Common sense, and multiple mandatory scenarios, but we have gone over this before, why are you repeating the same stuff.

The problem with the sort of automatic forfeiture law in question here, is that it creates the possibility of actions being motivated by $, rather than for public safety.

Even if the money was legal, he should have done it a different way.

Do you really think people shouldn't even get due process anymore?

and if you do get it back, without showing where it came from, you will pay taxes on it.

You guys still arguing about whether or not this guy was a drug dealer?

Consider this possibility.
If the DEA hadn't ripped him off, the Hollywood producers that were going
to do his music video probably would have.

I know, there is nothing in his claim, that makes any sense.

LOLOL

Maybe you can show me this 200.000 in clean cash story, I gotta see this one.

http://www.fear.org/ffjournal/$242,484.html

If you have unaccounted for, cash,...

...And if you cannot prove taxes were paid, the IRS will always step in.

She paid zero dollars taxes.

So your story does not apply in the first place, why would you even post it.

Bard better to err on the side of caution because once you are dead or brain dead it can't be undone.

There is simply no excuse to carry large amounts of cash around with you anymore unless you are a drug dealer, loan shark, gambler or buyer or fence of stolen goods.

No it's not and it's not freedom and liberty unless the people are a MORAL people
and have respect for the lives of others.

I'd just like to know why Jim thinks a black kid on a known drug route with unaccountable cash means he making a drug deal. But a lady carrying almost $250,00 of unaccountable cash on a known drug route is just a business woman. I thought no one has a reason to carry that much cash.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/07/dea-asset-forfeiture-joseph-rivers_n_7231744.html



After scraping together enough money to produce a music video in Hollywood, 22-year-old Joseph Rivers set out last month on a train trip from Michigan to Los Angeles, hoping it was the start of something big.

Before he made it to California, however, Rivers fell victim to a legal form of government highway robbery.

Rivers changed trains at the Amtrak station in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on April 15, with bags containing his clothes, other possessions and an envelope filled with the $16,000 in cash he had raised with the help of his family, the Albuquerque Journal reports. Agents with the Drug Enforcement Administration got on after him and began looking for people who might be trafficking drugs.

Rivers said the agents questioned passengers at random, asking for their destination and reason for travel. When one of the agents got to Rivers, who was the only black person in his car, according to witnesses, the agent took the interrogation further, asking to search his bags. Rivers complied. The agent found the cash -- still in a bank envelope -- and decided to seize it on suspicion that it may be tied to narcotics. River pleaded with the agents, explaining his situation and even putting his mother on the phone to verify the story.

No luck.

“These officers took everything that I had worked so hard to save and even money that was given to me by family that believed in me,” Rivers told the Journal. “I told (the DEA agents) I had no money and no means to survive in Los Angeles if they took my money. They informed me that it was my responsibility to figure out how I was going to do that.”

Rivers, who has since returned to Michigan, fell victim to civil asset forfeiture, a legal tool that has been criticized as a violation of due process and a contradiction of the idea that criminal defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty. Asset forfeiture allows police to seize property they suspect is related to criminal activity, without even charging its owner with a crime. The charges are filed against the property itself -- including cash, jewelry, cars and houses -- which can then be sold, with part of the proceeds flowing back to the department that made the seizure.

“We don’t have to prove that the person is guilty,” Sean Waite, the agent in charge at the DEA's Albuquerque's office, told the Journal. “It’s that the money is presumed to be guilty.”

The burden of proof lies with those whose property is taken, who often are forced to wage costly court battles to prove they came by their possessions legally.

That's where Michael Pancer, a San Diego attorney who now represents Rivers, comes in.

“What this is, is having your money stolen by a federal agent acting under the color of law,” Pancer told the Journal. “It’s a national epidemic. If my office got four to five cases just recently, and I’m just one attorney, you know this is happening thousands of times.”

Pancer is challenging the DEA asset forfeiture on Rivers' behalf, and wrote in a letter to Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), obtained by The Huffington Post, that Rivers' race "played a role in the incident." Conyers' office wouldn't comment on active litigation.

...


There's more to the article.


Someone please explain to me how this is any different than the Gestapo?


No evidence. No reason to suspect. No proof of guilt.

Just... give me that envelope... and THANKS, Good luck in LA?


WTF is wrong with this country??

I suppose they shouldn't seize the hundreds of thousands of dollars they catch people

with trying to cross into Mexico with too.

I mean they are innocent until proven guilty.

bard

I understand presumption of guilt, but there are other factors to consider.

The seizure of funds is important here, we have case that are so obviously drug or other illegal activity the state needs something to override it, yes, there can, and are abuses, just like in any system, but I am all for the overall good behind it.