Practice — No. 01
When the government is on the other side, everything you say, sign, and surrender is evidence. The first decision is choosing who stands between you and them.
A criminal case is not a search for the truth. It is a test of the government’s proof — every element, every witness, every link in every chain of custody. The Bear Firm has spent three decades administering that test, in more than a thousand criminal matters, from arraignment through jury verdict.
Mr. Santoro learned the prosecution’s playbook from the inside: early in his career he authored the Kings County District Attorney’s training manual on the prosecution of vehicular offenses — the manual prosecutors studied. He has spent every year since turning that education to the defense. He knows how cases are built, which means he knows where they break.
The firm’s best work is often invisible. Investigations that closed without charges. Grand juries that never returned an indictment. Clients who went home and never saw their names in a caption. When a matter cannot be resolved quietly, it is prepared loudly — as if the jury is already seated — because prosecutors extend their best offers to the defendants they least want to try.
Clients facing charges are presumed innocent. The firm’s job is to make the government feel the weight of that presumption from the first appearance to the last word of summation.
The lawyer defending your DWI wrote the manual prosecutors trained on. From a first-offense DWI to vehicular assault and vehicular homicide, these cases are won on the details others skip: the stop itself, the calibration records, the field-test conditions, the blood-draw chain of custody, the officer’s training file. Licenses, livelihoods, and liberty ride on suppression practice done properly.
Possession, sale, and trafficking conspiracies — state and federal. Drug prosecutions live and die on the Fourth Amendment: the stop, the search, the warrant, the wiretap, the informant. The firm litigates suppression aggressively, attacks lab work and weight calculations, and in conspiracy cases forces the government to prove agreement rather than mere association.
New York’s weapons laws are among the harshest in the nation, and federal firearms counts carry mandatory minimums that change lives in a single count. The firm defends possession and constructive-possession cases, permit and licensing matters gone wrong, and federal prosecutions under the gun statutes — where search-and-seizure litigation and mandatory-minimum exposure demand a lawyer who tries cases, not just pleads them.
Fraud cases are ledgers with adjectives. Wire and mail fraud, grand larceny, embezzlement, falsified business records, money-laundering allegations — Mr. Santoro reads the financial evidence himself, line by line, with an accountant’s training and a cross-examiner’s purpose. In parallel-proceeding matters, the firm coordinates the criminal defense with the civil and regulatory exposure so that a statement made in one forum never becomes the exhibit in another.
Tax evasion, failure to file, and false-return prosecutions sit at the junction of the firm’s two disciplines — criminal defense and income tax practice before the IRS and the United States Tax Court. When special agents appear, the civil audit has already become something else. The firm defends the criminal case while managing the assessment, and knows which numbers the government can actually prove.
Homicide, assault, robbery, and the other cases where the stakes cannot be overstated. These are tried — to verdict when necessary. The firm’s felony trial work includes full acquittals for clients facing mandatory minimums and the dismissal of every count after years of sustained defense. There is no substitute for a lawyer the prosecution believes will pick a jury.
The best criminal defense ends before a case begins. Target letters, subpoenas, agents at the door, a detective “just wanting to talk” — the hours after first contact are where cases are won or lost. The firm intervenes immediately: controlling communications, asserting privileges, making presentations to prosecutors, and navigating grand jury practice so that, wherever possible, the matter ends without a charge ever being filed.
Admitted before the Supreme Court of the United States and eight federal courts of appeals, the firm briefs and argues appeals from criminal judgments and pursues post-conviction remedies — sentencing challenges, ineffective-assistance claims, and motions to vacate — for its own clients and for those whose trial counsel fell short.
Every element. Every witness. Every reasonable doubt.
How a defense is built
From the first call, the firm takes over every communication with investigators and prosecutors. Clients stop talking; counsel starts. Nothing is volunteered, nothing is signed, and nothing is surrendered without a fight or a reason.
The defense runs its own investigation — witnesses, records, video, scene work — before memories harden and evidence disappears. The government’s file is the starting point, never the record.
Suppression motions, discovery enforcement, and challenges to searches, statements, identifications, and forensics. Every piece of evidence the court excludes is a piece the jury never hears.
Dispositions are pursued only from a position of leverage — and leverage comes from one place: the prosecution’s belief that this defense will pick a jury and make them prove it. When the offer isn’t right, the firm tries the case.
Defense of a client falsely accused and facing a mandatory minimum sentence. Tried to verdict before a jury. Acquitted on all counts.
A defense sustained over two years against serious felony charges, concluding with the dismissal of every count.
Trials, negotiated resolutions, dismissals, and investigations closed without charges — across New York state courts and the federal districts since 1997.
Attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case turns on its own facts.
He never once sugar-coated anything or made promises he couldn’t keep… I watched him put in countless hours on my case and treat me like I was his own family.Client — Acquitted on all counts
If agents have called, a search has happened, or an arrest has been made, the next hours matter more than the next months. Consultations are confidential and privileged.
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