>...That $4.5 number is completely worthless as a comparison to burglaries. It gives a sense of the scale of the abuse. A number of states refused to give out

>...That $4.5 number is completely worthless as a comparison to burglaries. It gives a sense of the scale of the abuse. A number of states refused to give out the data, so it is a low estimate. >...My understanding is that criminal forfeiture only happens when the owner is convicted of a crime. Yes, and that is justifiable. Abuses like confiscating a person's money because they went on a domestic airline flight with a large amount of cash are not justifiable. >...Back to the Madoff example, not all of the money was taken from Madoff directly. It is a mistake to just focus on a large forfeiture as that is rare: >...Data from 21 states show half of all currency forfeitures are worth less than $1,300, hardly the stuff of vast criminal enterprises and far less than it would cost to hire an attorney to fight back. https://ij.org/press-release/new-report-finds-civil-forfeiture-rakes-in-billions-each-year-does-not-fight-crime-2/ https://ij.org/press-release/new-report-finds-civil-forfeitu...