Any cash is inherently suspicious and can be deemed "guilty" by the seizing agency with no corroborating evidence
by Tim Cushing | Tech Dirt | May 12, 2015

There were no drugs and nothing to enforce, but that didn’t stop the Drug Enforcement Agency from taking $16,000 from a passenger on a train headed to California.

After scraping together enough money to produce a music video in Hollywood, 22-year-old Joseph Rivers set out last month on a train trip from Michigan to Los Angeles, hoping it was the start of something big.

Rivers changed trains at the Amtrak station in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on April 15, with bags containing his clothes, other possessions and an envelope filled with the $16,000 in cash he had raised with the help of his family, the Albuquerque Journal reports. Agents with the Drug Enforcement Administration got on after him and began looking for people who might be trafficking drugs.

Rivers said the agents questioned passengers at random, asking for their destination and reason for travel. When one of the agents got to Rivers, who was the only black person in his car, according to witnesses, the agent took the interrogation further, asking to search his bags. Rivers complied. The agent found the cash — still in a bank envelope — and decided to seize it on suspicion that it may be tied to narcotics. River pleaded with the agents, explaining his situation and even putting his mother on the phone to verify the story.

No luck.

Leaving aside the unsavory hint of racial profiling, there’s the fact that the DEA helped itself to cash simply because it was cash. It had no reason to suspect Rivers of anything, but the money was apparently too much to pass up. Even having his story corroborated was useless. And, sure, the DEA agents had no reason to believe anyone Rivers put them in touch with was a trustworthy source of information. (After all, he’s some sort of drug dealer, right?) But to grant the DEA the benefit of the doubt for its refusal to believe Rivers’ mother’s statements is to cut the agents an absurd amount of slack for everything preceding that.

Because what did the DEA actually have here? A young guy and $16,000 in cash. According to the DEA’s own statements, it doesn’t need anything more than that to effect an asset seizure. And, according to the DEA’s own statements, it has no reason to bother with anything more than a cursory look that “confirms” what it wants it to confirm.

[Sean] Waite [DEA – Albuquerque] said that in general DEA agents look for “indicators” such as whether the person bought an expensive one-way ticket with cash, if the person is traveling from or to a city known as a hot spot for drug activity, if the person’s story has inconsistencies or if the large sums of money found could have been transported by more conventional means.

If we leave it to the DEA to define drug activity “hot spots,” it becomes any destination any traveler is headed to, especially if there’s seizable cash involved. As for story inconsistencies, we’re back to “eye of the beholder” territory. If agents are motivated to perform asset seizures,any story can be found to have enough flaws to justify the forfeiture. Waite’s statement is very unhelpful, other than to show how completely screwed up asset forfeiture programs are.

As if on cue — and as if the DEA’s Sean Waite is completely unaware of the level of scrutiny and negative public opinion centered on asset forfeiture programs — he delivers the most tone-deaf of talking points:

“We don’t have to prove that the person is guilty,” Waite said. “It’s that the money is presumed to be guilty.”

Boom. There’s your problem. Or rather, Rivers’ problem. And the problem of far too many Americans who made the mistake of leaving home with cash on their person. The government doesn’t need to prove ****. It can just take and take and take and force those wronged by its “presumptions” to jump through multiple expensive and mostly futile hoops if they hope to recover their “guilty” belongings.

So, what do you tell people like Rivers? “Don’t carry cash?” Cash is universal and accepted everywhere. But it’s also apparently inherently guilty. Just don’t carry large amounts of cash? From Virginia’s asset forfeiture stats:

Contrary to the oft-stated defense that these programs are necessary to cripple powerful drug lords and multimillion dollar fraudsters, more than half the cash seized from 2001-2006 fell in the $614-1,288 range and the average worth of vehicles seized has hovered at about $6,000.

And Philadelphia, PA’s:

A City Paper review of 100 cases from 2011 and 2012 found the median amount of cash seized by the District Attorney was only $178.

Any cash is inherently suspicious and can be deemed “guilty” by the seizing agency with no corroborating evidence. $16,000 has just made its way into the DEA’s funds and if Rivers wants it back, he’s likely going to lose a great deal of it to legal fees. He’s currently trying to raise the money the DEA took from him via crowdfunding site GoFundMe. Hopefully, he’ll get another chance to make his music video without being sidelined by government agents looking to bust some “guilty” cash.

These money seizures are nothing new.
Been going on since at least as early as
the 1980s.

Its just the gov's way of making everyone
feel raped and freezing, equally.


Had the latest target, been carrying the same
amount in travelers cheques, the gov most likely
would have left him alone.

i agree, i just dont understand how they can get away with it.

It's a strategy to scare people away from cash. There have been numerous stories of cash seizures from legitimate small business people by police departments, Homeland Security, even the IRS.

A recent case in I believe Iowa was a guy with duffel bags of cash (Over $100,000 as I recall) that had been paid out by a casino for winning a poker tournament. He gets pulled over on the highway, is asked if his vehicle can be searched, and LIKE AN IDIOT says 'Ok'. The cop finds the cash, could care less than he has a casino payout slip and the cash is seized. It's literally highway robbery.

It will take over a year to get your money back, will cost you at LEAST $10,000 in lawyers fees, and you will likely become a target of harassment by the cops if you go public with your story.

So what's the lesson here? 1) IF you have no choice but to travel with cash, consider driving the most inconspicuous car on the planet. 2) IF you get pulled over, take whatever ticket is written up and DO NOT SUBMIT to ANY SEARCH unless presented with a warrant. Get off that road at the nearest exit and find a new route. 3)Set up a camera to record any conversation the driver might have to protect yourself should there be any question about your level of co-operation, or probable cause. 4) Be aware that there can be no unreasonable delay after stating the reason for the stop. Cop says you were speeding? Sorry officer, I didn't realize. I hope you'll give me a break on the ticket. NOW he says can I search? You say No. He says, well then, I might have to call for a drug dog to sniff the car. Nope. He gets to write the ticket and send you packing, because that is why he stopped you.

You're more than welcome, to place the
cop, under citizens arrest.


Its the gov., nobody to snitch them out to.

Media? Gov. don't care.
The stories of money seizure from law abiding
citizens, have been told, time and time again,
for decades.

now that is just ridiculous, you win a poker tourney, get paid in cash and have the slip to prove it, and they can still seize the money. wow that blows my mind that they can do that. i knew they always seized money from like supposed drug dealers and stuff like that, even if they person who was supposedly dealing drugs was found innocent. i just never knew it went to this extent.

i think citizens arrest is a thing of the past gnome, try that in todays world will get a round from a glock 17 put in your head.

www.infowars.com/feds-ugre-banks-to-call-cops-in-customers-who-withdraw-5000-or-more/

March 24,201
The Justice Department is ordering bank employees to consider calling the cops on customers who withdraw $5,000 dollars or more, a chilling example of how the war on cash is intensifying.

Well the $5,000 number I think was a Patriot Act thing, and so the banks got wise to the $4,999.00 deposit/withdrawl cycle. Since they can't report it to homeland security, they decided themselves to start making the process difficult for people.

In the U.S. Chase bank has said no cash will be allowed in safety deposit boxes unless it's 'collectible' in nature. They also limited cash transactions for business accounts to $50,000 a month. That was both for deposits and withdrawls.

In UK if you want $5,000 pounds or more in cash you essentially must provide the justification for the bank giving you the money. IF you said for example "Well I just want it on me in case I find a bargain at a garage sale. It's my money." that's not good enough. IF you are going on vacation, need plane tickets, clothes, spending money etc, the bank will ask why you are not doing these transactions with credit cards and debit cards? WHY do you NEED cash?

Again, the system trying to force you off cash. Use electronic means for ALL your purchases so they can be recorded, catalogued, and used as evidence by the state to enforce tax laws and to ensure they get their cut. The cash only 'underground economy' of tradespeople, drug dealing, and other criminal behaviour prevents the state from getting their cut.

IRS Steals Over $100,000 from Small Businessman in North Carolina
Man was not charged with a crime


The Institute for Justice, a national public interest law firm leading the fight to end civil forfeiture, has filed suit against the government for stealing $107,000 from Lyndon McLellan, the owner of a convenience store in rural Fairmont, North Carolina.

Although McLellan did not break the law or was he charged with a crime, the IRS and the Department of Justice seized his money. The theft occurred months after the IRS announced a formal policy change prohibiting the agency from using civil forfeiture to take money from law-abiding citizens.

“It took me 13 years to save that much money, and it took fewer than 13 seconds for the government to take it away,” said McLellan.

“This case demonstrates that the federal government’s recent reforms are riddled with loopholes and exceptions and fundamentally fail to protect Americans’ basic rights,” said Institute for Justice Attorney Robert Everett Johnson, who represents Lyndon. “No American should have his property taken by the government without first being convicted of a crime.”

Following a front page story in The New York Times, the IRS announced it “will no longer pursue the seizure and forfeiture of funds associated solely with ‘legal source’ structuring cases.” The Justice Department also made a promise not to raid bank accounts.

According to the Institute for Justice from 2005 to 2012 the IRS seized more than $242 million for suspected structuring violations in more than 2,500 cases, and annual seizures increased fivefold over those eight years. A third of those seizures occurred in cash transaction cases under $10,000 where no criminal activity was alleged.

Not exactly new.

On its official website, the Canadian government informs its citizens that “there is no limit to the amount of money that you may legally take into or out of the United States.” Nonetheless, it adds, banking in the U.S. can be difficult for non-residents, so Canadians shouldn’t carry large amounts of cash.

That last bit is excellent advice, but for an entirely different reason than the one Ottawa cites.

There’s a shakedown going on in the U.S., and the perps are in uniform.

Across America, law enforcement officers — from federal agents to state troopers right down to sheriffs in one-street backwaters — are operating a vast, co-ordinated scheme to grab as much of the public’s cash as they can; “hand over fist,” to use the words of one police trainer.

American shakedown: Police won't charge you, but they'll grab your money


Ming Tong Liu had a suitcase with $75,195 (£46,000) he was going to use to buy a restaurant. For Mandrel Stuart it was $17,550 in proceeds from a barbecue restaurant. Benjamin Molina was going to use $18,000 to buy a car. Jose Jeronimo Sorto had $28,500 in church funds for a land purchase in El Salvador and a new trailer in North Carolina.

Each of these men was driving in the US with sizable amounts of cash when they were pulled over by police for minor traffic infractions. Mr Liu, for instance, was going 10 miles over the speed limit. Mr Stuart's car's windows were too dark.

Each of these men had the money in their possession confiscated by police despite not being charged with a crime. It was enough that the officers suspected the money was tied to an illegal activity.

If your find yourself embroiled in a forfeiture case and you can't afford a lawyer, you have no recourse
Editorial, The Deseret News

The growing outcry over police confiscation

They can get away with it because there's no one to police the police.

yep except other police, who always side with, you guessed it. the police.