“Civil asset forfeiture” is a legal framework that allows the government to take money or other assets that it has probable cause to believe are connected to a crime. Meant to allow the government to drain the assets of drug cartels, the law is now used to take cash wherever a law enforcement officer finds it and then make the owner prove it wasn’t drug money if they want it back.
Frequently, this results in innocent citizens having to hire, and pay for, an attorney to force the government to return their money. They usually do not get their attorney’s fees paid back, and often, the government tries to “settle” the matter by offering a percentage of the money back to avoid a trial, leaving the innocent owner to either take back a fraction of their cash or face the time, expense, and uncertainty of a trial. Further, if the government detained you in the process of stealing your cash and you try to sue for false arrest or an illegal search, they argue that a law immunizing the government when “property was seized for the purpose of forfeiture under any provision of Federal law” (see 28 U.S.C. § 2680(c)(1)) also immunizes them from any misconduct incident to the seizure, including arrest and search.
My firm has been known for pressing back on that, starting in 2021 when we got the return of a full $70,000 taken from a filmmaker traveling with cash and then an additional $15,000 settlement for false arrest. But because that case, and others, ended in settlement, a judge has never determined whether an individual who was detained for a nonsense civil forfeiture could sue for damages beyond the value of the property. Today, U.S. District Judge Margo A. Rocconi in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California ruled for my client — who runs a legitimate, licensed cryptocurrency exchange and has had DEA agents harass him in airports on multiple occasions despite carrying paperwork proving his legitimacy — allowing him to recover for false arrest despite my firm having already recovered 100% of his seized currency in an earlier proceeding:
“Ultimately, the Court makes the general finding that the detention of goods exception bars Plaintiff’s claims to the extent that they are based on the agent’s seizure of Plaintiff’s cash but does not bar Plaintiff’s claims that they are based on the search of his bags or any temporary seizure of his person”
The court also refused TSA’s backup argument, which is that a brief stop of a traveler who is carrying large amounts of cash is legal because carrying large amounts of cash constitutes reasonable suspicion:
“Here, Plaintiff alleges that TSA noticed his cash and reported the cash, along with his flight itinerary, to the DEA, who stopped him at his arrival destination — seemingly without conducting much further investigation, given that Plaintiff had registered both transactions with the U.S. Department of Treasury. FAC ¶¶ 10–13.44–47. These allegations invite the inference that DEA stopped Plaintiff solely on the basis of the large sum of cash he had in his luggage. To find that Plaintiff has failed to allege that the DEA had no lawful basis to detain him on these facts would essentially require the Court to find that a large sum of cash, without more, can constitute reasonable suspicion. The Court will not take such a leap…”
Now, my client — and everyone else stopped for no reason other than having cash — can actually make himself whole, and the government will be further discouraged from using a “take first, make them justify themselves later” approach. Excellent!
White v. U.S. – Opinion Denying in Part Motion to Dismiss (.pdf)
White v. U.S. – Motion to Dismiss (.pdf)
White v. U.S. – Motion to Dismiss, Opposition (.pdf)
White v. U.S. – Motion to Dismiss, Reply (.pdf)
Professional Troublemaker ® 
I’ve always supported the idea of taking the money from known drug dealers and traffickers. I have no problem with that. Thing is, like a lot of laws, it started getting abused. I read once about a guy that owned a large flower business. At the time, checks and cash was the thing. While flying to get to the flower show to make a large purchase that would cover almost a year of his business, his cash was seized. Even after he showed the documentation to prove it was money through legal means, they still wouldn’t return his money. Last I read, he lost his business during the whole mess. Losing the money was bad enough but it also took what he needed to buy from anywhere to sell as well. Basically, he lost the ability to buy from anyone because they took almost every dime of his money.
In cases like you describe, I think law enforcement should be held to account. This law is being abused plain and simple. The law was never about seizing any money they find but about seizing money obtained by breaking the law. Seizing money until a trial is bad enough but to seize it with the owner having little recourse is just wrong.
If your client had a history of drug activity, I could at least understand it being seized pending the outcome of a short investigation or a trial. However, with no drug crime history, plus documents to prove it was legal, he should have been left alone. Just because law enforcement thinks or wants there to be a crime does not mean they have proof there is one.
See if you can put this law on its knees, render it dead if you can. If they abuse it enough, take it away from them.
The easiest way to make sure that money is only taken from criminals is to get rid of civil forfeiture, because criminal forfeiture is a thing. The government can, and does, take assets right when they arrest drug dealers using criminal forfeiture. Civil forfeiture allows them to skip the step of even alleging a crime has happened.
I never researched it but thought that could be done. So, would it be fair to claim that the reason for this law is just so they can take money with no proof or even reason to believe a crime has been committed? If that is the case, or how it is being used at least, then I’d support the law either being repealed or ruled unconstitutional completely. No wonder I’ve read about States repealing these types of laws. It needs to be done away with on the Federal level as well. At least that should protect the innocent people.
The idea, in theory, is that it might be possible to find a drug cartel’s property even if they don’t find anyone to arrest, and therefore civil forfeiture is necessary.
That’s a pretty niche edge case to justify the state of affairs today. In practice, before today, the government had no incentive not to seize every dollar of cash they came across, because the worst that could happen is that they’d be ordered to return the money. So they’d do it liberally. Hopefully, this will slow that down.
I can see where that might happen but I suspect it is rare, statistically speaking. Generally if something illegal is found, the owner of the property is liable for it. Find drugs in a car, driver is in trouble because he/she has control of the vehicle. With a house, someone tends to own it. I’d think the number of cases where that happens is really tiny.
I’m not sure slowing it down will help enough. At the very least, they should have to prove to a court that the money was part of a crime before it can be seized. Basically, the law needs to be rewritten in a way to make sure innocent people are not caught up in this mess just because law enforcement thinks they can do it. After all, we are innocent until proven guilty. If they have enough proof of a crime, then they can arrest and take the money as evidence. At least then even a guilty person gets their day in court.
If they can’t use this law in a more fair way, I’d rather they just got rid of it. I’d rather that those very few instances result in nothing taken than a large number of innocent people getting caught into a legal mess that can destroy sometimes years of work and sacrifice.
I’m trying to pick the lesser of evils here. If it wasn’t being abused so badly, then it wouldn’t be so bad. Thing is, it is being used for things it was never intended to be used for. Basically, it is like a cash cow of free money, on the backs of innocent people.
Congrats, dude! You are making a difference. I applaud you.
Wendy Thomson
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Thank you, Wendy! Hope you’ve been well!
Excellent! Good work, John.