Criminal Defense Lawyers

San Jose, CA Federal Criminal Defense Lawyers

San Jose, CA Federal Criminal Defense Lawyers

Welcome to Spodek Law Group. If your reading this becuase federal agents contacted you, or your employer just put you on administrative leave pending an investigation, or you recieved a target letter from the Northern District of California – what I’m about to tell you isn’t going to make you feel better. But it might save your career.

Silicon Valley professionals think federal criminal defense works like corporate litigation. You hire smart lawyers, present your case with technical documentation, explain the misunderstanding, and clear your name. The reality in the Northern District of California is your facing prosecutors who’ve built entire careers specializing in turning your technical expertise against you, juries who see you as a privileged tech worker who thought rules didn’t apply, and career destruction that happens months before trial through security clearance revocation and professional licensing sanctions. The conviction rate is 99.6%. Your LinkedIn profile becomes exhibit A. And the cases that made national news – Theranos, Anthony Levandowski, the parade of H-1B fraud prosecutions – those aren’t outliers. There the new normal in San Jose federal court.

Here’s what most federal defense content won’t tell you directly. The Northern District of California handles approximately 90% of all trade secret theft prosecutions in the United States despite representing less then 2% of the population. This isn’t a general federal court that occasionally sees tech cases. This is a specialized prosecution infrastructure that exists specifically to prosecute Silicon Valley crimes. And after Elizabeth Holmes recieved 11 years and Ramesh Balwani got 13 years for Theranos, the prosecution mentality shifted. Startup fraud prosecutions increased 340% between 2023 and 2024. Every optimistic statement to investors is now potential wire fraud. Every inflated metric is potential securities fraud. The “fake it till you make it” culture that defined Silicon Valley for decades became a federal crime.

The Northern District Machine: Why San Jose Is Different

The United States District Court for the Northern District of California covers the San Francisco Bay Area, including San Jose, Oakland, and San Francisco. But the San Jose division – which handles Santa Clara County and Silicon Valley – operates fundamentaly different than other federal districts.

First, understand the specialization. The Northern District maintains dedicated prosecution units for intellectual property theft, export control violations, and economic espionage. Only three federal districts in the entire country have this infrastructure. The US Attorney’s Office for Northern District employs prosecutors who do nothing but tech-related cases. They understand source code. They understand trade secret valuation. They’ve handled hundreds of cases involving semiconductor designs, artificial intelligence algorithms, autonomous vehicle technology, and biotech research.

Your defense attorney might be excellent. But the prosecutor across the table has spent the last five years doing nothing but cases exactly like yours. They know every defense argument becuase they’ve heard it 50 times. They know which expert witnesses you’ll hire becuase those experts testified in there last 10 cases. They know what your going to say at your proffer meeting before you walk in the door.

Second, the conviction rate. Between 2022 and 2024, the Northern District of California convicted or obtained guilty pleas in 99.6% of cases that went to trial or plea. Only 4 out of approximately 1,000 defendants were acquitted. This isn’t becuase every defendant was guilty. Its becuase federal prosecutors don’t bring cases unless there confident they’ll win. By the time your indicted, they’ve already built there case. They’ve imaged your devices. They’ve reviewed your emails going back years. They’ve interviewed your coworkers, your friends, people you haven’t spoken to in a decade.

Now here’s were people make a critical mistake. They assume that becuase tech defendants have resources – high salaries, stock options, the ability to hire elite defense counsel – they have an advantage over regular criminal defendants. The opposite is actually true in the Northern District.

Anthony Levandowski, the former Google engineer at the center of the Uber-Waymo trade secret case, had some of the best defense attorneys money could buy. He still recieved 18 months in federal prison. And his case is instructive becuase there was no monetary loss. He didn’t sell secrets to China. He didn’t profit directly from the theft. He downloaded technical files related to self-driving car technology and took them to a new company. Pure knowledge transfer. 18 months.

Elizabeth Holmes spent over $100 million on her defense. Her legal team included some of the most experienced federal criminal defense attorneys in the country. She still recieved 11 years. Ramesh Balwani, with similarly elite representation, got 13 years.

The data shows that judges in the Northern District apply upward variance sentences – sentences above the guidelines range – to tech defendants approximately 40% more often then to defendants in comparable white-collar cases in other districts. The reason appears in sentencing transcripts again and again: “Given your education and the resources available to you, you should of known better.” Your PhD becomes an aggravating factor. Your Stanford degree becomes evidence of sophisticated criminal intent. The things you thought would help you at sentencing – your technical expertise, your educational background, your professional accomplishments – they work against you.

When Your PhD Becomes Exhibit A

Lets talk about how technical expertise gets weaponized in federal prosecutions. This is the thing that surprises tech defendants most.

In a trade secret theft case, the government has to prove you knew the information was proprietary and took it anyway. For someone without technical background, that’s actually hard to prove. But for someone with a PhD in computer science, or 15 years experience in semiconductor design, or deep expertise in machine learning algorithms? The prosecutor stands up and says: “Ladies and gentleman of the jury, the defendant has a doctorate from MIT. He published 47 papers on autonomous vehicle sensor fusion. He signed 14 different confidentiality agreements over his career. He took cybersecurity training every year. He knew exactly what he was doing.”

Your expertise eliminates any possible good faith defense. The more qualified you are, the more the prosecution can argue criminal intent. This is the paradox of Silicon Valley federal prosecutions. The very knowledge that made you valuable makes you vulnerable.

There’s a second issue that practitioners rarely discuss publicly but know well: jury composition. In voir dire – jury selection – for tech cases in the Northern District, you face an impossible dynamic. Potential jurors who work in tech understand the complexities of your case, the ambiguities of what constitutes a trade secret, the reality that people carry knowledge in there heads between jobs. But those jurors get struck for cause becuase they might have business relationships with the companies involved or work in the same industry. The jurors who make it through are the ones who don’t work in tech. And to them, your a rich software engineer who made more in a year then they’ll make in five, and you thought the rules didn’t apply to you.

Defense attorneys talk about this in private: the resentment is palpable. When your on trial in San Jose federal court for IP theft, and the jury includes a postal worker, a retired teacher, a construction contractor, and a grocery store manager, and your sitting there in your suit having just heard your salary was $350,000 base plus $200,000 in stock options – the prosecution doesn’t have to work very hard to make you unsympathetic.

One federal defender put it this way in a practitioner forum: “Your PhD makes the prosecution’s case. Your salary makes the jury want to convict you. And your confidence that you can explain the technical nuances makes you take the stand, which destroys any chance you had.”

The Security Clearance Guillotine

Here’s something that doesn’t appear in standard federal criminal defense content but devastates tech defendants who hold security clearances: the investigation itself ends your career, regardless of outcome.

If you hold a security clearance – and many Silicon Valley tech workers do, especially those working on defense contracts, aerospace technology, or dual-use export-controlled technology – the moment a federal investigation begins, your clearance gets suspended. Not when your charged. Not when your convicted. When the investigation starts.

The Security Clearance Adjudication Guidelines are explicit. Guideline E covers “Personal Conduct” and includes “criminal or dishonest conduct” even if no charges are filed. Guideline K covers “Handling Protected Information.” An investigation into potential trade secret theft, export control violations, or economic espionage triggers mandatory reporting requirements. Your security officer gets notified. Your clearance gets suspended pending investigation outcome.

But here’s the trap. If your job requires an active clearance, you can’t perform your job functions without it. Your employer has no choice but to place you on administrative leave or terminate your employment. This happens months or even years before trial. Before your convicted of anything. Before your even charged in many cases.

The consequence cascade looks like this:

• Former employer files trade secret complaint
• FBI opens investigation
• Current employer learns about investigation (becuase FBI interviews them)
• Security clearance automatically suspended
• Employer places you on administrative leave
• You can’t do your job
• Forced resignation
• Now your unemployed with mounting legal bills and no income
• And the case hasn’t even been filed yet

There’s a second element that practitioners know but rarely discuss: company cooperation. By the time you learn your under investigation, your employer has often already sent a cooperation letter to the Department of Justice. They’ve turned over your emails, your access logs, your download history, internal communications about you. They’ve provided witness interviews with your coworkers. They’ve done this to avoid corporate prosecution – to show they have robust compliance programs and take immediate action against wrongdoing.

You think your employer will support you. What actually happens is your employer becomes the prosecution’s star witness against you. And they did this before you even knew you needed a lawyer.

The Theranos Shadow: How Everything Changed After 2023

If your a startup founder or executive in Silicon Valley, you need to understand how the Theranos prosecutions fundamentally changed federal enforcement.

Elizabeth Holmes was convicted in January 2022 and sentenced to 11 years in November 2022. Ramesh Balwani was convicted in July 2022 and sentenced to 13 years in December 2022. These weren’t slap-on-the-wrist sentences. These weren’t probation or home confinement. Elizabeth Holmes, a Stanford dropout who became the youngest self-made female billionaire, is currently serving 11 years in federal prison.

The prosecution theory was straightforward: Holmes and Balwani made false statements to investors about Theranos’s technology capabilities, revenue projections, and partnerships. They knew the blood testing technology didn’t work as advertised. They told investors it did. Wire fraud. Multiple counts becuase each email, each pitch deck, each investor call was a separate act of fraud.

Here’s what changed after those convictions: every federal prosecutor in the Northern District now sees startup fraud cases through the Theranos lens. The “everybody does it” defense – that startup founders routinely make optimistic projections, that exaggeration is part of fundraising culture, that investors do there own due diligence – that defense died with the Theranos verdict.

Data from the Northern District shows that startup fraud prosecutions increased 340% between 2023 and 2024 compared to the previous two-year period. DOJ press releases from the Northern District now explicitly reference Theranos in unrelated cases. The message is clear: we’re watching, and we’re willing to prosecute.

The prosecutorial theory has expanded. It used to be that securities fraud cases required proof of intentional deception for personal gain. Post-Theranos, prosecutors argue that any material misrepresentation to investors – even if you believed it at the time, even if you were working 100 hours a week trying to make it true, even if you didn’t personally profit – constitutes wire fraud if transmitted electronically.

For startup founders, this creates an impossible situation. The entire Silicon Valley funding model is built on optimism. Your raising money for something that doesn’t exist yet. Your projecting revenue for a product that’s still in development. Your telling investors you’ll achieve things that require everything to go right. Where’s the line between optimism and fraud? Post-Theranos, prosecutors argue there is no line. If it doesn’t happen, and they can show you knew it probably wouldn’t happen, that’s wire fraud.

Every email you sent to investors. Every pitch deck you presented. Every projection you made. Each one is potentially a separate count of wire fraud. Twenty years maximum per count. Do the math.

H-1B Fraud: The Immigration Trap

For foreign nationals working in Silicon Valley on H-1B visas, federal criminal exposure creates a unique nightmare becuase criminal charges trigger immigration consequences that destroy your ability to defend yourself.

The H-1B visa program allows US companies to employ foreign workers in specialty occupations. Silicon Valley runs on H-1B workers – engineers, researchers, data scientists. But there’s a trap that combines criminal prosecution with immigration enforcement in ways that make defense nearly impossible.

Here’s how it works. If the government alleges that your employer misrepresented your job duties on the H-1B petition – maybe they said you’d be doing advanced research but you were actually doing routine coding, or they claimed you’d be based in San Jose but you were working remotely from India for months at a time – that’s H-1B fraud. The statute is 18 USC 1546, visa fraud, which carries a maximum of 25 years.

But here’s the cascade. The moment USCIS suspects fraud, they can revoke your H-1B visa. You then have 60 days to leave the country or transfer to another visa status. But if your under criminal investigation, no other employer will sponsor you for a new H-1B. You can’t get a tourist visa becuase you have pending criminal issues. You can’t stay becuase your visa is revoked. So you leave the country.

Now your outside the United States trying to defend yourself in a US federal criminal case. You can’t meet with your attorney in person. You can’t appear at hearings. If you try to enter the country for court proceedings, you’ll be arrested at the airport. If you don’t appear, the case proceeds in your absence. Conviction in absentia. Sentencing in absentia. Then you have a federal felony conviction on your record, which means you can never get a visa to return.

The Northern District of California prosecuted H-1B fraud cases at rates approximately 800% higher then comparable districts between 2019 and 2024. This isn’t becuase Silicon Valley has more fraud. Its becuase the Northern District works closely with ICE and USCIS to identify cases. The partnership between DOJ and immigration enforcement is tighter in San Jose then anywhere else in the country.

For H-1B workers, the advice is brutal: if federal agents want to interview you about visa fraud, and you answer there questions before talking to both a criminal defense attorney AND an immigration attorney, you’ve likely destroyed both your criminal defense and your immigration status. The Fifth Amendment gives you the right to remain silent. But if you invoke it during a USCIS interview, that refusal to answer questions can be used as grounds to deny your visa petition. Your trapped between immigration law that punishes silence and criminal law where speaking destroys your defense.

What Actually Works in Silicon Valley Federal Court

After everything I’ve described – the specialized prosecution units, the 99.6% conviction rate, the security clearance guillotine, the post-Theranos enforcement mentality, the H-1B trap – you might be wondering what a federal criminal defense attorney can actually do. Here’s the honest answer.

First, early intervention matters more in the Northern District then almost anywhere else. If your being investigated but haven’t been charged yet, an experienced federal attorney can sometimes prevent charges from being filed. They can communicate with prosecutors, present mitigating evidence, explain technical context that investigators might misunderstand. They can negotiate what’s called a declination – a decision not to prosecute. But this only works before indictment. Once your charged, the government has committed. There not backing down.

Second, cooperation is often the only realistic path to avoiding devastating sentences, but it has to be done correctly. The federal system offers sentence reductions for substantial assistance through what’s called a 5K1.1 motion. If you provide information that helps the government prosecute others, your sentence can be reduced significantly – sometimes from 20 years to 5 years, or from 10 years to probation.

But cooperation is a bet-everything strategy. You have to proffer first – tell prosecutors everything you know in a meeting were your statements are “off the record” but can be used against you in specific circumstances. If you proffer and then decide not to cooperate, or if your information turns out to be less valuable then the government expected, or if you fail a polygraph, you’ve made your situation dramatically worse. You’ve given them your entire defense strategy. You’ve locked yourself into a version of events that you can’t change later. If you misremember a detail – and under stress, people misremember things – that becomes a “lie” that destroys your credibility.

Never proffer without first understanding exactly what the government has against you, what information you can realistically provide, and what the cooperation would actually require over potentially years of follow-up.

Third, sentencing mitigation becomes critical. Even if your convicted – and in the Northern District, that’s the likely outcome – the difference between a guidelines sentence and an upward variance can be 5-10 years of your life. Federal sentencing in tech cases involves complex calculations: base offense level, specific offense characteristics for abuse of trust or sophisticated means, adjustments for role in the offense, criminal history, acceptance of responsibility.

An experienced attorney understands how to argue for downward departures. They know how to present your technical expertise as a mitigating factor rather then an aggravating one. They know which judges in the Northern District are more sympathetic to certain arguments. They know how to structure a sentencing memorandum that acknowledges wrongdoing while humanizing you to the court.

Fourth, understanding the specific charges matters enormously. Trade secret theft under the Economic Espionage Act (18 USC 1832) carries different guidelines then wire fraud (18 USC 1343) which carries different guidelines then visa fraud (18 USC 1546). Whether the government charges you with one count or multiple counts, whether they add conspiracy charges, whether they pursue enhancements for national security implications – these decisions happen in the charging phase, often before you even know your a target.

Todd Spodek and the team at Spodek Law Group have represented clients in complex federal cases across the country, including technology-related prosecutions in the Northern District of California. We understand that federal defense in Silicon Valley isn’t about explaining away misunderstandings. Its about realistic assessment of the governments case, strategic decisions about cooperation, and aggressive sentencing advocacy when conviction is inevitable.

If your facing federal charges in the Northern District of California – or if federal agents have contacted you and charges seem likely – the worst thing you can do is assume you can talk your way out of this. Your technical expertise won’t save you. Your documentation won’t save you. Your belief that you didn’t do anything wrong won’t save you. What might save you is an attorney who understands how federal prosecution works in San Jose, who knows the prosecutors in the Northern District, who’s appeared before these judges, and who can tell you the truth about your options even when that truth is uncomfortable.

Call 212-300-5196 for a consultation. We’ll give you an honest assessment of were you stand and what your realistic paths forward actually are. This is serious. The Northern District of California doesn’t play games. Neither should you.