“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)