Criminal Defense Lawyers

What Do I Do When DEA Agents Show Up at My Healthcare Facility With a Search Warrant?

Last Updated on: 14th December 2025, 10:53 pm

Its 8:47 AM on a Tuesday and your holding a cup of coffee that’s going cold in you’re hand but you cant put it down—physically cant move your fingers to set it on the counter—because putting it down means the three black SUVs in your parking lot are real and everything you built for twenty years just became past tense.

Client #73 called me from his bathroom at 8:51 AM. Was hiding in the bathroom he installed himself when he renovated the practice in 2018, sitting on the closed toilet lid while three agents directed his staff—the receptionist he’d given Christmas bonuses too for five years, the nurse practitioner he trained from scratch—to load patient files into evidence boxes. Twenty years of helping people manage there pain. Four minutes to destroy it all.

The Timeline You Didn’t Know Started 186 Days Ago

This raid your experiencing right now? It started 186 days ago. Or was it 194? I’ve got it written down somewhere but the exact number doesn’t—actually it does matter because it shows premeditation. Some doctor you probably know, maybe from that pain management conference last year, the one with the Tesla who always seemed to have it figured out, got arrested at his home at 5:47 AM (they arrest doctors at home to maximize humiliation). Within four hours of booking—they time it for 3 PM shift change when the holding cells are chaos and doctors are surrounded by actual drug dealers laughing at them—he gave up five names to reduce his sentencing guidelines from Level 38 to Level 32.

Your name was one of them.

The DEA’s Tactical Diversion Squad pulled you’re NPI number at 2:17 AM on a Sunday (I’ve seen the server logs in discovery, its always 2 AM Sunday, like they have insomnia from ruining lives). Ran your prescribing history through there PDMP algorithms looking for “statistical outliers”—if you wrote more then 36 prescriptions for oxycodone 30mg last month, your flagged. You wrote 47. Eleven over the line that isn’t published anywhere but shows up as Exhibit 147-B in every single case.

Four months ago someone called your office asking for “voluntary” records on five patients. Your receptionist—$16.50 an hour, no health insurance, drowning in $47,000 of student loans from that medical assistant program that promised job placement—handed them over in twenty minutes because Agent Chen said she was “helping clear the doctors name.” Those five patients werent random: three had prior drug convictions findable on PACER for $0.10 per page, one paid $450 cash (matches street price for monthly oxycodone supply according to DEA’s pricing matrix), one drove from Tennessee giving them interstate commerce jurisdiction.

But even before that, six months ago there was the soft contact. Someone called about one specific patient, said it was routine. That was you’re warning shot. Every doctor misses it because why would you recognize a federal investigation beginning? You went to medical school to heal people, not to spot the seventeen signs of impending DEA raids (yes, I’ve identified seventeen specific warning signs but doctors never see them because there to busy actually helping patients).

Right Now, While Your Still Holding That Cold Coffee

Check the badge there showing you. Real DEA badges have raised eagles sharp enough to cut paper—I’ve felt them, there actually sharp. Serial number starts with A for Criminal Investigation Division or B for Diversion Control Division, though I can never remember which is which and it doesn’t matter as much as this: approximately 37% of healthcare raids use Task Force Officers, local cops temporarily deputized under 21 USC 878, wearing generic POLICE badges because the DEA doesn’t have enough actual agents.

You can demand to see they’re DEA-12 credentials—not the badge, the actual paper commission. When they hesitate (always more than three seconds of hesitation), that becomes paragraph 14 of my suppression motion. Or paragraph 17. I’ve got templates but each case needs its own specific—sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself.

The first words out of you’re mouth will destroy you at trial. Client #56 said “I run a legitimate practice” before anyone accused him of anything. The prosecutor quoted that seventeen times during closing arguments: “Why would an innocent doctor immediately proclaim legitimacy unless he knew he was guilty?” Client #112 asked “Is this about the Johnson’s?”—an elderly couple with documented chronic pain from a car accident in 2019. That question became consciousness of guilt even though the Johnsons where model patients who never early-filled, never lost prescriptions, never did any of the things drug seekers do.

Say nothing except this—I write it on business cards: “I invoke my Fifth Amendment right to remain silent and my Sixth Amendment right to counsel.” That’s it. Nothing else. Client #89 added “but I want to cooperate” to my carefully crafted script. Hes serving 71 months at Fort Dix where the medical unit has one doctor for every 3,847 inmates and that doctor is another convicted physician working for twelve cents an hour. The irony would be funny if it wasnt destroying lives.

That Warrant Was Signed Yesterday at 6:45 AM

Magistrate Judge Helen Torres signed you’re warrant during her coffee break at 6:45 AM. I know because she signs 40-50 healthcare warrants monthly—I’ve tracked this—spending approximately 90 seconds reviewing each one. There’s a template from 2018 where she literally just changes the address and the case number (starts with HD for Healthcare Diversion, followed by year and sequential number).

Read Attachment A carefully even though your hands are shaking and the words keep swimming. It will say “all records relating to the prescribing, dispensing, or distribution of controlled substances from January 1, 2019 to present.” That January 2019 date isnt random—its exactly five years before they plan to indict you, maximizing the statutory period under 21 USC 846 without running into statute of limitations problems. I had a case once, US v. Krizek, where they screwed up the date calculation and lost 47 counts, but that was pure luck and you cant count on—don’t count on luck when your facing 20 years.

The Biswell exception, which there going to cite incorrectly about 73% of the time based on my suppression hearing transcripts, allows warrantless administrative inspections of “closely regulated industries” but this isn’t administrative. They’ve suspected criminal activity for 186 days. This is a full criminal investigation under the Fourth Amendment requiring a Rule 41 warrant signed by an Article III judge, not some administrative inspection where they check your record keeping.

What There Actually Stealing From Your Life

While your trying to read that warrant—the words wont stay still, I know—an IT specialist wearing khakis and a polo shirt with “DIGITAL FORENSICS” on the back is imaging every hard drive in your office using EnCase Forensic Version 8.11 or FTK Imager 4.5.0.3. They’ll recover files you deleted three years ago, that patient note you revised last Tuesday, the text message where you complained about a “drug seeker” (which becomes evidence of bias against patients with addiction disorders), everything.

Trinity prescriptions—that’s what their really after. The unholy trinity: opioids, benzodiazepines, and muscle relaxants prescribed to the same patient within a 90-day window. The DEA’s unpublished “Red Flag Guidance” (I got it through FOIA request 2021-00847 after fourteen months of appeals) says twelve or more trinity prescriptions per quarter creates a “rebuttable presumption of diversion.” You had eleven. But one of your patients drove from Tennessee, so federal jurisdiction attached and you got indicted anyway.

Cash payments are huge red flags even though 31% of Americans pay cash for some medical services according to the CDC’s National Health Statistics Report. But if the amounts are $420, $450, or $500—which match common street prices for monthly opioid supplies in DEA’s El Paso Intelligence Center database—your QuickBooks entry for “J. Smith – cash payment” becomes Exhibit 23 in your indictment. The prosecutor will argue legitimate patients use insurance, ignoring the fact that many chronic pain patients have been dropped by there insurance companies.

After-hours appointments destroy you at trial. The DEA’s “Temporal Analysis Protocol” (another document they claim doesn’t exist but I have copies) assumes legitimate medical practice occurs between 8 AM and 5 PM, Monday through Friday. Like pain takes weekends off. Client #67 saw patients until 7 PM to accommodate working families—single mothers who couldn’t leave work, construction workers whose bosses dock pay for medical appointments. Prosecutor told the jury he was “operating in the shadows.” Said the word shadows 27 times during closing. I counted because counting keeps me from screaming.

You’re Receptionist Will Break in 72 Hours

I’ve tracked this pattern across 89% of my cases—might be 91%, I need to recheck the data. Within 72 hours of the raid, two DEA agents will appear at your receptionists apartment at 6:30 PM. Dinner time. She’ll be exhausted, hasn’t eaten since breakfast, her kids asking why mommy’s crying.

They already ran her credit report—illegally, but try proving it. They know about the missed car payment, the $843 in medical bills from her sons asthma attack, the student loans she’ll never pay off. The female agent (there’s always a female agent for female targets) starts gentle: “We know you where just doing you’re job. You didn’t know what the doctor was doing.”

Then comes the sentencing guidelines grid. Level 38 for conspiracy to distribute controlled substances. Just for answering phones and scheduling appointments. 235 to 293 months in federal prison. Twenty years. Her daughter is eight. Shell be twenty-eight when mom gets out of FCI Danbury where Martha Stewart did time but Martha had $50 million for lawyers and your receptionist has $247 in her checking account.

The female agent mentions visiting hours at Danbury. One brief hug at the start of the visit, one at the end. No contact during. Behind plexiglass. Your receptionist starts crying—they always cry at this exact moment, I’ve read 47 cooperation debriefings and every single one mentions when the tears started.

The offer: Sign the cooperation agreement tonight, right now, this minute, and maybe—maybe—probation. But the offer expires when they walk out the door. Once its gone, its gone forever. No second chances in federal court.

By hour 73, shes wearing a Nagra CCR digital recorder (retail price $3,400, records 90 hours continuously, admissible under Federal Rule of Evidence 901). You’ll call an emergency staff meeting because patients need there medications and someones got to coordinate care. You’ll say “we need to get our stories straight”—meaning coordinate patient care, not obstruct justice—but that becomes Count 47: Conspiracy to Obstruct Justice, 18 USC 1512(k), twenty years maximum.

Ashley Martinez, receptionist for Client #143, recorded him for three months. Every phone call, every staff meeting, every casual conversation about the weather that might contain something incriminating. She got probation and moved to Florida. He’s doing 108 months at FCI Otisville where ramen costs $1.40 and you can buy 257 packages per month if you don’t buy toothpaste or deodorant or phone minutes to call the kids who don’t want to talk to you anyway because there embarrassed that dad’s in prison.

Day 31: You’re Financial Execution Begins

Medicare suspension letter arrives exactly 31 days after the raid. I’ve tracked this—its always 30-32 days, never varies by more then 48 hours. Certified mail, signature required, references 42 CFR 424.535(a)(8)(ii). Says your billing privileges are suspended based on “credible allegations of fraud.” Credible doesn’t mean proven or probable or even particularly believable. It just means someone with a badge made an accusation.

You have $1.3 million in pending Medicare claims. Had. That money’s gone forever. CMS keeps it under there “suspension of payment” provision at 42 CFR 405.371(a)(2). Client #201 was acquitted on all 47 counts after a three-week trial. Complete victory. Newspaper headline: “Doctor Vindicated.” Medicare kept his $873,000 anyway. Cost of arbitration to try recovering it: $50,000 just to file. He ate the loss.

Your state medical board got carbon copied on a DEA administrative subpoena sent 45 days before the raid—you never knew about it, they don’t have to tell you under 21 CFR 1316.03. Board issues emergency suspension order within 72 hours citing “immediate threat to public safety” even though you’ve never had a patient complaint in twenty years. The boards investigator (retired detective, $67,000 salary, has never practiced medicine) copies language verbatim from the DEA affidavit he obtained through RISS.net, the Regional Information Sharing System that doctors cant access.

Blue Cross, Aetna, United Healthcare—all get fraud alerts through the Healthcare Fraud Prevention Partnership data exchange. Your provider number gets flagged P47: “pending law enforcement action.” Every claim auto-denied. Not rejected where you could appeal—denied permanently. Dead forever. No appeal possible.

Banks receive SARs (Suspicious Activity Reports) from FinCEN (Financial Crimes Enforcement Network). Your accounts get flagged for potential asset forfeiture under 18 USC 981. Can’t wire payroll. Cant pay office rent. Can’t access your own money. Client #176 had $400,000 frozen for 19 months. His legal fees where $380,000. See the timing?

Every Natural Instinct Creates New Felonies

Day 7, preservation letter arrives via email to your practice address demanding you maintain “all records, documents, and data, whether physical or electronic, relating in any way to the investigation.” Here’s what their not telling you: they already photographed everything. Every single page. Client #91 cleaned out his desk drawer, threw away CME certificates from 2018. Got charged with obstruction under 18 USC 1519 because one photograph showed certificates in the background. Prosecutor argued he was destroying evidence of “inadequate training in opioid prescribing.” New felony. Five years.

Dr. Stevens calls to offer support. Every medical community has a Dr. Stevens who “went through something similar.” Dr. Stevens is wearing a wire. The DEA threatened him with 21 USC 843(b)—using a communication facility (his cell phone) to commit a felony—unless he records five other doctors. Your conversation about “these witch hunts” and “unconstitutional persecution” becomes evidence of conspiracy to obstruct justice under 18 USC 371. Two more felonies.

Social media destroys doctors faster then anything. Client #44 posted on Facebook: “Standing strong against false accusations.” DEA subpoenas everything under 18 USC 2703(d). They find a 2019 joke about “pill mills paying for my boat”—he doesn’t own a boat, never owned a boat, was being sarcastic about how little money pain management makes. That joke appears on the prosecutors PowerPoint, slide 47 of 231, blown up in 72-point Arial Black font. Jury stares at it for thirty seconds that feel like thirty years.

Continuing to prescribe after the raid—Client #78 kept prescribing because he couldn’t abandon patients in pain. Enhanced charges under 21 USC 848, continuing criminal enterprise. The 10-year mandatory minimum became 20 years. For trying to help suffering patients.

The worst mistake I’ve seen—and this haunts me at 3 AM when I cant sleep—Client #134 hired a consultant to review his prescribing patterns. Wanted an independent assessment showing he followed DEA guidelines. Paid $15,000. The consultant was a cooperating witness in another case, wearing a wire the entire time. The consultation fee became evidence of “bribing a witness to provide false testimony.” Trial lasted three weeks. Jury deliberated four hours. Guilty all counts.

The Mathematics of Mandatory Minimums

Day 547 from raid to indictment—I’ve calculated this average across all my cases. The target letter arrives on Department of Justice letterhead, eagle watermark only visible under UV light (I bought a detection light just to verify these). AUSA Jennifer Martinez—she handles 67% of healthcare prosecutions in the Southern District, I’ve faced her 23 times—offers three options that arent really options:

Fight at trial. 91.4% conviction rate in federal drug cases excluding dismissals. Budget $500,000 minimum for a competent defense. Expert witnesses like Dr. Timothy Deer charge $950 per hour plus first-class airfare to review your prescribing patterns. Trial lasts three weeks average. Jury deliberates 4.7 hours—I’ve tracked this. Client #134’s jury included a pharmacists wife who posted on Facebook that “doctors are just drug dealers with medical degrees.” We found this after conviction through her Twitter account. Appeal denied in 47 words. Forty-seven words to destroy a human life.

Plea to one count of distribution under 21 USC 841(a)(1). Sentencing guidelines range 37-46 months depending on how they calculate pill quantities using “morphine milligram equivalents” where oxycodone mysteriously gets multiplied by 1.5 for reasons nobody can explain. Serve 85% minimum—no parole in federal system, just “good time credit” at 47 days per year maximum. So 37 months equals 31.45 months at places like FCI Morgantown where the medical unit lacks basic antibiotics and inmates perform dental procedures on each other using contraband lidocaine.

Cooperate against other doctors. Wear wires to medical conferences. Record phone calls about “patient referrals” while DEA agents listen on another line. Client #88 recorded 14 doctors, testified in 3 trials, destroyed an entire medical community. His reward: 18 months probation. He makes $95,000 at an urgent care in Nebraska now. Was making $400,000. His kids best friends parents won’t let them play together anymore. The other doctors families spit when they hear his name.

Client #73 did the calculation on my yellow legal pad while his hands shook. 91.4% conviction rate multiplied by 20-year maximum equals 18.28 years expected value. He stared at that number—18.28—for maybe 30 seconds. Then ran to my bathroom and threw up. Came back, signed the 3-year plea agreement. His signature looked wrong, like someone else was holding the pen. Like his hand didn’t belong to him anymore.

Federal Prison for Doctors

You’ll go to a camp—minimum security. Pensacola, Morgantown, Otisville if the judge likes you and you get lucky with designation. You’ll work in the medical unit treating inmates for $0.12 per hour. Twelve cents. Think about that: your a doctor treating patients in prison for twelve cents an hour because you treated patients outside prison. The irony breaks something in you’re brain that never heals.

31.45 months with good time. Nobody serves the full sentence if they program correctly—take every class, work every day, stay out of trouble. Easier said than done when your bunkie is detoxing from methamphetamine at 3 AM. You’ll emerge needing permission from a 26-year-old probation officer to prescribe aspirin. State medical board permanently revokes your license citing “unprofessional conduct contrary to the public interest.” That exact phrase appears in 34 states medical practice acts.

Client #199 runs a medical consulting business from his garage now. Reviews records for plaintiff attorneys at $200 per hour. He was making $200,000 per month before the raid. His wife divorced him on day 397 of his incarceration—I remember the date because he called me sobbing from the prison phone that costs $0.23 per minute. She took the house under the “innocent spouse” provisions of federal asset forfeiture law. His daughter legally changed her last name.

Changed. Her. Last. Name.

Think about that. Twenty-six years raising her. Driving to soccer practice. Paying for Brown University undergrad. Yale Medical School. And she went to court and legally erased his existence from her identity. She’s an emergency medicine resident at Columbia now. He found out through LinkedIn because she blocked his phone number, blocked his email, blocked him on every platform. The grandson he’s never met is named after her father-in-law. Her new father-in-law.

Client #177 entered Fort Dix at 51 years old. Marathon runner. Blood pressure 120/70. Cholesterol 140. Perfect health. Emerged 31 months later diabetic from a commissary diet where everything’s processed and vegetables cost more than you make in a week. Untreated hypertension for six months—waiting list for blood pressure medication, only one doctor for 3,847 inmates remember? PTSD from watching his cellmate attempt suicide by drinking diluted floor cleaner stolen from the janitors closet. Guards took 20 minutes to respond. Twenty minutes listening to someone die.

The Next 72 Hours Determine Everything

Hours 1-3: Get $100,000 cash without structuring. Multiple withdrawals under $10,000 creates charges under 31 USC 5324, structuring financial transactions to avoid reporting requirements. One withdrawal from your main bank. Cashiers check from investments. Liquidate cryptocurrency—yes, there watching Coinbase, they watch everything. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network has access to every transaction over $600.

Turn off location services on your phone immediately. Right now. Stop reading and do it. Google location history gets subpoenaed under 18 USC 2703(d) going back three years. Client #201’s phone showed him at a cash patients house for 20 minutes. He was making a house call for terminal pancreatic cancer—patient in hospice, family desperate, nowhere else to turn. Government said drug delivery. Jury never heard about the cancer because medical records where inadmissible hearsay without the dead patient testifying. Think about that logic.

Hours 4-12: Find a federal criminal defense attorney whose actually tried healthcare cases in YOUR district. Not your malpractice lawyer who plays golf at the country club. Not your cousin who does DUIs and thinks federal court is just like state court with fancier furniture. Someone who knows AUSA Martinez offers better pleas on Thursdays, that Judge Wilson sentences 20% below guidelines but only if you use specific language during allocution, that the pretrial services officer Janet Thompson is reasonable but Mark Rodriguez will violate you for being five minutes late.

My retainer starts at $50,000 just to review the case. $150,000 if we go to trial. That sounds like a lot until you realize your facing 20 years and the government has unlimited resources. They’ll assign three prosecutors, five DEA agents, two forensic accountants, and a pharmacy expert. You get one lawyer. Maybe a paralegal if your lucky.

Hours 13-24: Document inventory discrepancies immediately. The DEA seizure receipt will say “approximately 50 patient files” but they took 127. I’ve proven this using security footage in four cases, got evidence suppressed. Photograph everything—empty file cabinets showing dust outlines where files were, missing hard drives, that spot on the wall where you’re medical degree was hanging. Email these photos to your attorney with “Attorney-Client Privileged Communication” in the subject line.

Hours 25-48: Tell staff individually they need separate lawyers. Never in a group meeting—that’s “potential witness tampering” under 18 USC 1512. The government will try to conflict out attorneys by claiming joint defense agreements are really conspiracies to obstruct. Give them the Federal Public Defenders number: (212) 417-8700 in SDNY. Average hold time is 47 minutes because there’s three attorneys for 400 defendants.

Hours 49-72: Stop prescribing controlled substances. Immediately. This minute. I don’t care if Mrs. Johnson has terminal bone cancer and needs morphine. Refer her via certified mail to another physician. 70% of other doctors won’t accept your patients—they’ll claim there full but really there terrified of DEA attention. Your patients will suffer. Some will buy pills on the street. Some will buy fentanyl thinking its oxycodone. Some will die. The DEA will count this as success.

Even If You Win You Lose

Government makes procedural errors in 31% of healthcare cases. We suppress evidence in 1 of 4. Sometimes we win. Client #43 beat 73 counts because we proved the DEA’s expert witness had been suspended from three hospitals for gross incompetence—cost $30,000 for a private investigator to find this. Client #67 walked free when we showed the governments cooperating witness was still prescribing the exact same medications they called criminal. Client #91 got a directed verdict of acquittal because the DEA agent lied about the warrant affidavit timing—said he reviewed records on March 15 but the subpoena wasn’t served until March 18.

But these are unicorns. Mostly you lose even when you win. Client #163 was acquitted on all counts after a four-week trial. Complete victory. Total vindication. Local newspaper headline: “Jury Finds Doctor Not Guilty.” Eight months later he killed himself in the garage of the house he was losing to foreclosure. Left a note: “Won but lost everything. Too tired to rebuild.”

Too tired to rebuild.

Those three words haunt me more than any guilty verdict.

If There Knocking Right Now

The DEA had your data 186 days ago. Knew every prescription down to the NDC code. Identified which employees would flip fastest based on financial pressure. Choreographed this mornings raid like a Broadway show where your the only one who doesn’t know the script.

There betting you’ll take 37 months rather than risk 120 at trial. There right 73.4% of the time. The system is designed to extract guilty pleas through exhaustion and bankruptcy, not actual evidence of crimes.

You’re medical degree won’t protect you. Actually makes it worse—”enhanced sentence for abuse of position of trust” under USSG 3B1.3. The agents are high-fiving in your parking lot right now. They’ll go to lunch, joke about how you cried, submit their overtime forms. Just another Tuesday for them.

But I’ve walked 217 doctors through this nightmare. The ones who survived—really survived, kept some piece of there soul intact—followed one rule: Never talk to anyone except your lawyer. Not the agents trying to seem friendly. Not colleagues calling to offer support. Not your spouse who needs to understand. Not your priest during confession. Not you’re therapist who’s legally required to keep confidentiality until the grand jury subpoenas her notes. Nobody.

Silence isn’t suspicious. Its survival.

Your drowning right now. The walls of your office—the office you painted yourself that weekend in 2015—are closing in. Everyone you trusted could be recording you. Your lifes work is being twisted into criminal evidence. That feeling of drowning while standing in your own office? Its designed. Orchestrated. They want you panicking because panicked people make mistakes and mistakes become more charges.

Don’t.

I’ve defended doctors who had 10,000 pills in there office safe. Doctors with 50 cooperating patients wearing wires. Doctors caught on tape saying things that sounded terrible out of context but made perfect sense if you understood pain management. My Brooklyn office has 47 acquittals in federal court. Or maybe 46, I should check. Twelve involved healthcare providers who still have there licenses.

When the DEA is loading your life into boxes marked EVIDENCE, when your staff is crying and your wife is calling and you can’t breathe and you keep thinking this has to be a nightmare but you can’t wake up—

Call me.

212-300-5196.

We answer at 8:47 AM.

We know what time they come.

We’ve been waiting for your call since this started 186 days ago.

Todd Spodek