How to Get Us on Your Team
Nothing is easier than getting in touch with us. You can reach us by phone, text, email, and through the chat function. We offer free and confidential consultations to give you a chance to tell us about your situation. You will speak to real lawyers, not secretaries, who are here to listen, explain, and evaluate the process.
Phone: 866-603-4540 (Nationwide Intake)
Text: 310-873-8140 (Directly to Attorney Dr. Nick Oberheiden)
Email: [email protected] (Directly to Attorney Dr. Nick Oberheiden)
Chat: Often immediately answered during normal business hours.
What Happens in a Consultation?
There is no obligation on your part. You don’t need to tell us your name. Because you are talking to us as potentially your lawyers, you also don’t need to be afraid that the call is intercepted or recorded by the government. For the consultation itself, please do not send us any documents, court papers, or other case related materials. We just want to hear your story. We can discuss everything else at a later time. We will also address those questions that are most pressing to you, for example:
- Am I Under Surveillance?
- Is My Phone Tapped?
- Is the Government Monitoring My Bank Accounts?
- Should I Discuss My Situation with My Spouse/Friend/Neighbor?
- Am I Going to Get Arrested?
- Is There a Chance I Can Avoid Charges/Prison Time?
- What Is Your Experience in Cases Like Mine?
- What Is the Worst-Case, What Is the Best-Case Scenario?
- If I Hire You, Who Will Handle My Case?
- When Can We Meet?
- What Are the Next Steps from here?
Is the Call Confidential?
Yes, 100%. Importantly, what you tell us is 100% confidential, that is we will not share or publish the information you provide to us with anyone. This level of absolute confidentiality is true regardless whether you end up hiring us or not. However, since you are not our client at the time of that first call or initial meeting (but merely calling for a free consultation), you do not have a formal attorney-client relationship with The Criminal Defense Firm So, please do not make admission statements (“I robbed a bank” or “I committed fraud”); instead, just describe your situation (the FBI came to my house, I think they are investigating me for fraud) and let us put the pieces and hypotheticals together for you. And, remember, there is no charge, so call sooner rather than later.
Why Should I Call The Criminal Defense Firm Right Now, for a Consultation?
The longer you wait, the more difficult it is for any lawyer to help you. Criminal investigations are like building-blocks. The more time you give the government to investigate you, the more blocks they will try to stack on the tower. The key to success, the trademark of The Criminal Defense Firm, is to intervene and stop the government before the case escalates unnecessarily. The first step in this process is you reaching out to us as your trusted advisors. If you are like most people who contact us, you will notice how this consultation alone will make you feel confident, hopeful, and energized again. Give it a try. It’s really not that difficult to press the button to call us. Thousands of people have done this before you and are enjoying a happy life free of worries.
What Happens After a Consultation?
At the end of the call, we may suggest emailing you a simple proposal, typically within 15-30min, so that you can review our engagement terms and see how we structure our fees. You would then email us a signed copy, together with a confirmation of the requested fee payment. Thereafter, we would “officially” become your attorneys giving us the authority to act on your behalf. Often, one of the first things we do is to inform the government that you are represented by us. This notice of representation is very important because, from this moment of representation on, the government is not allowed to contact you directly, but they have to contact us instead in the absence of a court order. It is at this point that we would ask you to send us information relevant to your cases such as subpoenas, government notices, certain corporate documents, and the like.
When Do We Meet?
Often, the same or the next day. Depending on the nature of your case, potential court deadlines, and your location, we will coordinate the best way to get together to meet in person either in the initial call or shortly thereafter.
What Are the Fees?
You will find our fees fair. We don’t experience what other firms seem to deal with on a regular basis, which is disputes over fees with clients. We are straight shooters and there is no need to add heavy financial pressure on you when you are already experiencing pressure. In fact, most clients are happily surprised by the fees we charge because we tend to remain significantly below the few firms we would consider competitors. You benefit from our smart economics: we don’t employ junior lawyers, we don’t use paralegals, and we don’t rent spacious floors in luxurious high-rise buildings. Ultimately, the fees depend on why you contact us and at what stage your case is.
For example, if you call us because you want us to prepare for a 4-week long federal criminal jury trial, the fees could be higher than you just asking us to help you respond to a simple subpoena. Remember, there is no fee for asking us about our fees! So, just ask us. There is nothing wrong with that. You can pay by credit card, check, or (as most clients do) through wire and our bank information is listed on the first page of our engagement letter.
There is No Reason to Wait. Call The Criminal Defense Firm Right Now at 214-251-4238
Can I Be Prosecuted If I Had No Intent to Do Anything Wrong?
Few people sit at the kitchen table and discuss how to commit a crime. Nonetheless, in the vast majority of cases, the government operates under the assumption that crimes occurred intentionally, knowingly, and willfully and in full understanding of the illegality.
At The Criminal Defense Firm, we have a long track record of showing that our clients never did anything wrong, certainly not intentionally. Many laws are quite complicated, even for lawyers, and it is far from difficult to cross a line in a maze of rules and regulations. However, the mere fact you did something wrong is NOT enough for the government to prove.
However, here is the ticker. From our experience, many people get on the government’s radar because the government is misinformed, only collects one-sided information, interviews only adverse people (e.g. disgruntled former employees). One of the absolute missions for us at The Criminal Defense Firm is to clarify, explain, and fix negative perceptions. See it this way. When two people argue (and, at the end of the day a criminal case comes down to being an argument between the government and you), the most promising way to resolve that dispute is to discuss and resolve it by sharing your side of the story. Put differently, what the government doesn’t know about you, the government will not consider when making charging decisions. Put The Criminal Defense Firm on your team right now so that we can introduce your side and help resolve the case as quickly as possible.
What Are My Options If I Am Indicted?
Many clients call us because they got arrested and now need lawyers with litigation skills to defend and defeat the government’s case. Once you are indicted, there are essentially three options and three ways your case could go from here.
Option 1: Your Case Can Get Dismissed. To be clear, dismissals in criminal cases are rare, but not impossible to obtain. After all, the reason you are accused of an offense is that the grand jury saw a probable cause that you did commit an offense. Given the role the grand jury has in felony cases as the determining body whether or not to bring charges, judges don’t like to easily ignore the grand jury’s decision but are hesitant to overturn an indictment. Nonetheless, The Criminal Defense Firm has dismissed felony cases, state and federal, repeatedly by invoking violations of our client’s constitutional rights.
Option 2: We Litigate the Case in Court. The constitution affords everyone accused of a crime the right to present his or her case to an impartial jury. To be clear, going to court requires a special skillset because finishing second place is not an option. It is imperative for you as a client to know exactly who part of your trial team is and what the defense strategy is. The Criminal Defense Firm is proud of its record in getting our clients acquitted in state and federal cases. We would love to do the same for you!
Option 3: We Enter a Plea. Sometimes, the facts are just too strong against a client to take the risk of losing in a trial. However, here is an important difference: when we identify a guilty plea as our client’s best option in light of all evidence available, we don’t surrender. We always always always signal to the government that we are ready to litigate, ready to fight, ready to take our chances in court. We do so to demonstrate strength, not offer capitulation. This strategy puts us in a much stronger position to negotiate an acceptable resolution, rather than merely accepting whatever is being thrown at us.
We want to discuss each of these options with you as it may apply to your situation. Get our combined experience and secure your free advice today. Choosing the wrong option can be a life-altering mistake. Don’t rely on inexperienced lawyers. Don’t be talked into a plea because your lawyer is too lazy or too scared to take a case to trial. Call the competent, proven advocates at The Criminal Defense Firm
View How We Obtained Probation in Case After Case
Contrary to common conception, a lot can be accomplished for a client at a sentencing hearing. Many clients call The Criminal Defense Firm because they entered a bad deal and they are now confronted with the real-life consequences of their decision to agree to a potentially harsh sentence.
If this is you, we have good news. The Criminal Defense Firm has secured probation outcomes in many cases where “probation” wasn’t even an option. We hope it is comforting for you to know that The Criminal Defense Firm has been able to obtain favorable results for clients in more than 45 states around the country.
United States v. Client (Probation Bank Fraud). Our client, unfortunately, was caught on camera while committing the offense of bank fraud. Because the amount of the fraud was too large to qualify for probation, we had to apply some rafinesse to convince the presiding judge to follow our request for no jail time. Overcoming a procedural technicality and persuading a federal judge that probation is adequate serves as a good example that much good can be accomplished at sentencing!
United States v. Client (Probation Embezzlement). The Presentence Report in this case calculated that our client was ineligible for probation and ranged instead somewhere between two and three years. The sentencing hearing was quite contested because the prosecutor insisted on incarceration. After two hours of arguing the case, the judge agreed with our request for probation and went not just below the guidelines, but also below the absolute minimum, the probation officer considered appropriate.
United States v. Client (Probation Computer Crimes). Computer crimes can trigger significant penalties. In this case, our client was facing years of incarceration for using his computer to intercept and destroy millions of files located at and belonging to his former employer. The sentencing recommendation was incarceration for years. Instead of litigating this matter at sentencing, we applied a different strategy, namely to seek an independent agreement with the government before sentencing. After some months of negotiations, we convinced the government to not oppose our request for probation at sentencing which led the judge to grant probation for our client!
United States v. Client (Probation Multimillion Healthcare Fraud). One of the most unpredictable sentencing outcomes in our firm’s history, we obtained probation at sentencing in a multi-million-dollar federal healthcare fraud case. Our client was indicted for healthcare fraud exceeding $ 10m, which is an amount typically light years away from an expectation of probation. However, over a course of almost two years of contemplating trial versus plea, we were able to end up working with the government towards a fair and good outcome. Needless to say, the client was stoked.
United States v. Client (Probation Healthcare Fraud). The key in this multi-million-dollar healthcare fraud case was to sever and separate our client from the big, overall conspiracy. With that, almost instantly, our client dropped from a potential responsibility for $ 40m in Medicare fraud to roughly $ 1m. Even though the calculated recommendation by the Probation Officer, in this case, was 4 years, we convinced the judge, normally known for her rather harsh sentences, to order probation with three years of supervised release. No one, from prosecutor to defendant, to family members, expected this outcome and we were excited to celebrate this big victory with our client accordingly.
United States v. Client (Probation Federal Kickbacks). Several federal statutes prohibit “quid pro quo” arrangements by which one side induces and incentivizes another person to do something in exchange for remuneration. In a recent case, we were tasked to help a client who was accused of having paid a physician to refer patients to a certain facility. Against all recommendations from the Probation Office, we secured no jail time as an outcome for our client by passionately arguing the relevant sentencing factors in this case.
United States v. Client (ProbationIdentity Theft). We inherited this case from another law firm with the declared goal to turn a federal identity theft and healthcare fraud indictment into probation. The odds were against us. Normally, in order to get into the reach of probation in a heavily indicted federal case like this, all strategic elements must come together. Here, we just inherited a mess. The client was completely unprepared when the previous lawyer rushed him into an interview with the FBI. There was in fact a risk the government would supersede and amend the indictment. We filed our appearance, analyzed the discovery, and met with the client and his family extensively to better understand why he even was in the position he was in. In fact, we spent entire days listening to our client and then approached the prosecutor to reassess the case in light of the important client information just learned. Before we even got to the sentencing date, the prosecutor agreed with probation as a fair and just outcome. This is an important example of why it is so important to actually listen and care for a client’s side of the story!
Other Recent Examples
United States v. Client (Drug Trafficking). Our client was in a bad spot. The FBI raided his office and the evidence, in this case, did not look good for him. Both the plea proposal and the Presentence Report calculated our client’s sentence to reach “up to 860 years” in prison given the large amounts of controlled substances involved. Our strategy was to keep the sentence under 10 years. At the sentencing hearing itself, a dispute arose with the government, which tried to paint our client as an unremorseful, selfish man with no regrets and no apologies. We jumped at the opportunity to show the true nature and the true character of our client by introducing various facts that proved the government’s assertions as wrong. At the end of the hearing, the judge surprised everyone when announcing her order: she reduced the imprisonment to 32months for our client!
United States v. Client (Drug Dealing). Our client was the ringleader in one of the largest federal drug conspiracies ever brought by the government. With several prior convictions, our client was unequivocally aware that the amounts, in this case, would lead to an exposure of a life sentence. Because there are no hopeless cases at The Criminal Defense Firm, we identified ways to mitigate our client’s exposure in an acceptable way. After much negotiations with the Justice Department, we were able to obtain a sentence of fewer than 15 years, which we then further reduced at sentencing to 12 years, which was then subsequently further reduced to less than 10 years. The entire time prior to sentencing, our client was on bond, which we secured for him at the original arraignment.
United States v. Client (Human Trafficking). We represented the ringleader of a trafficking organization after he got federally indicted. The evidence was strongly against him, and it was too late in the case to undo the indictment itself. Instead, we explored avenues to convince the government that our client may have been involved, he clearly was not the mastermind of the scheme. After much negotiation, we reached an agreement with the government whereby our client’s sentence was not to exceed five (5) years. Going into the sentencing hearing, we knew that the sentence was anywhere between 0 years (unlikely) to 5 years (not so unlikely). To the dissatisfaction of the prosecutor, the judge sided with our arguments for a lenient sentence and we obtained a 24months sentence in a federal human trafficking case!
United States v. Client (Kickbacks). We inherited this case after our client lost her criminal trial and was found guilty of more than $ 4m in kickbacks as part of a larger healthcare fraud conspiracy. To make a long story short, the client was facing up to 20 years for other offenses she was also convicted of. After close to 2 years of preparing her sentencing, constantly interrupted by new continuances, we felt confident to convince the judge to issue a lenient sentence. Despite all hope, everyone in the courtroom was stunned when the judge announced that she decided to sentence our client to merely one year and one day and our client got out after less than 10 months.