> Also, having $50k on you with a bank receipt is generally a non-issue.
You have personal experience? The whole issue of Asset Forfeiture surrounds non-drug-dealing persons regularly having their cash seized under the assumption that they must be drug dealers while skipping the inconvenient step of pressing charges.
"A 2020 study found that the median cash forfeiture in 21 states which track such data was $1,300."[2]
[0] https://www.fincen.gov/sites/default/files/shared/CTRPamphle...
[1] https://www.wunc.org/news/2021-06-15/asset-forfeiture-create...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United...
>...On his drive from Texas to California, a Nevada Highway Patrol officer engineered a reason to pull him over, saying that he passed too closely to a tanker truck. The officer who pulled Stephen over complimented his driving but nevertheless prolonged the stop and asked a series of questions about Stephen’s life and travels. Stephen told the officer that his life savings was in the trunk. Another group of officers arrived, and Stephen gave them permission to search his car. They found a backpack with Stephen’s money, just where he said it would be, along with receipts showing all his bank withdrawals. After a debate amongst the officers, which was recorded on body camera footage, they decided to seize his life savings.
Well they must really believe they have a strong case then, right?
>...So Stephen teamed up with the Institute for Justice to get his money back. It was only after IJ brought a lawsuit against the DEA to return Stephen’s money, and his story garnered national press attention, that the federal government agreed to return his money. In fact, they did so just a day after he filed his lawsuit, showing that they had no basis to hold it.
Nope, I guess they knew they didn't have a case. To recap: They engineer a fake reason for a traffic stop treating cars as a potential lottery ticket with a big payoff. They take the money even though they know they shouldn't. They circumvent Nevada law by handing the money to the DEA so they could get a kickback, hoping he won't be able to now afford a lawyer since they took his life savings. The minute he shows he has a powerful legal team looking into the case, they hand back the money.
https://ij.org/case/nevada-civil-forfeiture/
>For civil asset forfeiture the whole premise is that you can't prove the money is your's.
Also, one has to wonder why the basic principle of the state having to prove guilt needs to be upended with civil asset forfeiture. If you are alleged to have murdered someone you are assumed innocent, but for civil asset forfeiture you are assumed guilty?
This is civil vs criminal law. In civil cases you do not have the right to an attorney and hearing can be ex parte. The burden of proof is only more likely than not. So you have one-sided cases with no representation for the asset. These same lack of protections are being exploited for things like red flag laws, proposed abortion laws, etc. It's the same sloppy paradigm - too much work to do things under criminal law due to pesky rights, so just move it to the civil side.
Coming directly out of a bank (and hence tracked by the gov’t already) is a legitimate source.
If you have a receipt showing you just withdrew it from a bank account, even if they’re stupid enough to seize it, the court is going to give it right back to you - along with a civil settlement.
This isn't true. You'll probably get the money back, but it will take a couple months and cost a couple thousand in attorney's fees (which the courts will not reimburse)
Unless you get a lot of press, and/or have someone like the Institute for Justice fighting on your behalf, that's not a given.
There's a playbook that local/state and federal agencies have.
If a local/state agency seizes your cash, then they can just kick it up to the feds. Then any suit you file will have to be against the federal government. This increases your costs and difficulty.
The local/state agency is fine with this, because they have an agreement (see "Equitable Sharing"[1]) to get 80% of the money back.
[1] https://ij.org/issues/private-property/civil-forfeiture/
Civil penalties for this behavior means if you prevail (and it’s an egregious case), you can more than make up for it. Many attorneys will take such cases on contingency, as the odds are pretty good.
Here is the federal manual on asset seizure btw [https://www.justice.gov/criminal/criminal-afmls/file/839521/...]
Sounds like a hassle.
Bank receipts, specifically don't help.
Plenty of cases where random traffic stops and airport "additional screening" checks have resulted in cash being seized, even when someone has sufficient evidence that they withdrew it from a bank.
In Civil Asset Forfeiture cases the burden of proof is reversed (i.e the cash is presumed guilty).
Simply having a bank receipt doesn't prove innocence of the cash, and the law enforcement officers who seize it will just do so and claim that you were about to do something criminal with it.
It's on you to prove - in court, by filing a lawsuit - how you came by it, how it was to be used in legitimate activity. Even then, if you 100% prevail, you're still liable for all of your costs for doing this.
If you had to file a Federal case (because local/state authorities can, and will, send it to some federal agency and get 80% of it back in a sharing-arrangement) then your costs for getting your money back are increased even further.
