I believe the 30 day requirement refers to the pilot/owner filing an interest in the aircraft. A lot of times people will walk away from the cash and/or the property just so they don’t get dragged into an investigation. For some dealers losing a car to forfeiture was just the cost of doing business.
Again, drug dealers adapt just as police agencies do. After losing many cars to LE agencies due to forfeiture laws, the dealers started renting cars. When the mule was stopped, the drugs would be found and the car seized. But since the owner of the vehicle was a rental agency and the owner had no knowledge of the use of the car, the vehicle would be returned to the rental car company with the admonition that if the RENTOR was picked up in one of their vehicles again with a quantity of drugs, the forfeiture would go forward. This would force the rental car companies to flag certain customers to make sure they couldn’t rent cars again. A national “blacklist” if you may.
The drug king pins then started buying the buy-here pay-here lots and using dealer tags to move the drugs. The excuse would be “I bought the car at auction in Texas and I had no knowledge it was being used to transport drugs to Detroit”....Right...They would have the auction paperwork and the car was returned. These were a little tougher to crack, but they were.
I’ve read case histories where scenarios involving aircraft like the one you mentioned were involved. I also seem to remember that there were times that a bond was required, but I honestly can’t say for certain because I never seized an airplane.
As an aside, USA Today used to publish the legal notice of intent to forfeiture and also the case dispositions. Remember, a third party could legally make a claim against the governments interest in property or currency.
The problem with this story is everyone is making assumptions without having all the facts at hand.
I won a few cases and I lost a few. The ones I won didn’t benefit me directly (I didn’t get a cut of the funds) and the ones I lost just made me work harder to cover the bases that caused the case to go south. I’ve also done investigations that returned to property to the owner because we couldn’t PROVE the item was proceeds or facilitation.
I played it straight and I think the guys I worked with (financial investigators) did as well.
Working a financial case isn’t easy, it takes a ton of paperwork, interviews, and attention to detail. At the end of the day, you may not be able to prove the case, but you didn’t cut corners or juice the evidence to get there.
Again thanks for your informative descriptions of how the forfeiture system works. A handy resource for FR!
I found the case i mentioned, and the most complete description seems to be this:
THE PITTSBURGH PRESS
Copyright 1991 The Pittsburgh Press Co.
Reprinted with permission.
THURSDAY AUGUST 15, 1991 Page A6
JET SEIZED, TRASHED, OFFERED BACK FOR $66,000
By Andrew Schneider and Mary Pat Flaherty
The Pittsburgh Press With more than 9,000 flights under his belt, Billy Munnerlyn has survived
lots of choppy air. But it took only one flight into a government forfeiture
action to send his small air charter service crashing to the ground.
Munnerlyn and his wife, Karon, both 53, worked for years building their
Las Vegas business. Their four planes - a jet and three props - flew
businessmen, air freight, air ambulance runs and Grand Canyon tours.
“It wasn’t a big operation, but it was ours,” Mrs. Munnerlyn says.
Today, Munnerlyn is malting 22 cents a mile trucking watermelons and
frozen car-rots across the country in an 18-wheeler.
He has filed for bankruptcy. He sold off his three smaller planes and
office equipment to pay $80,000 in legal fees. His 1969 Lear Jet - his pride
and joy - is being held by the federal government at a storage hangar in Texas.
Munnerlyn’s life went into a tailspin the afternoon of Oct. 2, 1989,
when he flew an old man and four padlocked, blue plastic boxes to the Ontario
International Airport, outside Los Angeles.
His passenger was 74-year-old Albert Wright, a convicted cocaine
trafficker. The plastic boxes contained $2,795,685 in cash.
But Munnerlyn says he didn’t know that until three hours after they
landed and Drug Enforcement Administration agents handcuffed him and took him
to the Cucamonga County Jail. Munnerlyn was charged with drug trafficking
and ordered to pay $1 million bail. Seventy-one hours later, he was released
without being charged.
When he went to get his plane, a drug agent told him “it belongs to the
government now” - a simple statement that launched a devastating legal battle
that continues today. An informant had told Ontario Airport police that
Wright would arrive Oct. 2 with a large amount of currency to purchase
narcotics.
Police were waiting when the Lear landed. They watched Wright get off the
plane. For the next three hours, agents followed him as he met two other
people, picked up a rented van, returned to the airport and unloaded the
plastic containers from Munnerlyn’s jet.
Police followed the van to a residence about 20 miles away. They
surrounded the van and four people nearby. All were identified as being major
cocaine traffickers.
A search of the plastic boxes found $2,795,685.
At the airport, agents told Munnerlyn he was in trouble. They searched
the jet. No drugs were found, but they seized $8,500 in cash that he had been
paid for the charter.
“I guessed they would figure out I had nothing to do with that guy and his
drug money, and give me my plane and $8,500 back,” Munnerlyn says. He was
wrong.
Two weeks later, drug agents showed up at Munnerlyn’s Las Vegas home and
office and carried off seven boxes of documents and flight logs.
It was just the beginning of the government’s efforts to prove he was a
drug trafficker and had flown for Wright for years. Munnerlyn says he didn’t
even know Wright was the man’s name.
Several days before the seizure, Munnerlyn was contacted by a man
identifying himself as “Randy Sullivan,” a banker, who was willing to discuss
financing a new aircraft that Munnerlyn had been telling business contacts he
wanted to buy.
Munnerlyn agreed to meet him Oct. 2 at Little Rock Airport. “We were
going to fly back to Las Vegas, where I was going to show him my operation and
talk about him financing my purchase of a larger plane.” Munnerlyn picked up
“Sullivan” and four boxes of “financial records.”
“He was a distinguished-looking, very old man dressed in a dark suit. He
looked like a banker is supposed to look,” Munnerlyn says.
They stopped in Oklahoma City to refuel. When they took off 45 minutes
later headed to Las Vegas, “Sullivan” told Munnerlyn he had made a telephone
call and had to go to the Ontario airport instead. They would discuss the loan
at a later date, he told the pilot.
While en route, he paid Munnerlyn $8,300, the normal tariff for a jet
charter, and gave him a $200 tip.
“I told the DEA that I never saw that man before in my life, and I’ve
never had anything to do with drugs,” Munnerlyn says. “All I want is my plane
back.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Alejandro Mayorkas is still fighting to prevent
that from happening.
In court documents Mayorkas filed, he acknowledged the government “will
rely in part on circumstantial evidence and otherwise inadmissible hearsay” to
try to justify the forfeiture.
The government “need not establish a substantial connection to illegal
activity, but need only establish probable cause,” the prosecutor wrote.
Mayorkas says the fact the aircraft flew into Los Angeles, “an area known
as a center of illegal drug activity,” is probable cause.
The prosecutor faulted Munnerlyn for not knowing what was in the boxes,
but government regulations do not require charter pilots to question or examine
baggage.
Munnerlyn wanted Wright to testify, but the government said he couldn’t.
“He was the only guy other than me who could tell the court that we didn’t
know each other. But Mayorkas said they couldn’t find him,” Munnerlyn says.
At a three-day trial that began last Oct. 30, Mayorkas sprang a surprise
witness. A ramp worker from Detroit’s Willow Run Airport testified that he had
seen Munnerlyn and Wright at his airport “in the fall of 1988.” The witness,
Steven Antuna, described Munnerlyn to a T, right down to the full reddish,
gray-streaked “Hemingway-like” beard he had when he was arrested.
The only problem was that Munnerlyn didn’t have a beard until the summer
of 1989.
Mrs. Munnerlyn and her 31-year-old son took the stand and refuted the
statements about the beard.
The six-member jury ruled that the plane should be returned to the pilot
and his wife.
In December, Mayorkas asked for another trial - and held on to the plane.
He said Munnerlyn’s family members had lied.
But Munnerlyn submitted 51 affidavits from FAA and Las Vegas officials,
U.S. marshals, bank officers, customers and business contacts sweating he did
not have a beard in the fall of 1988.
Photos and a TV news tape of Munnerlyn being interviewed after rescuing
a couple from Mexico after a hurricane, both taken that fall, showed him
beardless. But the government kept the plane.
Munnerlyn and his wife shuttled between Las Vegas and Los Angeles more
than 20 times.
“Each time we went we thought this nightmare would be over, but each time
there was some new game that the government wanted to play,” Mrs. Munnerlyn
says.
First, Mayorkas demanded the pilot pay the government $66,000 for his
plane.
“We didn’t have any money left and we couldn’t figure out why we should
have to pay the government anything, when a jury said we were innocent,”
Munnerlyn says.
Mayorkas lowered the “settlement” to $30,000, still far more then the
Munnerlyns could raise.
In April, Munnerlyn went to the U.S. Marshal Service’s aircraft storage
site in Midland, Texas. He climbed over, under and through his plane, which had
been torn apart during the DEA search for drugs.
“The whole thing was a mess,” he says. “That plane’s going to need about
$50,000 worth of work to bring it up to FAA standards again, to make it legal
to fly.”
In mid-June, Mayorkas made what he called a “final offer.”
“We have to pay the government $6,500 to get back my plane, that a jury
says shouldn’t have been taken in the first place, and they want to keep the
$8,500 that I was paid for the flight,” Munnerlyn says.
Last month, when asked if the settlement request was fair, Mayorkas said:
“If he was innocent, he would have taken reasonable steps to avoid any
involvement in illicit drug activity,” Mayorkas says.
But he wouldn’t detail what preventive measures Munnerlyn should have
taken. The Munnerlyns are trying to borrow the money to get their plane back.
No 10% bond mentioned, or dropped charges against the drug dealer.
But still the case sucks big time. To me, the government should have charged Munnerlyn or given his plane back as soon as they decided not to charge him.
Here’s a more compressed version. This later story says that the charges were dropped against the drug dealer!:
“Billy and Karon Munnerlyn owned and operated an air charter service. In
October 1989, Mr. Munnerlyn was hired to fly Albert Wright from Little
Rock, Arkansas to Ontario, California. DEA agents seized Mr. Wright’s
luggage and found $2.7 million inside. Both he and Mr. Munnerlyn were
arrested. Though the charges against Mr. Munnerlyn were quickly dropped
for lack of evidence, the government refused to release the airplane
(The charges against Mr. Wright, a convicted cocaine dealer, were
eventually dropped as well.). Mr. Munnerlyn spent over $85,000 in legal
fees trying to get his plane back. Though a Los Angeles jury awarded him
the return of his airplane — he had no knowledge that he was transporting
drug money — a U.S. District Judge reversed the jury’s verdict. Munnerlyn
was forced to declare bankruptcy and is now forced to drive a truck for a
living. He eventually spent $7,000 to buy his plane back. However, the
DEA caused about $100,000 of damage. The agency is not liable for the
damage, and there is no way (4) that Mr. Munnerlyn can raise the money
to re-start his business.”
http://venus.soci.niu.edu/~cudigest/CUDS5/cud548.txt