Posted on 03/05/2020 11:14:10 AM PST by nickcarraway
Neither Terry Rolin or his daughter were ever charged with a crime, but that didn't stop the DEA from trying to seize more than $82,000 from them through civil asset forfeiture.
The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) will return more than $82,000 that it seized from an elderly Pittsburgh man and his daughter after a federal class-action lawsuit was filed on their behalf last month.
The Institute for Justice, the libertarian-leaning public interest law firm that filed the lawsuit, announced today that the DEA will return $82,373 that it seized from Rebecca Brown six months ago at a Pittsburgh airport. The money was the life savings of her father, Terry Rolin, a 79-year-old retired railroad engineer. She says she intended to deposit the money in a bank but ran out of time before her flight.
According to Brown, a DEA agent met her at her gate and grilled her about the money. Brown told The Washington Post that the agent demanded she put her confused father on the phone, and, when their stories didn't exactly match, the agent seized the cash.
"I'm grateful that my father's life savings will soon be returned, but the money never should have been taken in the first place. I can't believe they're not even offering an apology for the stress and pain they caused for my family," Brown said in a press release today. "Without this money, my father was forced to put off necessary dental work—causing him serious pain for several months—and could not make critical repairs to his truck."
In cases like Rolin's, the DEA seizes cash using civil asset forfeiture, a practice that allows police to seize cash and property suspected of being connected to criminal activity, even if the owner is not charged with a crime.
After the seizure, the DEA notified Brown that it was seeking to permanently forfeit Rolin's life savings. Neither Rolin or Brown were charged with a crime.
Law enforcement groups say civil asset forfeiture is a vital tool to disrupt organized drug trafficking by targeting its illicit revenues. However civil liberties groups say there are too few protections for innocent owners and too many perverse profit incentives for police. More than half of all U.S. states have passed some form of asset forfeiture reform because of these concerns, but it is less constrained at the federal level.
Although it is legal to fly domestically with large amounts of undeclared cash, the Institute for Justice lawsuit claims the DEA has a practice or policy of seizing currency from travelers at U.S. airports without probable cause simply if the dollar amount is greater than $5,000. This practice, the suit argues, violates travelers' Fourth Amendment rights.
"We are glad that Terry will get his money back, but it is shameful that it takes a lawsuit and an international outcry for the federal government to do the right thing," said Institute for Justice senior attorney Dan Alban. "We know that this routinely happens to other travelers at airports across the United States."
In 2016, a USA Today investigation found the DEA seized more than $209 million from at least 5,200 travelers in 15 major airports over the previous decade.
A 2017 report by the Justice Department Office of Inspector General found that the DEA seized more than $4 billion in cash from people suspected of drug activity over the previous decade, but $3.2 billion of those seizures were never connected to any criminal charges.
The report reviewed 100 cash seizures and found that only 44 of those were connected to or advanced a criminal investigation. The majority of seizures occurred in airports, train stations, and bus terminals, where the DEA regularly snoops on travel records and maintains a network of travel industry employees who act as confidential informants.
"When seizure and administrative forfeitures do not ultimately advance an investigation or prosecution, law enforcement creates the appearance, and risks the reality, that it is more interested in seizing and forfeiting cash than advancing an investigation or prosecution," the Inspector General warned.
That warning has not been heeded, and Brown and the Institute for Justice plan to continue pursuing their lawsuit.
"The government shouldn't be able to take money for no reason, hang on to it for months, and then give it back like nothing happened, which is why the lawsuit we filed will continue," Brown said. "No one should be forced to go through this nightmare."
I’ll probably never have to worry about that.
“Why would anyone carry that much cash on them?”
How about “it’s none of your damned business”. Does that work for you?
L
They own him interest and damages, too.
I wonder if the author of this piece is related to the whistleblower? Same unusual last name and he a political reporter based out of Washington.
ROFL!!!!
I could have taken a year off with just her as a customer when i had my route :)
well they do have car vending machines now :)
They had no right to take her money but yeah I would DEFINITELY investigate something like that thoroughly or maybe folks in other parts of the country are more trustful or more naive...i dunno
BTW, this virus can’t be spread through the internet can it?
I’m going to wash my hands
Sure. But it’s none of anyone’s business.
Because they wanted to.
Take people's money for no reason?
Are you sure you are on the right board?
Sure, the daughter was stupid. She could have been mugged by a “youth” just as easily as by the DEA.
But, it shouldn’t have taken six months and the pro bono actions of a bunch of lawyers to straighten it out, either.
Jeff Sessions, Rudy Giuliani, Joe Biden, Strom Thurmond, the Bushes, Clintons like it.
Abolish the DEA-——consolidate the DEA into some other sub-branch of the DOJ
“...One cheer for the Kochs...”
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I am missing the connection to this story.
Now, there's a weird group you wouldn't expect to agree on any issue.
I wonder how much of all that cash ended up in the agent’s pocket. And I wonder if the government is going to give the money back with interest.
I don’t support civil forfeiture. I get the logic of using this tool to fight crime, but it always ends up hurting normal folks, who supposedly have the freedom to travel with cash. Various agencies outright steal travelers money every year.
Strom Thurmond? Do you have a source? He’s been dead 17 years.
Care to explain this? Per the 4th AMENDMENT of the CONSTITUTION, (I know, meh...)
It's why all politicians and badge heavy thugs should face an agonizing death if they violate the Constitution they are SWORN to defend.
With great power comes great risk.
I don’t think it is a tool to fight crime. It’s a distraction. They spend time fighting noncriminals and give criminals a pass.
Absolute violation of 4th Amendment rights. Heads should roll.
In a just world, these “officials” would all be put up against the wall and shot.
After a quick trial, of course.
2) people should be able to do so without fear of their own government
3) if that's the ONLY sign of criminality, that should not be enough to confiscate money
4) I dislike the DEA, and the ATFE
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