How The Police STEAL Your Money
– Yes It Is LEGAL
How many Americans are aware of a government-run racketeering scheme – some people like to call it civil asset forfeiture – that has netted over $68 billion for local and federal governments. In fact, over a 20-year period, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has seized (and kept) more than $203 million in cash from travelers at O’Hare International Airport. Even worse, in the vast majority of cases, no criminal charges were filed.
It is difficult to believe that in the United States, the government can raid citizens’ homes and confiscate property even though the citizen has never been convicted of a crime! This is the murky world of civil asset forfeiture, where the government needs only a preponderance of evidence to seize your belongings, including cash. This is because the proceedings are civil, not criminal, and the higher standard (beyond a reasonable doubt) does not apply. Criminal asset forfeiture kicks in only when someone has been found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt for a crime from which they profited directly.
Even if an alleged criminal is found not guilty in a criminal trial, is it possible for the government to keep that individual’s property? The answer to that question is a frightening “YES!”. Furthermore, many of the cases involve situations where the accused must prove innocence, flipping on its head our system of innocent until the government meets the burden of proving guilt. Even worse proving innocence in forfeiture cases many times involves proving a negative.
For example, consider the scenario in which someone is accused of having grown marijuana in a remote corner of a large tract of land. If he doesn’t wish to lose his property, the landowner must prove that he did not cultivate the crop or work with a third party who, unbeknownst to the owner, did cultivate the crop.
Consider, in Philadelphia, an elderly lady with end-stage renal disease had to rely on her neighbors just to make it through the day and consequently never locked her door. One day, police were pursuing a drug suspect who entered her front door and ran out the back. Afterward, they found in her home a small quantity of drugs that the fleeing suspect had obviously dropped. That didn’t stop the District Attorney from trying to seize her house. No wonder the aptly named Institute for Justice (IJ) has tackled civil asset forfeiture—i.e., policing for profit—with a vengeance.
America’s Founders clearly understood that private property is the foundation not only of prosperity but of freedom itself. Today that cherished notion is under savage assault.
According to the Institute, the federal government and most states use civil forfeiture to take cash, cars and more without charging owners with a crime. Even more frightening is that the proceeds often flow into accounts controlled by law enforcement, sometimes including the same police and prosecutors who seized and forfeited the property.
The IJ sternly warns that, legislators should recognize that it is our most vulnerable citizens who are suffering the most under this unjust system that divides communities and law enforcement. It is time for legislators to end civil forfeiture and replace it with criminal forfeiture.
Cash is not a crime. Nevertheless, a healthy portion of asset forfeitures involve highway traffic stops. Police will look for rental cars or cars with out-of-state licenses and pull them over for minor traffic violations. Then, if police determine the occupant seems “suspicious,” they will ask to search the vehicle. If a large amount of cash is found, police will seize it as drug-related.
Consider the case of Ameal Woods. With help from his wife, he saved up $40,000 in cash to buy a used tractor-trailer. Imagine his surprise when the police pulled him over for allegedly following a tractor-trailer too closely—something that, as a truck driver himself, Ameal knows he did not do. When Houston police officers found that he was traveling with cash, their focus shifted to the money, with their concerns about following at a safe distance vanishing. Ultimately, they let Ameal go minus his cash, giving him, instead, a receipt reading “currency seizure.”
According to the IJ, “What Ameal did was legal: He drove with cash. What the police did was illegal: They took his cash without probable cause.” The IJ adds that: “Texas’ most populous city [Houston] has set up perhaps the worst forfeiture system anywhere in the nation.”
IJ is bringing Ameal’s case as a class action lawsuit to provide immediate relief to the hundreds of people who have fallen victim to these outrageous practices. Its goal is to fight all the way to the Texas Supreme Court and score a victory for property rights.
Another troubling aspect of civil asset forfeiture is that there is no transparency about how much money and property governments are seizing and how much money of this money they are spending. In Oklahoma, a district attorney ignored a court order to sell a seized home and instead lived in it rent-free for five years!
In 2015, the prosecutor’s office in Hamilton County, Ohio, spent almost $15,000 of forfeiture money on “briefcases for attorneys.”
https://reason.com/2017/09/21/the-secret-slush-funds-of-asset-forfeitu/
One of the most disturbing cases involved Carl Nelson and Amy Sterner Nelson, residents of West Seattle. Reason magazine wrote about what happened in an article titled “The FBI Seized Almost $1 Million From This Family—and Never Charged Them With a Crime.” The story got almost no media because, as Amy said, “I am frightened of saying anything. Because this is incredibly scary.”
In May 2020, the FBI seized almost $1 million from the Nelsons. Their crime? Carl, a former real estate developer for Amazon, was accused of favoring certain developers and securing them deals in exchange for illegal kickbacks. Carl denies the accusation. “That never happened and is exactly why I’ve fought as long and hard as I have… It’s that simple.”
Significantly, despite a years-long investigation, the FBI never indicted Carl. Instead, in early 2022 the FBI agreed to return $525,000 of the approximately $892,000 it seized, while Amy and Carl forfeit about $109,000. Court fees devoured the rest. https://reason.com/2017/09/21/the-secret-slush-funds-of-asset-forfeitu/
What happened to the Nelsons is typical of how the government bludgeons the citizens: first comes the looting and then the extortion consisting of endless expenses (lawyers and court fees) to try to recover what the government shouldn’t have seized in the first place.
Houston Forfeiture
Anthonia Nwaorie, a Texas nurse, worked years to save $40,000 so she could start a medical clinic in Nigeria.
At the airport, however, Border Patrol asked her about the money. No matter what she said, they didn’t believe her.
“They poured everything, my clothes, my personal things, on the floor … I didn’t know they were going to take the money!”
They did, although they never charged her with a crime.
Fortunately, she turned out to be one of the rare victims who got the money back.
The IJ helped her sue the Border Patrol. Her attorney, Dan Alban, says, “If we were drawing up a diagram of a criminal organization, you would call civil asset forfeiture money laundering!”
https://ij.org/case/houston-forfeiture/
Restaurant owner Mandrel Stuart was stopped by police in Virginia when driving. Stuart thought, at worst, he’d get a ticket. But in his car was $18,000, which he planned to use to buy equipment for his restaurant.
When the cops saw that, they said they didn’t believe it was for his restaurant, and they confiscated it. “They said that I was a drug dealer,” he complains. “They had no proof!”
https://www.dailysignal.com/2026/01/25/civil-asset-forfeiture-how-the-police-can-steal-from-you/
It is abhorrent that law enforcement across America has a mindset saying it’s okay to prey on innocent citizens, ruining their lives by confiscating their property and taking away their cash. Yet it has been raging across America for decades.
– Mark Adams National Security Correspondent