Free Republic

A North Carolina trucker has waged legal war against the entire police department of Phoenix, Arizona - after officers seized $39,500 in cash from him at a local airport alleging it was drug money. The suit, filed in April by Triple J Trucking owner Jerry Johnson, demands the sum returned in full for what he slammed as 'false accusations' by the force, who seized the money during an August 2020 stop at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. Johnson, the owner and operator of his Charlotte-based business, alleges that seizure was unjust, saying he had saved the money to purchase a...

‘The government’s theory is that having cash makes you a presumptive criminal, and I think every American should be worried about that.’ There is no denying anymore that our federal agencies have weaponized their power against the political adversaries of the left. But if you think the feds’ abandonment of all standards only affects outspoken critics of the regime, think again. More allegations of FBI corruption and hubris are coming to light after a lawsuit last week revealed FBI agents misled a judge so they could illegally seize and withhold property from innocent American citizens. Agents took more than $86...

Federal prosecutors want to keep key details about the planning and execution of the March 2021 raid at U.S. Private Vaults out of the public's sight.First, the FBI raided a private business to seize safe deposit boxes and assets belonging to hundreds of people who were not suspected of having committed any crimes.Now, prosecutors are trying to keep the public in the dark about why the brazen forfeiture effort was undertaken in the first place—and are offering little justification for why such secrecy is necessary.Four depositions that could be crucial to understanding the motivations and intentions behind the FBI's March...

Graham Filler, a state legislator in Michigan, describes two recently enacted civil forfeiture bills as a "reform" that closed a dangerous "loophole." In reality, the new laws open a dangerous loophole by authorizing forfeiture of cash carried by travelers at Michigan airports without a criminal conviction. That change represents a substantial reversal of reforms that Michigan enacted in response to complaints about a system that allows police to seize and confiscate property based on little more than a bare allegation that it is somehow connected to criminal activity. "Traveling with cash is not a crime," notes Institute for Justice senior...

The first sign of trouble for Empyreal came on May 17, when a sheriff's deputy in Dickinson County, Kan., pulled over one of its vans' drivers on I-70 for an alleged traffic violation and questioned her. She told the deputy she was on her way to pick up cash at medical pot dispensaries in Kansas City, Mo., then planned to drive the money back through Kansas the next morning to deposit it at a credit union in Colorado, according to the DEA. Medical marijuana is legal in Missouri but not in Kansas. The next morning, the DEA put the driver...

The U.S. has seized thousands of dollars in media proceeds from accused rioter John Earle Sullivan, who sold the rights to his Jan. 6 narrated video inside the Capitol to NBC News, CNN and four other outlets.The seizure was disclosed in a court filing in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., by a prosecutor opposing Mr. Sullivan’s motion to release the money. Assistant U.S. Attorney Candice C. Wong said that Mr. Sullivan received $90,875 for rights to his widely posted self-narrated video.It included the stark scene of Ashli Babbitt being fatally shot by an unidentified Capitol Police officer as protesters...

One of government’s most shocking powers is civil asset forfeiture or seizure. This power occurs when law enforcement confiscates private property with or without charging the owner with a crime. In Tennessee, the betting odds say it is more likely personal property will be taken by law enforcement than through a robbery. Scary, isn't it? Going back slightly more than a decade you will find Tennessee law enforcement has taken more than $150 million in cash and personal property – without criminal charges or legal accusations of criminal activity. The proceeds from these types of seizures are generally applied to...

Kermit Warren, an out-of-work shoeshine man from New Orleans, was carrying nearly $30,000 in cash through the airport in Columbus, Ohio, last November when federal drug agents stopped him and began asking questions. Warren was returning home with his life savings after the purchase of a truck fell through. He had a one-way plane ticket, no luggage and he gave some shaky answers about himself and the cash, leading the agents to suspect that it was drug money. Warren wasn’t charged with a crime, but the agents seized all of his cash. With his savings gone and the Covid pandemic...

The current state of civil asset forfeiture in the United States is one of almost naked tyranny. Don’t believe us? Listen to the latest Resistance Library Podcast. Picture this: You’re driving home from the casino and you've absolutely cleaned up – to the tune of $50,000. You see a police car pull up behind you, but you can’t figure out why. Not only have you not broken any laws, you’re not even speeding. But the police officer doesn’t appear to be interested in charging you with a crime. Instead, he takes your gambling winnings, warns you not to say anything...

Six months after the Drug Enforcement Administration stole $43,000 from Stacy Jones at a North Carolina airport, her lawyer, Dan Alban, received a letter from the aptly named Douglas Kash, a senior attorney in the DEA's Asset Forfeiture Section. "I am writing to inform you of the decision to return the above-referenced property," Kash said. While the DEA offered no explanation for its sudden benevolence, the reversal fit a pattern: Government bullies who use civil asset forfeiture laws to seize allegedly crime-tainted property from innocent people tend to back down when they encounter unexpected resistance. But because challenging a forfeiture...

Earlier this week, the bitcoin community was shocked when a digital wallet containing roughly $1 billion in bitcoin...was emptied by an unknown individual. The Department of Justice announced on Thursday that it had seized the wallet’s contents as part of a civil forfeiture case targeting the Silk Road. The government said it retrieved the roughly 70,000 bitcoins with the help of an unnamed hacker, whose identity is known to the government but who is simply referred to as “Individual X” in court documents. “Individual X” allegedly hacked the Silk Road’s payments system some time in 2012 or 2013. The government...

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and other Department of Homeland Security agents seized more than $2 billion in cash from travelers in U.S. airports between 2000 and 2016, according to a new report by the Institute for Justice, a libertarian public interest law firm. The institute's report is the first to comprehensively analyze the use of civil asset forfeiture by federal law enforcement in airports, where multiple news investigations have revealed horror stories of passengers having their money taken even though they weren't ever charged with a crime. Take a case that Reason covered: Rustem Kazazi, a U.S. citizen who...

When he heads to airports now, Samuel Haile thinks of that day at Buffalo's airport a few years ago. The government took $12,000 from his carry-on and wouldn't give it back. Haile was not charged with a crime ... Dozens of passengers have suffered such a loss in recent years in Buffalo. With an X-ray machine, a screener spots a dense mass in a piece of luggage. If it's an unusually large sum of cash, the government takes it on the suspicion that it's drug money. At Buffalo and every other airport in the country, the TSA screens bags and...

The killing of George Floyd and the subsequent nationwide uproar has rightfully forced needed conversations about law enforcement and the criminal justice system. While Congress has so far fumbled on working toward tangible, passable legislation, Sens. Rand Paul, R–Kentucky, Mike Lee, R–Utah, Mike Crapo, R–Idaho, and Angus King, I–Maine, have reintroduced legislation to limit the use of civil asset forfeiture. Through the practice, law enforcement is able to seize cash and other assets from individuals suspected or accused of criminal activity without so much as a criminal conviction or even bringing criminal charges. The practice of civil asset forfeiture in...

It’s all about the revenue. Civil forfeiture brings in money, and lawmakers are more worried about their budgets than residents’ due process and property rights. An Arizona bill requiring police and prosecutors to get a criminal conviction before they could attempt to force defendants to forfeit their assets died Thursday at the hands of a bloc of mostly Democrat lawmakers. Civil asset forfeiture is a mechanism that lets law enforcement seize and keep the assets of people believed to have committed crimes. Many states do not require defendants to actually be convicted — or sometimes even charged — with a...

-Smith charged in connection with alleged misuse of county forfeiture funds MACOMB COUNTY, Mich. – Macomb County Prosecutor Eric Smith has been hit with 10 criminal corruption charges -- including running a criminal enterprise, a 20-year felony -- in connection with the alleged misuse of county forfeiture funds. Smith faces considerable jail time if he’s found guilty, but the case reaches far beyond the prosecutor. He’s accused of turning the top law enforcement office in the state’s third-most populated county into a criminal enterprise. After the state raided Smith’s office last April, and then his home a month later, Smith...

SOUTH FAYETTE TOWNSHIP, Pa. — A local man’s life savings of more than $82,000 was seized at Pittsburgh International Airport in August, and now he and his daughter are suing, Channel 11’s news exchange partners at TribLIVE reported. Rebecca Brown, 54, of Lowell, Mass., told TribLIVE her 79-year-old retired father, Terry Rolin, of South Fayette Township, asked her to help manage the cash he and his late parents had hidden in hiding spots throughout the family home. “It was late Saturday night after the banks closed when he gave me the money, and I had an early (Monday) morning flight...

Governor Phil Murphy today signed legislation (S1963) mandating comprehensive disclosure and transparency requirements for the system of civil asset forfeiture. “New Jersey law enforcement agencies currently have no permanent statutory requirement to disclose civil asset forfeitures,” said Governor Murphy. “This legislation would boost confidence in our justice system by requiring county prosecutors to track and report data on this practice. Allowing the public to understand how assets are being seized, where seized funds go, and where forfeited property is going is a huge step forward for transparency and accountability.” Under the bill, county prosecutors would submit quarterly reports to the...

When police arrested Luis Melendez on drug charges, they found $2,928 in cash alongside drugs and weapons in his bedroom. The drugs and weapons became evidence in his criminal case, but prosecutors also went after the money in civil court using a common but little-understood practice called civil asset forfeiture. When Melendez fought to keep the money, they used his statements against him in his criminal case. New Jersey’s highest court on Wednesday declared this practice an abuse of power, though the ruling upheld Melendez’s conviction based on the other evidence against him. The decision places additional limits on New...

LEWISBURG, W.Va. — A financial services company coming after Gov. Jim Justice personally for $2.79 million is asking the Greenbrier County sheriff to seize personal property and for Justice assets in a dozen banks to be checked. Meanwhile, a legal ad says the sheriff of Logan County has been authorized to sell shares of two Justice-owned companies to settle yet another debt in the court system. This has been quite a week for Governor Justice and his family’s vast holdings. Court cases, including some from afar, keep resulting in local law enforcement officers being asked to assess what personal property...