7 ms·

Family Sues DEA and TSA After Elderly Man’s Life Savings Were Seized at Airport

65 points by jseliger 7y ago

siruncledrew 7y ago
In any case, it sounds extra-ordinarily stupid to travel anywhere with $82k in a tupperware container. Regardless of how the TSA/DEA case goes, I'm just in awe that people in this day and age legitimately choose to bring around all their money they worked decades to acquire in one easy to access place... like a container. (Assuming the prerequisites of opening a bank account were not the issue). Seriously, what are they actually thinking? Are they fearful of banks? Is it out of frugality? Even in a 1% interest account, $82k would make a good amount of interest to use for spending. Hell, imagine if the wrong person happened to get a peek at stacks of cash in someone's backpack? People could get killed in an instant over that.
- seibelj 7y ago
  How does that make it OK for the feds to steal the money? It’s kind of dumb to walk around with a $1000 phone and a $4000 laptop as well.
  - oarsinsync 7y ago
    Civil asset forfeiture, or legalised theft by the government. It's not right, it's not ok, but tragically it continues to be legal.
    - duckMuppet 7y ago
      Far more tragic is the victim blaming mentality that eschews and condones such behavior because, Well it's 2020 and no one should should be using cash let alone said cash in a container and travel with it. Get a bank account or better yet, just use credit like the rest of us...
  - Melting_Harps 7y ago
    > How does that make it OK for the feds to steal the money? It’s kind of dumb to walk around with a $1000 phone and a $4000 laptop as well. It doesn't, and this LEO apologist narrative around here is what keeps things like this in place. This belief that such actions are the result of the victim's stupidity, and not the legal practices and judicial system that enable and ultimately legalize what amounts to theft is the source of the problem. I feel bad for the elderly man, he came from a period where inherit Trust in law enforcement was basically the norm, perhaps ignorant and naive, but it can't help but underscore the times we live in. For those who have never had anything taken away from them from Police its hard to explain the vulnerability and exposed sense of betrayal it leaves you with, especially when you're proven innocent. It makes you take so many precautions before leaving your home, not against the most cunning and slick of thieves, but those legally sanctioned to do so.
    - thephyber 7y ago
      it’s always harder to change the status quo when the average citizen doesn’t know about the practice and isn’t directly hurt by it (concentrated costs, diverse benefits). Also, I think the police in the USA right now are FAR more professional than they were when this guy was born. They literally didn’t use fingerprints or most kinds of forensic evidence. It was largely about picking up the person that most tweaked your spidey-sense and trying to work backwards from there. Today we have FAR more traceability of chain of evidence and documentation of actions by individual officers than ever before. I’m not apologizing for officers or bad policy, I just want to give credit where I think not enough is given.
      - etripe 7y ago
        > didn't use fingerprints It might still be a bad idea. I don't know what has changed since, but this source (0) says fingerprinting hasn't been subjected to scientific review. [0] : https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/10/171005111100.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/10/171005111100.h...
      - nullc 7y ago
        A lot of forensic science is borderline or outright pseudoscience. Genetic testing with a FP rate worse than photo comparisons... Whats the ROC of the fingerprint comparison? Oops 'experts' working on comparing fingerprints haven't ever heard of a ROC. The reason much of it works at all is because it gets applied primarily where there is a lot of other extremely traditional evidence (witnesses, motive, etc.). Overconfidence in science-theater investigations have been resulting in more calls for dragnet operations, which would have extremely bad results.
  - tomatocracy 7y ago
    Indeed. Plenty of walk around with jewellery or watches worth significantly more than that too.
- munmaek 7y ago
  So he deserves to have his money taken by a government agent? How about we don’t victim blame people, and instead decry unconstitutional seizure of assets.
- kragen 7y ago
  The dude is 87. That means he was born around 1933. So, for most of the first 40 years of his life, about 1935 to 1973, dollars were a relatively safe investment; by contrast, a significant number of banks failed, losing all their depositors' money, though not in the US. Storing your life savings in dollars after 1973, whether in a bank or in cash, was not a reasonable idea, but maybe he was not alert enough to new financial developments to figure that out. You yourself foolishly say, "Even in a 1% interest account, [US]$82k would make a good amount of interest to use for spending," apparently unaware that such a low interest rate is insufficient to compensate for even the lower rate of inflation the dollar is currently experiencing. That is to say, it amounts to a negative interest rate, once you adjust for inflation. If you had put a million dollars in a 1%-interest bank account in 1973 and not spent any of that interest, it would be 1.6 million dollars today, worth roughly 0.02 million 1973 dollars, depending on which deflator you measure against. The family simply believed that they would be safe traveling through an airport, foolishly trusting that the government wouldn't simply steal the money just because they could. This naïve innocence is mirrored by your touching faith in banks, whose willingness to give you your money is also entirely conditioned on the government not simply stealing it — as everybody in my country found out in 2001. This is precisely the kind of thing that makes people want to use Bitcoin.
  - jazzyjackson 7y ago
    My order-of-magnitude detector went off at "0.02 million", it's 0.27 million, which still makes your point https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1.6+million+2020+dollars+in+1973 https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1.6+million+2020+dolla...
    - kragen 7y ago
      Wolfram Vertical Line Alpha is terrible at citing sources, perhaps unsurprisingly given its own provenance, but it says it's using one of the BLS CPI deflators, which to my way of thinking systematically understate inflation over long periods of time; but there isn't an objectively correct deflator to use. If you instead use a basket of commodities made to the same standard in 2020 and 1973, such as crude oil, coal, or gold, it comes out closer to 0.02.
- thephyber 7y ago
  I agree with the other commenters that victim blaming isn’t called for. Also, I think you severely discount how many other people in this world don’t trust banks. It might be worth actually asking the question about _why_ and what experiences they had which might make them distrust such a massive industry. Putting your money in a bank is far from a zero risk proposition. Hell, putting your assets in a safety deposit box is also risky[1]. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/19/business/safe-deposit-box-theft.amp.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/19/business/safe-deposit-box...
  - JohnFen 7y ago
    I don't trust banks. I only use them because there isn't really a system that I do trust that still allows me ready access to my money. That said, I don't keep all of my money in a bank. Nor do I keep it all in a tupperware container. I like to avoid accidentally creating honeypots.
- beatgammit 7y ago
  I've walked around with >$10k before (purchased a car with cash), and it's really not a problem. There's no reason anyone would see that money if it weren't for the TSA exposing all of our secrets at the security line. The problem here isn't the guy carrying a ton of cash, the problem is the TSA. Is carrying a ton of cash usually a bad idea? Yes. Should it be a right to choose to go so? Absolutely. In terms of potential for crime, I regularly carry >$20k worth of credit limit and have a similar total credit limit across all cards as the guy in the OP is carrying in cash. If someone knew how much credit I carry and how easily cards can be used illegally (I don't remember the last time I was asked for ID, and I've made many purchases over $500), I would likely have my credit cards stolen frequently. Losing my laptop means potentially getting access to all of my credit cards if I don't act in time. So is carrying my laptop cause for seizure as well since I could be defrauded? I currently do most of my financials through online banking and credit cards, but that's because I don't want to pay the inflation tax and sales tax makes transactions complicated. However, that doesn't mean using cash is bad.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
tjpnz 7y ago
Who are they intending to catch? Drug traffickers and tax evaders aren't going to set foot in an airport with that amount of cash.
- thephyber 7y ago
  Anybody with large amounts of cash. If you don’t use digital banking, they can’t trace your spending easily and that becomes something close to enough evidence to Civil Asset Forfeiture your cash. And I don’t like your argument because there are always a few extreme dummies who justify the policies at airports, so I don’t think the “all smart criminals will avoid detection” is strong enough to mean we should just drop all screening.
  - beatgammit 7y ago
    How about we stop assuming that lots of cash implies a crime? I bought my last car with cash, which I think is greater than the current "this is sketchy" limit since it was over $10k in $100 bills. I have also given and received gifts of similar magnitude. If it weren't for sales tax making change a royal pain, I would use cash far more often, in which case carrying a few hundred would be an everyday thing, and carrying a few thousand wouldn't be "weird". I am really uncomfortable with asset forfeiture without at least a criminal charge, or preferably a conviction. Carrying a ton of cash may raise questions, but it should never be sufficient evidence for seizure.
    - ororo92 7y ago
      My guess is you’ll never be in a position to have a lot of cash, keeping it from being a real problem for you, meaning you’ll forget all about this righteous little display of thought experimenting how the world ought to work and have accomplished nothing of value from it. How about we stop doing that? Put a real plan together in the legal sense and we’ll have something. Banal forum exercises like this are a fractional Bitcoin for a dozen.
      - flyingfences 7y ago
stevespang 7y ago
God bless the Institute for Justice. Imagine all the billions our Gov't has thrown away in Afghanistan, and across the world . . . we know who the real crooks are . . . wikileaks taught us that . . .
BurnGpuBurn 7y ago
Civil forfeiture cases have been in the news for more than five years now, how long are people going to let those guys get away with this? It's absurd. I'm willing to bet this will still be happening five years from now though.
- JumpCrisscross 7y ago
  > how long are people going to let those guys get away with this? I’ve tried organising support for shifting New York law from its current “clear and convincing” standard to one requiring criminal conviction before seizure, as in Connecticut [1]. It’s hard to get people to show up, call their representatives and generally provide an electoral incentive for going through the difficulty of changing the law. Because most people don’t see themselves as potential criminals, and thus at risk of such seizures, it tends to get second fiddle to more pressing issues, e.g. wrapping up the war on drugs or healthcare. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_Unit...
mmhsieh 7y ago
owning money is a crime in america now?
mmhsieh 7y ago
this is the TSA retirement plan: show up to the airport with your life savings the TSA agent retires with your money
JohnFen 7y ago
Damn, I hope that family wins hard. This sort of theft is widespread amongst other law enforcement agencies as well. I hope that they win hard enough to make everyone stop (or at least curtail) stealing.

65 points by jseliger 7y ago

In any case, it sounds extra-ordinarily stupid to travel anywhere with $82k in a tupperware container. Regardless of how the TSA/DEA case goes, I'm just in awe that people in this day and age legitimately choose to bring around all their money they worked decades to acquire in one easy to access place... like a container. (Assuming the prerequisites of opening a bank account were not the issue). Seriously, what are they actually thinking? Are they fearful of banks? Is it out of frugality? Even in a 1% interest account, $82k would make a good amount of interest to use for spending. Hell, imagine if the wrong person happened to get a peek at stacks of cash in someone's backpack? People could get killed in an instant over that.

seibelj 7y ago
How does that make it OK for the feds to steal the money? It’s kind of dumb to walk around with a $1000 phone and a $4000 laptop as well.
- oarsinsync 7y ago
  Civil asset forfeiture, or legalised theft by the government. It's not right, it's not ok, but tragically it continues to be legal.
  - duckMuppet 7y ago
    Far more tragic is the victim blaming mentality that eschews and condones such behavior because, Well it's 2020 and no one should should be using cash let alone said cash in a container and travel with it. Get a bank account or better yet, just use credit like the rest of us...
- Melting_Harps 7y ago
  > How does that make it OK for the feds to steal the money? It’s kind of dumb to walk around with a $1000 phone and a $4000 laptop as well. It doesn't, and this LEO apologist narrative around here is what keeps things like this in place. This belief that such actions are the result of the victim's stupidity, and not the legal practices and judicial system that enable and ultimately legalize what amounts to theft is the source of the problem. I feel bad for the elderly man, he came from a period where inherit Trust in law enforcement was basically the norm, perhaps ignorant and naive, but it can't help but underscore the times we live in. For those who have never had anything taken away from them from Police its hard to explain the vulnerability and exposed sense of betrayal it leaves you with, especially when you're proven innocent. It makes you take so many precautions before leaving your home, not against the most cunning and slick of thieves, but those legally sanctioned to do so.
  - thephyber 7y ago
    it’s always harder to change the status quo when the average citizen doesn’t know about the practice and isn’t directly hurt by it (concentrated costs, diverse benefits). Also, I think the police in the USA right now are FAR more professional than they were when this guy was born. They literally didn’t use fingerprints or most kinds of forensic evidence. It was largely about picking up the person that most tweaked your spidey-sense and trying to work backwards from there. Today we have FAR more traceability of chain of evidence and documentation of actions by individual officers than ever before. I’m not apologizing for officers or bad policy, I just want to give credit where I think not enough is given.
    - etripe 7y ago
      > didn't use fingerprints It might still be a bad idea. I don't know what has changed since, but this source (0) says fingerprinting hasn't been subjected to scientific review. [0] : https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/10/171005111100.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/10/171005111100.h...
    - nullc 7y ago
      A lot of forensic science is borderline or outright pseudoscience. Genetic testing with a FP rate worse than photo comparisons... Whats the ROC of the fingerprint comparison? Oops 'experts' working on comparing fingerprints haven't ever heard of a ROC. The reason much of it works at all is because it gets applied primarily where there is a lot of other extremely traditional evidence (witnesses, motive, etc.). Overconfidence in science-theater investigations have been resulting in more calls for dragnet operations, which would have extremely bad results.
- tomatocracy 7y ago
  Indeed. Plenty of walk around with jewellery or watches worth significantly more than that too.
munmaek 7y ago
So he deserves to have his money taken by a government agent? How about we don’t victim blame people, and instead decry unconstitutional seizure of assets.
kragen 7y ago
The dude is 87. That means he was born around 1933. So, for most of the first 40 years of his life, about 1935 to 1973, dollars were a relatively safe investment; by contrast, a significant number of banks failed, losing all their depositors' money, though not in the US. Storing your life savings in dollars after 1973, whether in a bank or in cash, was not a reasonable idea, but maybe he was not alert enough to new financial developments to figure that out. You yourself foolishly say, "Even in a 1% interest account, [US]$82k would make a good amount of interest to use for spending," apparently unaware that such a low interest rate is insufficient to compensate for even the lower rate of inflation the dollar is currently experiencing. That is to say, it amounts to a negative interest rate, once you adjust for inflation. If you had put a million dollars in a 1%-interest bank account in 1973 and not spent any of that interest, it would be 1.6 million dollars today, worth roughly 0.02 million 1973 dollars, depending on which deflator you measure against. The family simply believed that they would be safe traveling through an airport, foolishly trusting that the government wouldn't simply steal the money just because they could. This naïve innocence is mirrored by your touching faith in banks, whose willingness to give you your money is also entirely conditioned on the government not simply stealing it — as everybody in my country found out in 2001. This is precisely the kind of thing that makes people want to use Bitcoin.
- jazzyjackson 7y ago
  My order-of-magnitude detector went off at "0.02 million", it's 0.27 million, which still makes your point https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1.6+million+2020+dollars+in+1973 https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1.6+million+2020+dolla...
  - kragen 7y ago
    Wolfram Vertical Line Alpha is terrible at citing sources, perhaps unsurprisingly given its own provenance, but it says it's using one of the BLS CPI deflators, which to my way of thinking systematically understate inflation over long periods of time; but there isn't an objectively correct deflator to use. If you instead use a basket of commodities made to the same standard in 2020 and 1973, such as crude oil, coal, or gold, it comes out closer to 0.02.
thephyber 7y ago
I agree with the other commenters that victim blaming isn’t called for. Also, I think you severely discount how many other people in this world don’t trust banks. It might be worth actually asking the question about _why_ and what experiences they had which might make them distrust such a massive industry. Putting your money in a bank is far from a zero risk proposition. Hell, putting your assets in a safety deposit box is also risky[1]. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/19/business/safe-deposit-box-theft.amp.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/19/business/safe-deposit-box...
- JohnFen 7y ago
  I don't trust banks. I only use them because there isn't really a system that I do trust that still allows me ready access to my money. That said, I don't keep all of my money in a bank. Nor do I keep it all in a tupperware container. I like to avoid accidentally creating honeypots.
beatgammit 7y ago
I've walked around with >$10k before (purchased a car with cash), and it's really not a problem. There's no reason anyone would see that money if it weren't for the TSA exposing all of our secrets at the security line. The problem here isn't the guy carrying a ton of cash, the problem is the TSA. Is carrying a ton of cash usually a bad idea? Yes. Should it be a right to choose to go so? Absolutely. In terms of potential for crime, I regularly carry >$20k worth of credit limit and have a similar total credit limit across all cards as the guy in the OP is carrying in cash. If someone knew how much credit I carry and how easily cards can be used illegally (I don't remember the last time I was asked for ID, and I've made many purchases over $500), I would likely have my credit cards stolen frequently. Losing my laptop means potentially getting access to all of my credit cards if I don't act in time. So is carrying my laptop cause for seizure as well since I could be defrauded? I currently do most of my financials through online banking and credit cards, but that's because I don't want to pay the inflation tax and sales tax makes transactions complicated. However, that doesn't mean using cash is bad.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

tjpnz 7y ago

Who are they intending to catch? Drug traffickers and tax evaders aren't going to set foot in an airport with that amount of cash.

thephyber 7y ago
Anybody with large amounts of cash. If you don’t use digital banking, they can’t trace your spending easily and that becomes something close to enough evidence to Civil Asset Forfeiture your cash. And I don’t like your argument because there are always a few extreme dummies who justify the policies at airports, so I don’t think the “all smart criminals will avoid detection” is strong enough to mean we should just drop all screening.
- beatgammit 7y ago
  How about we stop assuming that lots of cash implies a crime? I bought my last car with cash, which I think is greater than the current "this is sketchy" limit since it was over $10k in $100 bills. I have also given and received gifts of similar magnitude. If it weren't for sales tax making change a royal pain, I would use cash far more often, in which case carrying a few hundred would be an everyday thing, and carrying a few thousand wouldn't be "weird". I am really uncomfortable with asset forfeiture without at least a criminal charge, or preferably a conviction. Carrying a ton of cash may raise questions, but it should never be sufficient evidence for seizure.
  - ororo92 7y ago
    My guess is you’ll never be in a position to have a lot of cash, keeping it from being a real problem for you, meaning you’ll forget all about this righteous little display of thought experimenting how the world ought to work and have accomplished nothing of value from it. How about we stop doing that? Put a real plan together in the legal sense and we’ll have something. Banal forum exercises like this are a fractional Bitcoin for a dozen.
    - flyingfences 7y ago

stevespang 7y ago

God bless the Institute for Justice. Imagine all the billions our Gov't has thrown away in Afghanistan, and across the world . . . we know who the real crooks are . . . wikileaks taught us that . . .

BurnGpuBurn 7y ago

Civil forfeiture cases have been in the news for more than five years now, how long are people going to let those guys get away with this? It's absurd. I'm willing to bet this will still be happening five years from now though.

JumpCrisscross 7y ago
> how long are people going to let those guys get away with this? I’ve tried organising support for shifting New York law from its current “clear and convincing” standard to one requiring criminal conviction before seizure, as in Connecticut [1]. It’s hard to get people to show up, call their representatives and generally provide an electoral incentive for going through the difficulty of changing the law. Because most people don’t see themselves as potential criminals, and thus at risk of such seizures, it tends to get second fiddle to more pressing issues, e.g. wrapping up the war on drugs or healthcare. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_Unit...

mmhsieh 7y ago

owning money is a crime in america now?

mmhsieh 7y ago

this is the TSA retirement plan: show up to the airport with your life savings the TSA agent retires with your money

JohnFen 7y ago

Damn, I hope that family wins hard. This sort of theft is widespread amongst other law enforcement agencies as well. I hope that they win hard enough to make everyone stop (or at least curtail) stealing.