My Son Got a Federal Target Letter - How Can I Help
Welcome to Spodek Law Group. If you're reading this at 2am because your adult child just called with terrifying news about a federal target letter, we want to give you the reality of this situation - not the sanitized version other websites present, not the false comfort of "it'll be okay," but the actual truth about what happens when the federal government decides your son is a target of a criminal investigation.
Your instinct right now is to help. To fix it. To protect your child the way you did when they were young. But the federal criminal system contains a trap that exploits exactly that love. And everything you're about to do from pure parental instinct may be the thing that destroys your son's case.
That envelope your son received represents the end of something, not the beginning. Federal prosecutors spent somewhere between 8 and 18 months building their case before they ever sent that letter. They have the bank records. They have the emails. They have witness statements from people your son thought were friends. The target letter means they're ready - or nearly ready - to seek an indictment from a grand jury. You're not responding to an investigation that just started. You're responding to one that's almost finished.
What That Envelope Actually Means
The federal government categorizes people in investigations three ways: witness, subject, and target. Witnesses are people with information. Subjects are people whose conduct is within the scope of the investigation. Targets are people the prosecutor believes committed a federal crime.
Your son is a target.
That designation doesnt come lightly. Federal prosecutors have a conviction rate that approaches 99.6 percent. They dont bring cases they might lose. They dont send target letters unless they beleive they have the evidence to convict. The letter your son received means a team of federal agents and assistant U.S. attorneys spent months - sometimes years - gathering evidence, interviewing witnesses, subpoenaing records, and building a case they are confident they can win.
Heres the terrifying math. According to data tracked by the U.S. Sentencing Commission, 80 to 90 percent of people who receive federal target letters are eventually indicted. Of those who are indicted, the vast majority plead guilty. Of the tiny percentage who go to trial, almost all are convicted. In 2024, 91 percent of federal sentences included incarceration.
The timeline from target letter to indictment is typically 30 to 45 days. In aggressive districts like the Southern District of New York, it can be two weeks. Your son has a small window to engage counsel who can potentialy intervene before the grand jury acts. That window is shrinking every hour.
Most people dont understand what an indictment actually means. An indictment isnt a conviction - but in the federal system, it might as well be. Once the grand jury returns an indictment, your son will be arrested. He will be booked, fingerprinted, photographed. He will appear before a magistrate judge for arraignment. Depending on the charges and his circumstances, he may be detained pending trial or released on conditions that restrict his travel, his work, his ability to see certain people. His name will be on public court records. The indictment will describe what the government believes he did. Potential employers, business partners, landlords - anyone who searches his name - will find it.
The Privilege That Doesnt Exist
This is were most parents make their first devastating mistake. You assume that conversations between parent and child are protected somehow. That theres some kind of privilege - like between husband and wife, or attorney and client - that shields what you and your son discuss.
There is no parent-child privilege in federal court.
Read that again. Let it sink in.
Federal courts have consistantly rejected the creation of a parent-child testimonial privilege. Only five states - Massachusetts, Connecticut, Idaho, Minnesota, and New York - have any form of protection for parent-child communications, and even those are limited. In federal court, which is were your son's case will be heard, no such protection exists.
What does this mean practicaly? It means every conversation you have with your son from this moment forward can be subpoenaed. If a federal prosecutor wants to know what your son told you about his situation, they can drag you in front of a grand jury and demand you repeat it. Word for word.
You might think there's some protection because prosecutors "try to avoid" compelling family testimony. Thats technically true - the Justice Manual, which guides federal prosecutors, includes language about avoiding compelling testimony from close family members when possible. But heres the thing. Thats guidance. Its policy. Its not law. And when prosecutors decide they need your testimony, that guidance goes out the window.
Ask Marcia Lewis about that. Shes Monica Lewinsky's mother. During the Ken Starr investigation, she was subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury about intimate details her daughter had shared with her. There was no privilege to protect those mother-daughter conversations. She was compelled to testify about private communications with her own child. The nation was outraged. Congress tried to pass a parent-child privilege act. It died in commitee. Nothing changed.
How Helping Destroys His Defense
Your son has hired an attorney - or you've hired one for him. Good. Thats the right move. But now your parental instincts are screaming at you to be involved. You want to sit in on meetings. You want to know whats happening. You want to understand the strategy. You're paying the bills, after all.
Stop.
Attorney-client privilege belongs to one person: the client. Thats your son. Not you. Even though your writing the checks, even though your the reason theres an attorney at all, that privilege is not yours. And heres the trap that catches well-meaning parents: if you sit in on a meeting between your son and his attorney, you become a third party. And when a third party is present during an attorney-client communication, the privilege is waived.
Lemme say that differently. Your presence in that room can make everything discussed in that meeting admissible as evidence against your son.
The prosecution can then subpoena you. They can ask what was discussed. They can ask about defense strategy. They can ask what your son admitted to his own attorney. And you will have no privilege to hide behind, becuase you were never the client - and your presence waived the protection that would have existed if you hadnt been there.
OK so maybe you think you'll stay out of the meetings. Fine. But you still want to help. Your son has some debts that look questionable. Maybe if you pay those off, clean things up a bit, the situation looks better. Maybe you should move some money around, make sure assets are protected.
Dont.
Every financial transaction right now is being watched. The same investigators who spent 18 months building this case are still watching. When you "help" by paying off debts or moving assets, you create evidence of consciousness of guilt. You might be creating obstruction of justice charges. You might be creating money laundering exposure. For yourself.
Todd Spodek has seen this pattern too many times. A parent trying to help becomes a target themselves. The government's leverage over your son just doubled - now they can offer him a better deal if he testifies against you. Or they can offer you a better deal if you testify against him. The system is designed to weaponize family love.
What Happens When They Subpoena You
Lets talk about what happens when - not if - the government decides your testimony would be useful.
You receive a subpoena to appear before a federal grand jury. Unlike a trial, there's no judge present in the grand jury room. No defense attorney can accompany you inside. It's you, the prosecutor, the jurors, and a court reporter. You are alone.
The prosecutor asks you questions about your son. About conversations you've had. About things he told you. About financial transactions. About documents you may have seen or helped with.
You have two choices. Neither is good.
Choice one: you answer truthfully. You become a witness against your own child. Your testimony becomes part of the evidentiary record that will be used to indict him and potentialy convict him.
Choice two: you refuse to answer. The prosecutor moves to compel your testimony. A federal judge orders you to answer. If you still refuse, you face contempt of court. That means jail. Not overnight - potentially months, until you comply or the grand jury's term expires.
Wait. Can you just... not remember things?
Dont. Lying to a federal grand jury is perjury. Thats a seperate federal crime. If they can prove you remembered something and claimed you didnt, you've now committed a felony. Federal investigators are trained to detect this. They often already have the answers to the questions there asking you - there testing your truthfulness.
The only legal protection you have is the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. But that only applies if answering would incriminate YOU, not your son. And if you invoke the Fifth, the prosecutors may start looking at whether you're involved in whatever your son allegedly did. Now you're a target too.
This is not hypothetical. This happens. Federal prosecutors use family subpoenas as a pressure tactic specifically because it works. It forces the target to worry about their parent being dragged into this. It accelerates plea negotiations. It's effective precisely because it's cruel.
Theres something else you need to understand about grand juries. They meet in secret. Everything that happens in that room is sealed. Your son wont know what you testified to - not unless it comes out at trial. His attorney cant be there to protect you or advise you. And grand juries are notoriously one-sided. Theres an old saying among criminal defense attorneys that a prosecutor could get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. Its not much of an exaggeration. Grand juries hear only the government's evidence. Theres no cross-examination. No defense presentation. Just prosecutors asking questions designed to elicit the answers they want.
When they ask you those questions about your son, they already know most of the answers. There testing whether you'll lie. There building a case not just against him, but potentially against you if you obstruct their investigation.
The 6 Things That Create New Charges
As Todd Spodek tells clients at Spodek Law Group, the worst outcomes in federal cases often come not from the original alleged crime, but from what people do after they learn there under investigation. Here are six things parents do that create additional federal charges - for their child, for themselves, or for both.
1. Advising your son to delete files or destroy documents
The government already has copies. They subpoenaed his email provider, his bank, his phone company - months ago. When your son deletes files they already possess, all he accomplishes is proving consciousness of guilt and adding obstruction of justice charges. When you tell him to do it, you've commited witness tampering under 18 U.S.C. § 1512. That carries up to 20 years if force or threats are involved. Even without that, its years in federal prison.
2. Contacting witnesses to "explain" things
Your son's business partner. His former employees. Anyone who might be a witness. If you reach out to them - even just to "get the story straight" - you're tampering with witnesses. It dosent matter that you meant well. It dosent matter that you werent threatening anyone. The act of contacting a witness to influence their testimony is itself a crime.
3. Moving money or assets
That money in your son's account? Leave it alone. Transfering assets to family members during an investigation is the kind of thing that turns a fraud case into a fraud-plus-money-laundering case. Moving assets to protect them from potential forfeiture is obstruction. And if you're the one doing the moving, you're not helping - your joining him as a defendant.
4. Hiring a lawyer to represent both of you
Stop. Your interests and your son's interests are not the same. In fact, they may directly conflict. You need your own attorney - one whose loyalty is to you alone. A joint defense agreement might be appropriate, but that's a complicated instrument that requires seperate representation for each party. Never share an attorney when theres any possibility you could both face exposure.
5. Lying to federal agents
If FBI agents show up at your door asking questions, you might think a small lie wont hurt. Maybe you'll say you havent talked to your son about the case when you have. Maybe you'll claim you dont know about certain transactions.
18 U.S.C. § 1001 makes it a federal crime to make any false statement to a federal agent. Dosent matter if you're under oath. Dosent matter if it seems like an informal conversation. Martha Stewart went to federal prison not for insider trading, but for lying to investigators about it.
6. Discussing the case with extended family, friends, or anyone who isnt your attorney
Everything you say to people who arent your lawyer can be subpoenaed. Your sister who you vented to? Shes a potential witness. Your best friend who you asked for advice? Witness. Your spouse? Depends on the situation, but spousal privilege has exceptions. The only truly protected communication is with YOUR OWN attorney - and only regarding YOUR OWN legal situation.
Think about what happens when you call your sibling to vent about your sons situation. You tell them what your son said to you. You share your fears about what he might have done. You speculate about the evidence. Now imagine that sibling receiving a grand jury subpoena. Theres no sibling privilege. Everything you shared can now be repeated under oath. Every fear you expressed becomes potential evidence. Every speculation becomes a statement attributed to the defendant's own parent. You just handed the prosecution ammunition you didnt even know you were creating.
What You CAN Actually Do
By now your probably terrified. Good. You should be. The federal criminal system is designed to be terrifying, and the specific ways it can weaponize family relationships against defendants is one of its most effective tools.
But there are things you can do. Right things. Things that actually help.
First: Get your son a federal criminal defense attorney immediately. Not a general criminal attorney. Not your family lawyer who handles wills and real estate. A federal criminal defense specialist who has experience with target letters, grand jury proceedings, and the specific U.S. attorney's office handling the case. This matters more then anything else. Spodek Law Group has handled these cases for years and understands the specific dynamics at play.
Second: Get yourself a lawyer. This might seem dramatic, but you need someone whose job is to protect YOU. Not your son - you. This attorney can advise you on how to avoid inadvertently creating exposure for yourself, what to do if you're subpoenaed, and how to navigate the situation without making things worse. They can also coordinate with your son's attorney under a joint defense agreement if appropriate.
Third: Stop talking about the case. With your son. With your spouse. With your friends. With anyone except your attorney. Every conversation is potential evidence. Every word can be subpoenaed. Silence isnt abandoning your son - its protecting him.
Fourth: Do not touch finances. Dont pay off his debts. Dont move money. Dont "protect" assets. Leave everything exactly where it is. If there's going to be financial restructuring, let his attorney guide that process with full knowledge of what the government is looking at.
Fifth: Prepare to support him emotionally without discussing the case. This is hard. You want to talk about it. You want to understand it. You want to strategize together. You cant. But you can be present. You can tell him you love him. You can show up for court dates. You can help him manage the stress and fear without crossing into territory that could hurt his case.
Sixth: Prepare for the long haul. Federal cases take time. The period from target letter to potential resolution can be months or years. There will be pretrial motions, discovery, negotiations. If it goes to trial, add more time. Your son needs sustained support - financial, emotional, logistical - and you need to pace yourself accordingly.
The clock started when that envelope arrived. Every day matters. The window for pre-indictment intervention is narrow. The decisions made in the next few weeks may determine whether your son serves years in federal prison or has a chance at a different outcome.
Call Spodek Law Group at 212-300-5196. We understand what your facing. We've guided families through this before. The situation is serious - more serious then you probably realize - but having the right counsel makes a difference. The worst thing you can do right now is nothing. The second worst thing is acting on instinct without understanding how the federal system will use your love against your child.
The federal government spent 18 months preparing for this moment. Your son needs someone who can respond with the same level of preparation, strategy, and knowledge. That's not something you can provide no matter how much you love him. But you can make sure he has it by making the right call today.
