Criminal Defense Lawyers

Massachusetts Federal Criminal Defense Lawyers

Massachusetts Federal Criminal Defense Lawyers

Welcome to Spodek Law Group. Our mission is giving you the truth about federal criminal defense in Massachusetts – not the version that makes you feel better, but the reality that might save your life. What you need to understand about the District of Massachusetts is this: federal prosecutors here don’t just enforce the law. They redefine it. They take routine business practices – college consulting payments, healthcare billing patterns, investor communications – and transform them into federal crimes through legal theories that other districts won’t touch. By the time you realize your compliance efforts are being reframed as a criminal conspiracy, the investigation has been running for years and the evidence is already built. That’s not a warning. It’s the operating reality of federal prosecution in Boston.

Here’s what makes Massachusetts different from the other 93 federal districts. The US Attorney’s Office in Boston has produced federal judges, law school deans, and Supreme Court clerks. These aren’t just prosecutors – there legal theorists with career ambitions that require landmark cases. The college admissions scandal wasnt about catching rich parents who cheated. It was about a US Attorney using a novel application of honest services fraud to make national news and build a judicial resume. The legal theory – that paying a consultant who lies to a university is wire fraud – had never been used that way before. And when appellate courts started overturning those convictions, it proved what defense attorneys already knew: the prosecution came first, the legal justification came second. If your dealing with federal charges in Massachusetts, understand that your not just fighting the facts. Your fighting prosecutors who see there careers advanced by expanding federal criminal law into areas it hasnt reached before.

Massachusetts has some of the best law schools in the world teaching constitutional criminal procedure. It also has federal prosecutors who those same professors say are pushing the boundaries of due process. Thats not a contradiction – its the paradox of practicing in a jurisdiction were innovation happens through prosecution instead of legislation. The question isnt whether you did something wrong. The question is whether what you did becomes a federal crime after prosecutors decide to charge you.

The District That Writes Law Through Prosecution

Federal criminal statutes are written with broad language. Wire fraud under 18 USC 1343 prohibits any “scheme to defraud” using interstate communications. Mail fraud is the same concept using postal service. Honest services fraud under 18 USC 1346 makes it a crime to deprive someone of “the intangible right of honest services.” Read those statutes and try to figure out exactly what conduct is criminal. You cant, because the language is intentionally vague. Congress writes fraud statutes broadly to give prosecutors flexibility to address new types of fraudulent schemes that the drafters couldnt forsee.

In most federal districts, prosecutors use this flexibility conservatively. They charge wire fraud when someone actually stole money using email or phone calls. They charge mail fraud when someone ran a Ponzi scheme through the mail. The discretion exists, but its used to prosecute conduct that everyone agrees is criminal – just using modern technology that didnt exist when the statutes were written.

Massachusetts prosecutors see those same broad statutes as permission to test legal theories that redefine what fraud means. If you pay a college consultant $500,000 to help your kid get into Stanford, is that wire fraud? Not if the consultant provides real services. But what if the consultant lies to Stanford on your behalf without you knowing the details? In 48 other states, thats the consultants crime, not yours. In Massachusetts, prosecutors argued that your payment was part of a “conspiracy to defraud” Stanford of its right to “honest” admissions decisions. That theory – extending honest services fraud to private university admissions – was novel. It had never been prosecuted that way. And appellate courts later said it was invalid in many cases. But by then, 29 parents had pled guilty or been convicted, spent millions on legal defense, and some had served federal prison time for a crime that higher courts said didnt exist under the statute.

The statute means whatever the prosecutor says it means, and you wont know if there interpretation is valid until after your convicted and an appellate court weighs in years later. Thats the reality of prosecutorial discretion in a district that views novel theories as career opportunities.

Why Massachusetts Prosecutors Are Different

Look at the career trajectory of US Attorneys who’ve served in Massachusetts. They dont just go into private practice after goverment service. They become federal judges. They join law school faculties. They get appointed to senior DOJ positions in Washington. The pathway from Massachusetts US Attorney to the federal bench is well-established, and it requires a certain type of resume: high-profile prosecutions that make national news and establish new legal precedent.

The college admissions scandal – Operation Varsity Blues – is the perfect example. In March 2019, federal prosecutors in Boston indicted 50 people including actresses Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman. The media coverage was instant and massive. The US Attorney at the time became a national figure overnight. The legal theory was complicated – honest services fraud combined with conspiracy and money laundering – but the narrative was simple: rich people buying there way into college while deserving poor kids got rejected. Morally, it was easy to sell. Legally, it was shaky.

Heres what happened on appeal. In 2023 and 2024, multiple defendants successfully challenged there convictions. The First Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the “honest services fraud” theory didnt apply to the admissions scheme because the parents didnt bribe university employees to violate fiduciary duties owed to the university – they bribed a consultant who lied to the university. Thats a critical legal distinction, and it meant the entire prosecution theory collapsed for some defendants. There convictions were overturned. But the damage was done. Those defendants had already spent years in legal limbo, millions on defense attorneys, and in some cases had served federal prison sentences.

Why did prosecutors bring charges using a legal theory that wasnt clearly supported by statute? Because in the District of Massachusetts, the prosecutorial culture rewards innovation. Prosecutors who expand the reach of federal criminal law get promoted. Prosecutors who play it safe and only charge obvious cases dont make partner at white-shoe firms or get nominated to federal judgeships. The incentive structure pushes toward aggressive novel theories, not conservative restraint.

And its not just college admissions. After Varsity Blues, prosecutors started applying similar honest services theories to other contexts. Corporate hiring practices. Athletic recruiting. Scholarship decisions. The theory metastasizes because once one prosecutor succeeds in getting a conviction using a novel approach, others adopt it. The District of Massachusetts becomes a testing ground for legal theories that eventually spread to other jurisdictions – or get rejected by appellate courts and disappear. Either way, your the test case.

The College Admissions Trap: Inventing Federal Crimes

Lets break down exactly what the college admissions parents were charged with, because it reveals how prosecutors reframe conduct as federal crimes retroactively.

The facts: Parents hired a consultant named Rick Singer who ran a college prep business. Singer told parents he could get there kids into elite universities through “side door” admissions – not the front door of legitimate applications, and not the back door of multimillion-dollar donations, but a side door involving athletic recruitment fraud and test-taking fraud. Parents paid Singer between $200,000 and $6.5 million. Singer used some of that money to bribe SAT/ACT proctors to correct students answers, and to bribe college coaches to designate students as athletic recruits even though they didnt play those sports.

The parents knew they were paying for an advantage. Most didnt know the specific mechanisms Singer was using. They thought they were paying a consultant for legitimate “college counseling” services that happened to be very effective. Some parents were more involved in the details of the scheme and clearly knew it was fraudulent. Others were told vague stories about “donations” and “helping the athletic program” and didnt ask followup questions because they didnt want to know.

Federal prosecutors charged all of them with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and honest services fraud. The theory: by paying Singer, who then bribed university employees, the parents were depriving the universities of the “honest services” of those employees. Under 18 USC 1346, depriving someone of honest services through fraud is a federal crime.

Heres the problem with that theory. Honest services fraud was originally designed to prosecute public corruption – politicians taking bribes, government employees steering contracts to friends. It was later extended to private sector employees who have fiduciary duties to there employers. But the parents werent bribing university employees directly. They were paying a consultant who then bribed employees. Does that make the parents part of the honest services fraud? The statute dosent clearly say.

Some prosecutors defended the charges: “The parents cheated. They deserve punishment. Were just using the tools Congress gave us.” Thats the moral argument. But federal criminal law isnt supposed to be based on “this feels wrong so we’ll find a statute that might apply.” Its supposed to be based on conduct that clearly violates a specific statute. The question isnt whether the parents were wrong. The question is whether there wrongness was a federal crime before prosecutors decided it was.

The appellate courts answered that question in some cases: no. The First Circuit overturned convictions for parents who were less directly involved in the bribery scheme, ruling that the honest services fraud theory didnt extend to there conduct. But other parents – who pled guilty early to avoid trial – are still convicted felons based on a legal theory that higher courts later rejected. They cant appeal because they waived there appellate rights in plea agreements.

If you think this is just about rich people who could afford expensive lawyers, your missing the broader principle. The same prosecutorial approach applies to healthcare providers billing Medicare, corporate executives making financial disclosures, and anyone else who’s conduct can be reframed through the lens of federal fraud statutes. Massachusetts prosecutors didnt just charge the college parents. They established a template: find conduct that seems morally wrong, identify a broad federal statute that might apply, charge conspiracy to give yourself extra leverage, and let the courts sort it out years later. By then, most defendants have already pled guilty to avoid the risk of trial.

Healthcare Fraud: When Your Billing Software Becomes Your Indictment

Massachusetts has the highest concentration of healthcare providers per capita in the country. Boston is a medical hub – teaching hospitals, research institutions, specialty clinics. Its also home to one of the most aggressive Medicare Fraud Strike Force operations in the nation. Thats not a coincidence. Its a target-rich environment.

The Medicare Fraud Strike Force dosent just investigate complaints. They run statistical algorithms analyzing billing patterns across all providers in a given specialty. If your billing is more than two standard deviations from the mean for your specialty, you get flagged for investigation. You dont have to bill for services you didnt provide. You dont have to intentionally defraud Medicare. You just have to have billing patterns that a computer algorithm identifies as “outliers.”

Heres why that should terrify any healthcare provider in Massachusetts. Standard deviation analysis dosent account for patient population differences. If your practice treats sicker patients than average, your billing will naturally be higher. If you practice in a specialty with high variability in treatment intensity – oncology, cardiology, pain management – your billing might be all over the statistical map. The algorithm dosent care. It flags you as suspicious, and then human investigators start looking for intent to defraud.

Once your under investigation, everything you did becomes evidence of fraud:

• You followed your billing software’s recommendations? Thats “relying on automation to conceal fraud.”
• You hired a compliance consultant? Thats “sophisticated knowledge of healthcare billing rules proving you knew you were breaking them.”
• You billed for services that Medicare guidelines say are reimbursable? If prosecutors decide those services werent “medically necessary,” your billing becomes fraud.

Medical necessity is a judgment call. Prosecutors make it retroactively, looking at charts from three years ago, and any service they question becomes potential fraud.

The numbers are staggering. In fiscal year 2023, the Medicare Fraud Strike Force charged over 200 defendants nationwide, with a significant concentration in Massachusetts and Southern Florida. The cases involve hundreds of millions of dollars in alleged fraud. But heres the part that doesnt make headlines: many of those providers thought they were billing correctly. They followed industry standards. They hired compliance staff. They used certified billing software. And they still got charged with federal healthcare fraud.

If your a healthcare provider in Massachusetts billing Medicare, theres a non-zero chance your already under federal investigation and dont know it. The investigation can run for three to five years before you recieve a target letter. By the time you know, prosecutors have analyzed years of billing data, interviewed your staff, talked to patients, and built there case. The first conversation you have with your attorney is about damage control, not prevention.

Even if you win at trial – and acquittal rates in federal court are under 1% – the process destroys you. Your medical license gets suspended pending the criminal case. Your hospital privileges are revoked. Your Medicare billing number is frozen, which means you cant bill for any services, which means your practice revenue goes to zero. Your malpractice insurance gets cancelled because insurers wont cover physicians under federal indictment. You spend $500,000 to $2 million on legal defense. And even if the jury says “not guilty,” you’ve lost your practice, your savings, and years of your life.

The process is the punishment. Thats the reality of healthcare fraud prosecution in Massachusetts. The legal question – did you actually intend to defraud Medicare? – becomes irrelevant because the investigation and indictment destroy your career regardless of the verdict.

The Investigation You Don’t Know Is Happening

Federal investigations are designed to be invisible to the target until prosecutors are ready to strike. Heres how it works in Massachusetts.

Phase 1: Preliminary Investigation

FBI or IRS agents start gathering publicly available information. If your a business owner, they pull incorporation documents, tax filings, SEC disclosures. If your a healthcare provider, they pull Medicare billing data. This happens without warrants because its all public record. You have no idea its happening.

Phase 2: Grand Jury Investigation

Prosecutors convene a grand jury and start issuing subpoenas. They subpoena your bank records, your email provider, your business partners, your employees. Grand jury subpoenas are secret – the people who recieve them are legally prohibited from telling you. Your own employees can be testifying against you and you dont know. This phase can last years.

Phase 3: Witness Interviews

FBI agents start showing up at peoples homes and offices asking questions. Sometimes they talk to your colleagues and competitors. Sometimes they talk to your family members. Sometimes they show up at your office pretending to be routine investigators, asking “a few questions” about industry practices. If you talk to them without an attorney, everything you say gets memorialized in an FD-302 report. Any inconsistency between what you say and what your emails show becomes evidence of “false statements” under 18 USC 1001. You thought you were being cooperative. You were actually building the case against yourself.

Phase 4: Target Letter

After years of investigation, you recieve a letter from the US Attorneys Office informing you that your a target of a federal criminal investigation. The letter usually gives you 30-45 days to respond before the grand jury votes on an indictment. That sounds like an opportunity to defend yourself. Its not. Its an opportunity to incriminate yourself in a “proffer session” were you tell prosecutors everything you know in exchange for a promise that they wont use your exact words against you at trial – but they can use everything you say to find other evidence against you, and if you misremember any detail, that becomes “lying to federal agents.”

By the time you get the target letter, the case is essentially built. Prosecutors have spent 2-3 years gathering evidence. They have every email, every bank record, every witness statement. They know more about your business than you do because theyve analyzed it forensically. Defense attorneys in Massachusetts have a saying: “The charging document IS the trial.” Because by the time your indicted, prosecutors have already assembled the narrative, and your trial is about trying to explain away there interpretation of the evidence.

Heres the part that should keep you awake at night. You could be in Phase 2 or Phase 3 right now and not know it. If your a healthcare provider with unusual billing patterns, if your a corporate executive who’s company is under SEC investigation, if your involved in any business that could be reframed as fraud under a novel legal theory – there might be a grand jury sitting in Boston right now reviewing your records. And the first time you’ll know about it is when you get that target letter or, worse, when FBI agents knock on your door at 6am with an arrest warrant.

The investigation you dont know is happening is the one that destroys your defense. Because you cant defend against something you dont know exists, and by the time you know, its too late to prevent the charges.

What Actually Works Against Novel Theories

After everything Ive laid out – the prosecutorial innovation culture, the college admissions disaster, the healthcare fraud machine, the invisible investigations – you might be wondering what defense actually looks like in this environment.

First, early intervention matters more in Massachusetts than in any other federal district. If your being investigated but havent been charged yet, an experienced federal defense attorney can sometimes prevent charges from being filed. This requires knowing when your under investigation (which is why any contact from federal agents should trigger an immediate call to counsel), understanding the specific legal theory prosecutors are considering, and presenting compelling reasons why that theory dosent fit the facts or the law. Once your indicted, your negotiating power drops dramatically.

Todd Spodek and the attorneys at Spodek Law Group have defended clients in federal courts across the country, including complex white-collar cases in the District of Massachusetts. We understand that federal defense in Boston isnt about dramatic courtroom speeches. Its about recognizing when prosecutors are testing a novel legal theory, knowing which appellate precedents undermine that theory, and positioning your case to either force dismissal or create grounds for appeal. The college admissions cases that got overturned on appeal didnt win because of passionate closing arguments. They won because defense attorneys identified the specific legal weakness in the honest services fraud theory and preserved that issue for appellate review.

Second, understanding the district and the prosecutors matters. What works in the Southern District of New York might not work in Massachusetts. The Assistant US Attorneys handling cases here have different incentive structures and different risk tolerances. An attorney who’s appeared before the specific judge assigned to your case, who understands how the local magistrate judges handle detention hearings, who knows which prosecutors are willing to negotiate and which see every case as a vehicle for making new law – that institutional knowledge is critical.

Third, if cooperation is on the table, timing and strategy are everything. Massachusetts prosecutors value cooperation that helps them build bigger cases against more significant targets. But proffer sessions are incredibly dangerous if done wrong. You need to know exactly what evidence the goverment has before you proffer, because if you say anything inconsistent with there evidence, you’ve given them an obstruction case. You need to know what information you have thats actually valuable – prosecutors dont give cooperation credit for telling them things they already know. And you need to understand that once you start cooperating, your committed. You cant change your mind halfway through without making everything worse.

Fourth, challenging the legal theory directly – before trial – is sometimes the only winning strategy. If prosecutors are charging you under a novel application of wire fraud or honest services fraud, the motion to dismiss becomes your most important filing. You need to identify the appellate precedents that limit the statutes reach, show why your conduct dosent fit within established interpretations, and force the court to rule on the theory before trial. Sometimes judges will dismiss cases pretrial if the legal theory is too much of a stretch. More often, they let the case go to trial and leave it for the appellate courts to sort out – which is why preserving issues for appeal is critical even if you lose at trial.

Fifth, understand that in Massachusetts federal court, the process itself is part of the punishment. Even if you ultimately win, the investigation and prosecution will cost you financially, professionally, and personally. Asset freezes can shut down your business before trial. Pretrial detention – if the goverment argues your a flight risk or danger to the community – can last months or years before trial. Professional licenses get suspended. Reputation gets destroyed. Strategically, this means that for some defendants, negotiating a plea to reduced charges is the least-bad option even when you have viable defenses, because the alternative is years of litigation and destruction regardless of the outcome.

The brutal truth about federal defense in Massachusetts is that the system is designed to extract guilty pleas. The conviction rate – including pleas – is over 99%. Trials are rare, and acquittals are rarer. The leverage prosecutors have – mandatory minimums, sentencing guidelines, asset forfeiture, pretrial detention – makes fighting incredibly costly. But some cases need to be fought. Cases based on novel legal theories that are likely to be overturned on appeal. Cases were the evidence of intent is weak. Cases were the government’s theory requires twisting the statute beyond recognition.

If your facing federal charges in Massachusetts, or if youve been contacted by federal agents and charges seem likely, you need an attorney who understands this specific district’s prosecution culture. Not a state court criminal attorney who handles DUIs. Not a general practice attorney who did one federal case five years ago. You need someone who knows that Massachusetts prosecutors view novel theories as career opportunities, who understands which legal theories are vulnerable on appeal, and who can recognize when your being used as a test case for expanding federal criminal law.

Call Spodek Law Group at 212-300-5196 for a consultation. We’ll give you an honest assessment of were you stand, what the governments likely theory is, and what your realistic options are. Federal prosecution in Massachusetts is different from everywhere else. Your defense needs to account for that difference from day one.