Comment by RIMR
7 years ago
What's worse is they don't even need a shred of evidence to take your stuff.
In some states, having more than $10,000 in cash on your person is automatically considered "evidence of criminal activity". That means that the police, just by seeing that you have more than $10k in cash, can simply seize it and then force you to spend your time and additional money proving that the money didn't come from crime.
And, of course, every cent of the cash they take goes to their own department, so they are incentivized to look for cash during traffic stops just so they can literally commit highway robbery...
It's also not unusual for an officer to record that they found $15k in cash, only for the person they seized it from to call foul, stating that they had more. Since there is literally nothing protecting the citizen in this situation, they are left without any legal remedy, and the cop gets to pocket your cash for his own illicit purposes.
This is a system that encourages corruption with the justification of profit.
In some states it is illegal to defend against civil forfeiture practices using hidden compartments in your vehicle to store 100% legal property (e.g. cash, jewelry, confidential information)
Interesting article about a guy who was sentenced to 24 years in federal prison for building hidden compartments for customers of his car stereo shop:
https://www.wired.com/2013/03/alfred-anaya/
From the article:
I.e. the court's argument is that he was perfectly aware that he was building these for drug cartels. If we take that judgement at face value I don't see the problem with this. You don't get to wink wink nudge nudge your way out of being a knowing accomplice to a crime.
6 replies →
as opposed to people actually using those compartments in an illegal fashion. Out of control government...
Which states?
Ohio, California, Georgia, Illinois, and Oregon.
http://reason.com/archives/2014/02/16/the-crime-of-having-a-...
http://policelink.monster.com/training/articles/2191-hidden-...
https://leb.fbi.gov/articles/legal-digest/legal-digest-inves...
* http://www.slate.com/blogs/crime/2013/12/09/secret_compartme...
* https://www.wired.com/2013/03/alfred-anaya/
OH and CA both have laws on the books against creating (hidden compartment) or operating a vehicle with a hidden compartment if it's intended for something illegal. Drugs and guns is the common justification, but I wonder what would happen if you had say 15k in cash in a compartment.
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I hope, and if this applies to you maybe this will be a wake up call, nobody reading this walks around with lump sums of cash like this without a receipt from the ATM or bank teller. I hope not.
And how would that help? Playing policeman’s advocate, maybe you left half of what you just withdrew at home? How would you prove you were carrying the whole amount?
update, its now less than $5,000 and greater than $2,999...ever wonder why the debit/cc cards for poor can only have cash loaded on the card less than $2,999?