Tag: civil asset forfeiture

Feds accused of seizing $85 million from safe deposit boxes without ‘any legal basis’

Hundreds of people storing valuables in safe deposit boxes in Los Angeles may never see their cash, precious metals and heirlooms again, unless a federal judge intervenes in the next week.

Several are suing the government for seizing the contents of about 800 boxes as part of a March raid of the storage provider, U.S. Private Vaults (USPV), which was indicted for conspiracy to sell drugs and launder money. 

The Institute for Justice (IJ) is seeking class-action status for a May lawsuit by several owners alleging “shocking, unconscionable, and unconstitutional” behavior by the government. IJ attorney Robert Frommer accused the feds of an “$85 million cash grab” from people who were not accused of wrongdoing.

The civil forfeiture notices “do not identify any legal basis,” namely the “specific offense,” to justify each forfeiture, and thus violate due process rights, the public interest law firm said in an amended complaint filed last week. “Box holders thus do not know whether the government is accusing them of drug crimes, money laundering, structuring” or any crime at all.

“While this case is similar to many of our other forfeiture actions, it is also bigger because the government is trying to forfeit hundreds of safe deposit boxes all at one go,” IJ senior attorney Rob Johnson told Just the News. 

It’s also unusual for the government to keep fighting “tooth and nail” after innocent people contest the forfeitures, he wrote in an email. The feds appear intent to “make all these box holders prove their own innocence to get their property back” with no evidence of a crime. 

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Chicago Cops Use Asset Forfeiture Funds to Buy Drones “Off the Books”

Asset forfeiture funds help build the ever-growing national surveillance state.

Civil asset forfeiture is a pernicious policy in its own right. It is nothing more than legalized, institutionalized, government-sanctioned theft. Forfeiture laws flip due process on its head and create perverse “policing for profit” incentives.

On top of that, we have long suspected that police departments use forfeiture money to secretly purchase surveillance technology. Recent Chicago Police Department emails obtained from a trove of hacked documents prove this happens, revealing that cops used asset forfeiture money to buy drones off the books with no oversight or accountability.

According to reporting by the Chicago Sun-Times, details of the CPD drone program were revealed in an email sent by the director of police research and development. In the email exchange, Karen Conway told other high-ranking police officials that the department’s counterterrorism bureau “utilized 1505 funds for a pilot Drone program that operates within the parameters of current laws.”

Conway wrote that drones “have been purchased and the Electronic & Technical Support Unit (Counter-terrorism) is in the process of creating a training to start a pilot. Some of the Drone uses will be for missing persons, crime scene photos, and terrorist-related issues.”

The city refused to answer specific questions about the drone program, saying the city would not answer questions relating to hacked emails.

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TSA Has Never Stopped a Terrorist But They’ve Been ‘Legally’ Robbing Travelers for Years

The TSA – whose job is supposedly “fighting terrorism” – is, without doubt, one of America’s most corrupt and incompetent agencies. However, last year, they apparently became so unsatisfied with the mere ability to strip search babies, remove colostomy bags, beat up blind cancer patients, and fondle your genitalia, that they announced a more invasive physical pat-downs. The pat-downs, which TSA warned would probably prompt assault complaints with the police department because of their invasive nature, have been implemented.

On top of aggressive pat downs and indiscriminate molestation of the young, old, and even triple amputees, the TSA can and will steal your money if they find it in your bag. A new class action lawsuit filed by the Institute for Justice, exposes an egregious practice of agents taking money — specifically, lots of cash — from innocent people, and keeping it. And they are doing it “legally.”

The class action lawsuit seeks to put an end to this legal theft and it will now move forward against both the TSA and DEA.

“TSA and DEA routinely violate Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights at airports across the country by detaining them for doing something completely legal: flying with cash,” said IJ Senior Attorney Dan Alban. “Seizing and forfeiting someone’s savings should not be done lightly, yet we’ve documented how easy it is for law enforcement to take money at airports without any evidence of a crime. Now, thanks to our class action lawsuit, we are going to uncover the truth behind how and why the government is targeting innocent flyers, and ultimately put an end to this predatory practice.”

Several of the victims named in the lawsuit had tens of thousands of dollars stolen from them and were never even accused of a crime, much less convicted of one. Terry Rolin and his daughter Rebecca Brown were flying from Pittsburgh to Boston with Terry’s life savings in order to open a bank account to help care for her father. When TSA found the cash in their luggage, it was stolen.

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Border Patrol Declares Innocent Man’s 5 Bullets ‘Munitions of War’ and Steals His Truck

For decades now, federal government and their cohorts in law enforcement have been carrying out theft of the citizenry on a massive scale using Civil Asset Forfeiture (CAF). The 1980’s-era laws were designed to drain resources from powerful criminal organizations, but CAF has become a tool for law enforcement agencies across the U.S. to steal money and property from countless innocent people. As the case below illustrates, many of those in law enforcement will use CAF as a punitive measure against innocent people for merely asserting their rights.

No criminal charge is required for US law enforcement to use CAF, resulting in easy inflows of cash for law enforcement departments and the proliferation of abuse. This phenomenon is known as “policing for profit.”

In the last 30 years, the amount of “profit” stolen through civil asset forfeiture has skyrocketed.

According to the US Department of Justice, the value of asset forfeiture recoveries by US authorities from 1989-2010 was $12,667,612,066, increasing on average 19.5% per year.

In 2008, law enforcement took over $1.5 billion from the American public. While this number seems incredibly large, just a few years later, in 2014, that number tripled to nearly $4.5 billion.

When we examine these numbers, and their nearly exponential growth curve, it appears that police in America are getting really good at separating the citizen from their property — not just really good either, criminally good.

To put this number into perspective, according to the FBI, victims of burglary offenses suffered an estimated $3.9 billion in property losses in 2014.

That means that law enforcement in America, in 2014, stole $600,000,000 more from Americans than actual criminal burglars.

In many instances, even if no crime was committed, it takes years for people to get back their property — if they get it back at all.

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How a Young Joe Biden Became the Architect of the Government’s Asset Forfeiture Program

Biden, a young Senator from Delaware, had to do something to show that despite his “liberal” reputation, he could be just as tough on crime as his Republican colleagues. He took notice of the RICO law, and he realized that law enforcement agencies were not taking advantage of it, particularly in regards to the Drug War. He turned to the General Accounting Office and asked them to produce a study on the potential uses of RICO for drug enforcement.

The report showed that the RICO Act granted enormous powers to police to confiscate drug-related assets, but these powers were not being taken advantage of: “The government has simply not exercised the kind of leadership and management necessary to make asset forfeiture a widely used law enforcement technique,” the report stated. By the time the report came in, Ronald Reagan was settling into office and getting ready to wage a renewed War on Drugs.

Reagan brought the FBI into the Drug War, and he gave the director, William Webster, a mission. His agents would use the RICO Act powers to find drug rings and take away their assets. Drug cartels must be rendered unprofitable.

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Congressman Introduces Bill to End Civil Asset Forfeiture Nationwide, Allow Victims to Be Reimbursed

For decades now, federal government and their cohorts in law enforcement have been carrying out theft of the citizenry on a massive scale. We’re not talking about taxes, but an insidious power known as Civil Asset Forfeiture (CAF).

The 1980’s-era laws were designed to drain resources from powerful criminal organizations, but CAF has become a tool for law enforcement agencies across the U.S. to steal money and property from countless innocent people.

No criminal charge is required for this confiscation, resulting in easy inflows of cash for law enforcement departments and the proliferation of abuse. This phenomenon is known as “policing for profit.”

In the last 30 years, the amount of “profit” stolen through CAF has skyrocketted.

According to the US Department of Justice, the value of asset forfeiture recoveries by US authorities from 1989-2010 was $12,667,612,066, increasing on average 19.5% per year.

In 2008, law enforcement took over $1.5 billion from the American public. While this number seems incredibly large, just a few years later, in 2014, that number tripled to nearly $4.5 billion.

When we examine these numbers, and their nearly exponential growth curve, it appears that police in America are getting really good at separating the citizen from their property — not just really good, criminally good.

To put this number into perspective, according to the FBI, victims of burglary offenses suffered an estimated $3.9 billion in property losses in 2014.

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This Forfeiture Victim Waited 2 Years Without a Hearing. Is That Due Process?

Civil asset forfeiture laws, which allow the government to seize property allegedly tainted by crime without ever charging the owner, are fundamentally rigged in favor of the law enforcement agencies that get a cut of the proceeds. Even when an owner manages to challenge a forfeiture by arguing that he was not involved in any criminal activity, he has the burden of proving his innocence, and the process often costs more than the property is worth. Adding insult to injury, the government can drag out the process for so long that even innocent owners feel compelled to surrender. The Institute for Justice (I.J.) challenges that aspect of civil forfeiture in an appeal it filed this week, asking the Supreme Court to rule that due process requires a prompt post-seizure hearing.

Early civil forfeiture laws in the United States recognized the importance of that safeguard. The Collections Act of 1789, I.J. notes, required a hearing within 14 days after the government filed its forfeiture complaint, which was supposed to happen shortly after the seizure. A decade later, Congress amended the law to emphasize that forfeiture suits must be commenced “without delay.” Nowadays, by contrast, property owners routinely wait months or years before they get a chance to challenge a seizure before a neutral adjudicator.

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Homeland Security Seized $2 Billion in Cash From Travelers at U.S. Airports

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.

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