A letter from a United States Attorney is not the beginning of your case. It is the government telling you how far along it already is.
The Letter Is the Warning Shot
It usually arrives on a weekday, in a plain envelope, on letterhead from the Office of the United States Attorney. Two or three paragraphs. Your name, a statute number, a sentence saying you are a target or a subject of a federal grand jury investigation, and an invitation for your attorney to call.
Then a phone number, and silence.
Understand what has already happened by the time that envelope reaches you. Agents have been working the case for months, sometimes years. Bank records are in. Subpoenaed emails are in. Someone you know has probably already sat in a conference room and answered questions about you. A prosecutor has reviewed all of it and concluded serious enough to put in writing.
Understand also what has not happened. No grand jury has voted. No charge exists. Nothing is public. For a short and finite period, you are the only person in this story who can still change the ending.
Roughly ninety percent of federal defendants plead guilty, and federal trials are won rarely. The pre-indictment window is where the outcomes that look nothing like that statistic are made.
Target, Subject, Witness: The Words Are Not Interchangeable
Federal prosecutors use these terms precisely, and the Justice Manual defines them. Read your letter for the exact word, because it tells you where you stand.
| STATUS | WHAT IT MEANS | WHAT IT USUALLY SIGNALS |
| Target | A person the prosecutor or grand jury has substantial evidence linking to a crime, and who in the prosecutor’s judgment is a putative defendant. | An indictment is contemplated. The letter is often a last invitation to be heard, or to cooperate, before charges are sought. |
| Subject | A person whose conduct is within the scope of the grand jury’s investigation. | Not comfort. Subjects become targets routinely, and the difference is frequently one witness interview away. |
| Witness | A person believed to have information relevant to the investigation. | Also not comfort. Witnesses acquire exposure through the interview itself, under 18 U.S.C. § 1001 and the obstruction statutes. |
Status is a snapshot, not a verdict. It moves in both directions, and moving it is much of what pre-indictment counsel does.
Five Ways People Make It Worse in Week One
- Explaining themselves to agents
Lying to a federal agent is a separate five-year felony under 18 U.S.C. § 1001, and it does not require an oath, a recording, or a warning. An innocent person with a faulty memory can manufacture a charge that did not exist an hour earlier. You are permitted to decline politely and refer the agent to counsel. - Cleaning up
Deleting an email thread, wiping a phone, shredding a folder, or asking someone else to. Under 18 U.S.C. § 1519 this up to twenty years, often more than the conduct under investigation. Preservation begins the day you learn of the investigation, and it is not optional. - Calling the other people involved
A reassuring phone call to a colleague, a partner, or a former employee reads in a charging document as witness tampering under 18 U.S.C. § 1512. Whatever needs to be coordinated gets coordinated through counsel, in writing, under a proper joint defense agreement or not at all. - Assuming the company lawyer is their lawyer
Corporate counsel represents the company. In an internal investigation, the warning that should be given makes that explicit, and the interview notes can go straight to the government when the company decides to cooperate. If you are an employee inside a corporate investigation, you need counsel of your own. - Waiting to see what happens
Nothing about a federal investigation gets easier with time. Evidence hardens, cooperators get locked into versions of events, and the prosecutor drafts. The person who engages counsel the week the letter arrives is playing a completely different hand from the one who calls after the indictment is returned.
The federal system gives you one genuine moment of leverage, and it is before the indictment. After it, you are negotiating over a charge someone already committed to in public. Before it, the prosecutor still has a choice, and my job is to make the version of the facts they have not heard yet impossible to ignore. I would rather spend six weeks in that window than six months litigating what could have been prevented in it
— Vikas S. Dhar, Managing Partner, Dhar Law, LLP
What the Pre-Indictment Window Is Actually For
People assume the only thing counsel can do here is wait and prepare. That is the passive version of this work. The productive version looks like this.
Finding out what the government thinks it has
Contact with the line prosecutor, with the agent’s case theory reconstructed from the subpoenas already served, the accounts already frozen, the people already interviewed. Sometimes the AUSA will sit for a reverse proffer and lay out the case. What you learn there shapes every decision that follows.
Presenting the case the government has not seen
Prosecutors build from what witnesses and records hand them, and investigations develop blind spots. A written submission with documents attached, an accountant’s reconstruction of the transactions, an email chain read in full rather than in the excerpt the agent pulled, a timeline that eliminates you from three of the five transactions in the spreadsheet. Declinations happen. They happen to clients whose lawyers gave the prosecutor a reason.
Shaping the charge if a charge is coming
Not every outcome is indicted or not indicted. The realistic middle ground includes counts dropped before they are drafted, loss amount and relevant conduct negotiated while the numbers are still fluid, a pre-indictment resolution by information with a waiver of indictment under Fed. R. Crim. P. 7(b), deferred prosecution or pretrial diversion in the right case, and a plea structured so that the immigration, licensing, or forfeiture consequence the client actually fears does not follow.
Deciding, carefully, about cooperation
A target letter is frequently an invitation to come in first. That decision deserves a sober analysis of what the client actually knows, what a proffer agreement does and does not protect, and what the realistic value of substantial assistance is in this district. It is a decision with consequences that outlast the case, and it should never be made in the first week or in a panic.
Handling the clock
The general federal limitations period is five years under 18 U.S.C. § 3282, longer for offenses affecting a financial institution. Prosecutors sometimes ask for a tolling agreement to buy time for the discussions above. Whether to sign one is a real strategic question, not a formality.
I spent years as a prosecutor deciding which cases to bring, and the honest answer is that charging decisions are made by human beings with finite resources and a view of the file that is incomplete. A defense lawyer who shows up early, with credibility and documents rather than adjectives, can change that view. A lawyer who shows up after the indictment is arguing with a decision that has already been defended internally.
— Robert M. Griffin, Attorney and former Chief of Superior Court Prosecutions, Dhar Law, LLP
Watch how the interview is set up. Agents come to the house at seven in the morning, or catch you in the parking lot, because the point is to talk to you before you have had a chance to think or to call anyone. It is not a conversation; it is an evidence-gathering step, and a 302 written from memory afterward becomes the official record of what you said. Being polite and saying almost nothing is not obstruction. It is the only sensible thing to do.
— Joseph F. Hennessey, Attorney and former police detective, Dhar Law, LLP
The Consequences That Are Not the Sentence
For most of the professionals and business owners we represent at this stage, prison is one risk among several, and not always the one that governs the strategy.
| Status | Licenses and Clearances | Money |
| For a visa holder, green card holder, or naturalization applicant, the charge selected and the loss amount agreed can determine removability. Those are pre-indictment decisions. See crimmigration. | Physicians, brokers, attorneys, contractors, and clearance holders face reporting duties and parallel proceedings that move on their own schedule, often faster than the criminal case. | Seized accounts, restrained assets, and forfeiture allegations drafted into the indictment. Arguing about property after the charge is far harder than addressing it before. |
A client from outside the United States hears target letter and thinks about prison. What I am watching is the immigration consequences, the passport, the business partners abroad, and whether the family understands what is happening. Those pieces have to be managed at the same time as the criminal exposure, in the client’s own language, or the resolution that looks good on paper turns out to be the wrong one for that person’s life.
— Cheyevna B. Hausmann, Director of Operations and Associate Attorney, Dhar Law, LLP
Who We Defend at This Stage
Company owners and executives, physicians and clinic operators, financial professionals, government employees and contractors, technology and life sciences staff, and individuals swept into conspiracy allegations because of who they banked with or worked for. The investigations most often involve wire and mail fraud, bank fraud, pandemic relief fraud, health care billing, money laundering and structuring, securities fraud, tax matters, public corruption, and narcotics conspiracies. We appear in the District of Massachusetts and in federal courts across the country, and we handle the cross-border dimension, including extradition and Red Notices, when an investigation reaches outside the United States.
Does a target letter mean I will definitely be indicted?
No. It means a prosecutor believes there is substantial evidence linking you to a crime and considers you a putative defendant. Cases are declined, charges are narrowed, and matters are resolved without indictment. None of that happens on its own.
Should I be relieved that my letter says subject rather than target?
No. Subject means your conduct is within the scope of the investigation. People move from subject to target on the strength of one interview, one document, or one cooperator. Treat a subject letter with the same urgency.
Can I just call the prosecutor and explain?
Please do not. Anything you say can be used; your statements can be compared against records you have not seen, and you will have given away information without learning anything. Communication with the government at this stage should run entirely through counsel.
Should I testify before the grand jury?
Almost never, and never without extensive preparation. Your lawyer cannot be in the grand jury room with you. You may consult with counsel outside the room, and you retain your Fifth Amendment rights, but the setting is controlled entirely by the prosecutor.
Will the government tell me what evidence it has?
It has no obligation to do so before an indictment, and grand jury proceedings are secret under Fed. R. Crim. P. 6(e). In practice, counsel often learns a great deal through direct discussion with the prosecutor, and in some cases through a reverse proffer where the government previews its case.
How long do these investigations take?
Months to years. The general statute of limitations is five years, and ten for offenses affecting a financial institution. Long silences are normal and should not be read as good news.
My employer’s lawyers want to interview me. Is that safe?
Company counsel represents the company, not you, and what you tell them can be shared with the government if the company chooses to cooperate. If you are inside an internal investigation, get your own lawyer before the interview, not after.
What is a proffer, and is it a good idea?
A proffer is a meeting under an agreement that limits, but does not eliminate, the government’s use of what you say. It can be the right move and it can be a disaster. The analysis depends on what you know, how the government values it, and what the realistic alternative is.
Do I need to tell my licensing board, my bank, or my employer?
Maybe, and the answer is contract and regulation-specific. Disclosure obligations are frequently triggered by charge rather than by investigation, which is one more reason to work on preventing the charge.
Can you help if I am outside Massachusetts or outside the country?
Yes. We appear in federal districts nationwide and handle matters with an international dimension, including clients abroad and cases involving foreign charging authorities.
The window is open right now
If a target or subject letter, a grand jury subpoena, or an agent’s business card is sitting in front of you, the next two weeks matter more than any two weeks that follow. Contact us online or call and we will tell you honestly what you are facing and what can still be done about it. Call (617) 880-6155
About Dhar Law, LLP
Dhar Law, LLP is a Boston criminal defense firm with more than 100 combined years of experience across eight attorneys, including former federal and state prosecutors and alumni of the United States Attorney’s Office, the FBI, the Boston Police Department, and the Massachusetts Appeals Court. The firm defends federal matters from pre-indictment investigation through trial, appeal, and international extradition. Vikas S. Dhar has been recognized by Best Lawyers as the 2027 Lawyer of the Year for White-Collar Criminal Defense in Boston and named a Massachusetts Super Lawyer in white-collar defense for eighteen consecutive years. He serves as a Commissioner of the Supreme Judicial Court and has twice been appointed by the federal judiciary to Merit Selection Panels for United States Magistrate Judges. Contact us here. We work with clients and families in Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, and French.
Attorney advertising. This page is published for general informational and educational purposes, is not legal advice, and does not create an attorney-client relationship. Every case turns on its own facts. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Any person accused of a crime is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
