a SNAP-accepting store owner, you should be aware that the government views it as being the sole responsibility of the store owners to ensure compliance at all times, even among the store’s employees. All too frequently, store owners find themselves facing serious sanctions from the federal government as a direct result of the the actions taken by rogue employees.

In a typical year, the USDA has over 100 analysts, investigators and processors working, year round, on flushing out violations of current SNAP laws and regulations. In a typical year, over 15,000 stores are reviewed and more than 4,000 are fined or the owners taken to court and convicted of both criminal and civil infractions in their abuse of the SNAP program or violations of rules relating to it. In hundreds of cases, store owners are sentenced to lengthy terms of incarceration and made to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines and restitution.

For this reason, if you find yourself under the scrutiny of the USDA and its Food and Nutrition Service arm, it is absolutely imperative that you get in touch with a competent lawyer who understands the process and has the experience needed to help ensure you take the necessary steps to maximize your chances of a favorable outcome.

If you have received a letter from the USDA alleging violations of the SNAP program, you will only have 10 days to respond. Should you fail to do so, the USDA has absolute authority to immediately cut off your store from the program. For many urban food retailers, this could be a business-ending event. It is, therefore, imperative that you respond quickly and without error.

Our law firm has handled hundreds of cases on behalf of store owners accused of various forms of SNAP program violations. The most common of these tend to be less serious offenses, such as failing to comply with stocking requirements or allowing ineligible items to be purchased. More serious are allegation involving the trafficking of food benefits, that is, selling food stamp benefits for cash or otherwise trading in the non-negotiable benefits. It is important to know what types of allegations you are facing in order to properly respond and mount a defense that is most likely to succeed.

It is always to get a competent lawyer fighting on your side as early in the process as possible. Because of the limited time frame available to contest USDA allegations of SNAP violations, the sooner you hire an expert lawyer, the higher the likelihood that you will prevail.

Our lawyers have successfully resolved hundreds of cases of SNAP abuse, fraud and non-compliance allegations on behalf of our store-owning clients. Make sure you don’t fall victim to overzealous FNS enforcement. Give us a call today.