It’s quite simple. If you’re traveling on Amtrak or any airline and have a lot of cash with you, the DEA will take it and then give it to the local police department. They budget for it. They depend on it. They won’t file charges against you or make sure you’re not a criminal. They just want your money. After they take it, you’ll need to hire an attorney to get it back, to prove the money was legit. It might take years to get it back. And even after you prove the money was simply your retirement savings that was being used to purchase a car, they’ll forfeit some of it anyway, because they can.
Agents seized $25,000 from Christelle Tillerson’s suitcase in 2014 as she was waiting to board a flight from Detroit to Chicago. The Justice Department said in a court filing that agents became interested in Tillerson after they “received information” that she was headed to Los Angeles on a one-way ticket.
Tillerson told the agents that her boyfriend had withdrawn the money from his U.S. Postal Service retirement account so that she could buy a truck, according to court records. Agents were suspicious; Tillerson was an ex-convict, who had spent time in prison for driving a load of marijuana into the United States from Mexico. She seemed to have little money of her own. And a police dog smelled drugs on the cash.
Agents seized the money, and let Tillerson go. Her lawyer, Cyril Hall, said she was never arrested, or even questioned about whether she could give agents information about traffickers.
A year and a half later — after she produced paperwork showing that much of the money had indeed come from her boyfriend’s retirement fund — the Justice Department agreed to return the money, minus $4,000. A spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Detroit, Gina Balaya, said prosecutors concluded that “a small percentage of the funds should be forfeited.”
“It was outrageous. It’s still outrageous,” Hall said.
Over the past decade, the DEA have seized upwards of $200 million from travelers.
Ah, the virtues of America never cease to amaze me.
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Police departments around the country do the same thing. In NYC there is a lawsuit pending against the NYPD around its illegal confiscation of citizens’ property.
http://www.bronxdefenders.org/lawsuit-challenges-nypds-policy-of-unlawfully-keeping-peoples-cash-and-property/
And it was an issue in police behavior in Ferguson, Missouri that may have contributed to the shooting of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown.
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-03-05/ferguson-and-its-money-hungry-police
ironic that the government stole money from a government retirement fund.
we will see the end of cash in our lifetime. no doubt. the cabal wants it all electronic.
I was going through a small airport in the Philippines and had taken off my belt and put it in an item bucket so it could go through the x-ray detector. It was a normal looking belt but it held fifteen 100 dollar bills folded inside it (for emergencies). I was there alone and the security guard picked up the belt so he could put my shoes in the bucket too. He could tell there was something not quite right about the belt and he asked what was going on…I said they’re dollar bills and he just stared at me….Then I said they were hundred dollar bills folded up expecting not to see the belt again or having it “inspected”…The guard said, Oh, that’s a great idea and put the belt back without even opening it…He probably made $3000 a year.
I have been raging about the DEA forever on Twitter. They are the most corrupt out there.
Good to know.
We take the Amtrak every once in awhile to Ft. Lauderdale or Savannah.
I will take enough cash on the train (next time) just enough for their infamous microwave chickened fingers and a cup of noodles soup (microwaved, of course).
She wasn’t exactly a shining citizen…
I do think 100% should have been returned, though.