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."
But there is some process by which you can prove the money is yours and you are entitled for it to be returned? For example, petitioning to be involved in the case, can it be denied? Is it just a procedural nightmare? Then what? I'd just be interested in the deeper story about actually trying to get the money back. If you show the paper trail of exactly where the dollars came from, are the judges still ruling against it and keeping the money? That's sounds like an entirely seprate layer of corruption which is going unreported.
I've seen it written many times that it often costs more to get the asset back than they're worth. That cost to the lawyer is also cost to the state and judicial system, and typically the justices don't take kindly to anyone wasting their time. I'm not reading about the massive backlog of forfeiture cases, mostly it seems like people don't even try.
On the one hand I hear that JDs are dropping like flies because there's no work, and on the other hand I hear there's tens of billions of dollars in money sitting in a big pot waiting for lawyers to try to get some of that back on contingency?
I found one blog after a bit of searching which has an interesting summary (criminal and civil forfeiture considered) I'm guessing that most people targeted, as usual, simply don't know their rights, and don't bother fighting for them, even when there's thousands of dollars on the line. [1]
The narrative that you can't get the money back I think is damaging to the cause of clamping down on forfeiture abuse. In fact you can get the money back [2], and particularly in cases like TFA, when the prosecutors office starts having to allocate a larger part of their workweek defending this bile they will start pushing back on it as well.
>I'm not reading about the massive backlog of forfeiture cases, mostly it seems like people don't even try.
For two reasons. One, you can't afford a lawyer because the government took your money. And two, there's not a lot of point in spending $300k to get $12.5k back from the government. The DEA is using tax dollars - they can stretch out the proceedings until you run out of money.
>And two, there's not a lot of point in spending $300k to get $12.5k back from the government. //
Don't injured parties receive costs from the perpetrators in USA courts? The risk may not be worth it but provided you have reasonable legal costs they get paid, surely? Also if the action is without due process or is malicious then you'd get punitive damages as well wouldn't you [which would have to be high to discourage the behaviour in the future]? At least in a democracy you'd have these things ...
The Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act (CAFRA) ammended the law specifically in civil forfeiture cases so that you should be awarded attorney fees if you "substantially prevail". Unfortunately, the courts have decided to interpret this as meaning something mystical other than simply winning the case on the merits.
The problem is that you're paying for legal representation. Even if you get the money back by the time you pay legal bills there may not be much of it left.
So this 'civil forfeiture' is appalling and Orwellian enough in its own right, but it's also one of those cases where the apparent inability to award costs in US courts seems truly insane.
If this happened under the English legal system, you can be pretty sure the courts would make the DEA pay both sides' legal costs for meritless seizures like this one.
So if you were prepared to take the risk of going to court you'd at least stand a good chance of getting all your money back.
In my opinion the English courts don't even go far enough.
There are plenty of cases where it's worthwhile for a malicious actor to antagonize someone, safe in the knowledge that the most they can lose is the legal costs. That is, if the victim is able to offer the significant effort and cash enough to seek legal recourse.
Even if the money were sentient and capable of arguing for itself and defending its own case better than a good lawyer, here's what would happen: You can only authorize a legal person to use computer equipment. It is impossible to authorize a pile of money to use computer equipment. Therefore any computer equipment that is used by the pile of money (including that of the owner of the money) is used without consent, and therefore runs afoul of anti-piracy / anti-hacking laws, and your money will be charged with High Tech Fraud.
Since the money is not a legal person, legal responsibility would probably fall to the owner at the time of the crime (just like it falls to the "owner" of a child, their parents) and you would get punished along with your money. On top of this the money is automatically guilty and must pay reparations and punitives, which means you need to pay more of it as legal guardian of the now-bankrupt money.
> Since the money is not a legal person, legal responsibility would probably fall to the owner at the time of the crime (just like it falls to the "owner" of a child, their parents) and you would get punished along with your money.
Right, but at least now you've managed to get yourself involved in the case, meaning that you can now invoke things like "right to counsel", no?
Yes, but if you do so you become eligible for charges of Conspiracy for High Tech Fraud, and a Conspiracy charge opens up a whole other can of worms you really don't want to mess with.
Oh, then that's simple. The $30,000 USD corporation pays a fine of $374, reparations for the officer's time to the tune of $41.75, and then is severely reprimanded with a warning not to do it again on threat of further monetary retribution.
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."