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How the DEA took a young man’s life savings without charging him with a crime

washingtonpost.com

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Re: How the DEA took a young man’s life savings without charging him with a crime

#111

Post by sukilot »

simoncion wrote: post #29
MCRed wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not aware of any instances where it was used to fight crime. Seriously, not one.

shrug Several news orgs point to a DoJ study that finds that 20% of those hit by asset forfeiture end up charged with one or more crimes. I agree that forfeiture is a tool that is currently widely abused. Its use should be tightly constrained, if not entirely eliminated. However, I cannot agree that forfeiture has never been used to fight crime. Much like it's pretty clear that the NSA's dragnet has swept up evidence…

What was the one credible plot? I have only ever heard of plots initiated by undercover FBI agents, often involving mentally ill patsies.

Re: How the DEA took a young man’s life savings without charging him with a crime

#112

Post by adventured »

visarga wrote: post #103
adventured wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US still ranks among the best nations on earth when it comes to low corruption in fact. The civil forfeitures problem is non-trivial, but you're drastically exaggerating. The whole of the US has a very highly functional, low-corruption judiciary system, and a mostly still intact and strong property rights system. Most of America is low crime, low corruption, the opposite of what you're implying. In fact it's beca…

> a mostly still intact and strong property rights system The practice of civil forfeiture on people who can't defend legally, like this guy, sure doesn't indicate that. Maybe for the HSBC guys who laundered $378.4 billion over several years there will be a small fine, their profit for a few months. But no bank was forfeited. No board members were sent to jail for it. It seems property rights are solid, if you are ri…

Yes, the DEA forfeiture racket is vile, and yes it needs to be stopped. Nobody should undercut how terrible what they're doing is.

The reason the US still ranks high on the low corruption index, is because you have to take the value of the whole, not just one small problem such as this.

It impacts an extraordinarily small percentage of Americans today, and the dollar sums are extraordinarily small in such a large economy. Put another way, on that 100 point corruption scale, the DEA program would represent a negative deduction of 2 or 3 points.

What's actually important here, is stopping it before it gets larger. If they don't stop it, it will get much bigger, and graduate from being a small problem to being a serious threat to the average citizen.

If we're talking about rights violations, civil forfeitures are a joke compared to the war on drugs for example and the incarceration that has been going on since the 1970s.

Re: How the DEA took a young man’s life savings without charging him with a crime

#113

Post by rhino369 »

rgbrenner wrote: post #104
rhino369 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I skimmed it, but it appears the Court is saying that Michigan is not required to have an innocent owner defense. That isn't the same as saying there can never be an innocent owner defense. But many jurisdictions do allow such a defense. US federal civil forfeiture does: 18 USC § 983(d)

US federal civil forfeiture does: 18 USC § 983(d) Thanks for that.. that was part of the reform passed in 2000.

It is my understanding that all the federal civil forfeiture statues included their own innocent owner defense since the 1970s when civil forfeiture was applied to drugs.

The new statute removed ambiguities and created a uniform defense for all federal civil forfeitures.

Re: How the DEA took a young man’s life savings without charging him with a crime

#114

Post by sukilot »

dba7dba wrote: post #53

I heard a truly tragic story related to the civil forfeiture rule. Heard from a friend who heard from a friend. The family hired an older lady (immigrant, but lived many years in US) who came to clean their house a few times a week. She shared that she had been divorced from her husband but in the process ended up with the house. Being retired with no income (and probably no pension of any kind other than social secu…

The PD actually usually skips the charges. It is literally highway robbery: trooper pulls over a car, searches it, takes the money.

Re: How the DEA took a young man’s life savings without charging him with a crime

#115

Post by rhino369 »

Meekro wrote: post #107
rhino369 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't violate the 4th amendment because, despite the inaccuracies in the article, you do get a trial and the government does have the burden of proof. The DEA agent they are quoting is either ignorant or means that there is no due process before they seize the money in the first place. But you do get the due process after the fact. Most of the time there is no trial because the person they took the money from do…

> Most of the time there is no trial because the person they took the money from doesn't go back to claim it. Why? Because it was illegal money. "Georgia brought in $2.76 million in forfeitures; more than half the items taken were worth less than six hundred and fifty dollars" -- http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/08/12/taken There's no trial because they go after tiny amounts, generally with no evidence of guilt…

Ok I'll have to read it tomorrow, but I will since the New Yorker piece about the execution of an innocent man really changed my opinion on the death penalty.

Re: How the DEA took a young man’s life savings without charging him with a crime

#117

Post by cbsmith »

"Asset forfeiture is lucrative for the DEA. According to their latest notification of seized goods, updated Monday, agents have seized well over $38 million dollars' worth of cash and goods from people in the first few months of this year."

Umm... $38 million in three months works out to about 5% of the DEA's operating budget. If your revenue is 5% of your burn rate, that's not exactly lucrative.

This is money that, absent some form of corruption, benefits exactly no one, not even greedy shareholders or executives with tons of stock options. Let's be careful with our use of "lucrative".

Re: How the DEA took a young man’s life savings without charging him with a crime

#118

Post by tsotha »

zaroth wrote: post #45
itistoday2 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am concerned that by calling it "civil forfeiture" this article is using language to mask a very basic crime. What was described in this article is called stealing or theft. To call it anything else is to mask and downplay what was done to this man. It is to enable the very act that was committed. George Carlin observed this as a dangerous trend in our language: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuEQixrBKCc Call it "…

You could imagine reading it this way: DEA agents confronted the only black man in the train car and demanded he open his bags, shook him down, and stole his cash. In a brazen theft which DEA agents later claimed was legal under the veil of "civil forfeiture" the state prosecutor has refused to press charges, and the judge on the case has refused to provide relief for the plaintiff... I hope we continue to see a rele…

It's hard to get your money back because the government treats it as if it weren't your money. What happens is since the DEA can't prove you're involved in a crime they sue... your money. There will be a case in federal court that will be something like "Leonhart v $23,174". They don't even have to notify you.

So. At this point you're not a party to the proceeding, so you can't do any of the normal things you'd do if the DEA was suing you, and you certainly don't have the presumption of innocence you'd have in criminal court. You have to petition the court to be involved in your own case. Because your money is just sitting there not doing much to defend itself. Once you're officially involved, the burden of proof is on you to show you came by the cash honestly.

I used to play a lot of relatively high stakes poker. Guys I played with would be carrying a fair amount of cash (more than the subject of this story), and it was common knowledge if you got robbed it would most likely be by the cops.

The gallows humor around the table was "So when their investigation turns up nothing you ask if they'll be returning your money. 'No,' they explain."

Re: How the DEA took a young man’s life savings without charging him with a crime

#119

Post by bcook »

a3n wrote: post #58
bcook wrote: post #39

I keep seeing these stories and, yes, civil forfeiture is a problem, but why are these people traveling with CASH in these amounts? I always get a cashier's check or similar since it offers me some protection.

Who do you make it out to, and when?

I woud just keep it in the bank.

Was he just going to go find someone and give them 16k for a music video company? 16k in cash just makes very little sense to me.

Re: How the DEA took a young man’s life savings without charging him with a crime

#120

Post by ploxiln »

AwesomeGriffin wrote: post #33

I've heard this sort of thing happening in Third World countries. Perhaps the US is - for all its advanced technology and creature comforts - essentially now a Third World kleptocracy. Silicon Valley and Manhattan are like Dubai - gaudy showcases that don't represent the true nature of the hinterland. I would be very wary about working in Dubai; I would be equally wary about working and living in the US for the same…

I'm a US citizen who is very unhappy about "civil forfeiture", about mass surveillance, etc. But the reality is that most people in the US are not directly affected. I haven't really been affected, and I don't personally know anyone who has been. (yeah yeah it helps that I'm white.) Most US citizens who are aware of these things, like me, are very unhappy about them. But most people are not really aware, and one reason for that is they haven't been personally affected.

Things in the US are not nearly as bad as in third world countries. They're bad, they're serious, but third world (or whatever you want to call Russia and China) problems are really in a league of their own. Dubai is in a different league than NYC / SF.

In the US, you can talk about it, you can get a lawyer, you can have newspaper articles written. Many third world countries - nope. There may be a couple of bloggers but they tend to get arrested.

Again, I'm not saying these things in the US are OK. I'm just saying it's unrealistic to say Manhattan is like Dubai, or NSA is like Chinese internet monitors/hackers. Really - not even close.

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