7 ms·

> Lyon arrived @RDUAirport & gave his bag to @TSA to be scanned. He says he absolutely knew TSA would see the cash, but said he also knew there is no law limiti

by aazaa 5y ago

> Lyon arrived @RDUAirport & gave his bag to @TSA to be scanned. He says he absolutely knew TSA would see the cash, but said he also knew there is no law limiting the amount of cash one can fly with in the U.S. Here's the real problem. Civil asset forfeiture is an extralegal action. It's outside the legal system, which is why it's nearly impossible to get your money back. It's why the legality of what Lyon was doing doesn't matter. It's not a system of law, but power. He who has the power makes the law on the spot. That the US collectively has resigned itself to this level of clear overreach, utterly indefensible on any legal grounds, not to mention the bill of rights, says a lot about what 9/11 has done. The terrorists won the battle the people of this country thought they were fighting.

gamblor956 5y ago
Civil asset forfeiture is an extralegal action. This is categorically wrong. CAF is outside of the criminal legal system, but is very much part of the civil legal system, and the governments loses CAF cases more often than they win them in CAF cases preceding or not involving related criminal cases. (But conversely, the governments almost always win CAF cases that occur after succesful criminal cases involving drugs, racketeering, fraud, or financial crimes.) CAF cases make the news when the victim doesn't get their money back in a timely fashion, for the same reason that fires and earthquakes do: because that's not the normal state of things. CAF is problematic, especially the way it is run in the South and Midwest, but don't make it out to be something that it isn't. EDIT: The OP asserted that CAF was extralegal, and it absolutely is not. CAF is specifically authorized by the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984, a federal law. The OP asserted that the "terrorists won" even though CAF predates 9/11 and was created to combat organize crime. (CAF laws in the U.S. date back to the 1700s, but were infrequently used until roughly 1920 when they were used to target organized crime during Prohibition. The modern federal CAF law was passed in the 1984, to fight the "war on drugs", specifically referring to the drug cartels, and were modeled on the Prohibition Era CAF laws.)
- aazaa 5y ago
  > CAF cases make the news when the victim doesn't get their money back in a timely fashion, for the same reason that fires and earthquakes do: because that's not the normal state of things. Got a source for that?
  - gamblor956 5y ago
    That's its normal for the victims to get their money back without much of a hassle? No, because people showing the cops they have a legitimate reason to have the money and getting it back isn't news, it's just how the process normally works. (And note, this is my professional experience from when I was a public defender, which included helping clients recover assets seized pursuant to CAF claims.) It's like how there aren't any news articles about how most Tesla owners don't have problems with their car driving into obstacles every day. Normal isn't news. I agree that it sucks that someone has to prove they have a legitimate reason to have their own money (in cash), but that's the way the laws are currently written, and they were written that way because their intended use was against organized crime. Most of the abuse of CAF laws can be addressed by eliminating the incentives for LEAs to seize the money (namely, that it currently goes toward their budgets), since prior to that incentive CAF laws were rarely used except in organized crime cases.
    - ch4s3 5y ago
      Even if you could expect to get your money back most of the time, it's still a morally repugnant thing for armed agents of the government to do. As a society we should not tolerate it at all.
- cortesoft 5y ago
  I don't think the fact that the government loses most of the CAF cases means this isn't a problem. Winning the case will cost the person money and time, and they will be without their money for that time.
  - bena 5y ago
    Not to mention, this is a matter of "losing cases" not "returned assets wrongly seized". If it never becomes a case, the government can't exactly lose that case, can they?
  - gamblor956 5y ago
    I agree that's a problem, but that's not what the OP was claiming. The OP asserted that CAF was extralegal, and it absolutely is not. The OP asserted that the "terrorists won" even though CAF predates 9/11 and was created to combat organize crime. (CAF laws in the U.S. date back to the 1700s, but were infrequently used until, roughly 1920 when they were used to target organized crime during Prohibition. The modern federal CAF law was passed in the 1984, to fight the "war on drugs", specifically referring to the drug cartels, and were modeled on the Prohibition Era CAF laws.)
  - wrycoder 5y ago
    Many people won't contest the action if the amount is relatively small - say $5000 - because the legal fees will eat most of it and they don't want to spend the time. Others are simply not savvy enough with the system to follow through with legal action. Or, they are too intimidated. I've heard stories of people being stopped while driving through a small town, having the car searched, and having $1000 confiscated for no good reason.
- mountainb 5y ago
  They downvoted you because you speak the truth.
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    The comment is in part correct and in part incorrect. As is the comment it responds to. Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- Karishma1234 5y ago
  I think it is very complicated. CAF comes in many forms, Judicial AF and Administrative AF. In many cases you can't even reach the courts as the government attorney needs to allow the case to reach the court. If it is CBP that confiscates your cash, it is supposed to inform DOJ about it and then you are supposed to reach out to DOJ to get it back. Now despite the law CBP simply refused to inform DOJ, as you have to chase this alphabet soup of agencies. In most cases CBP offers to keep a portion of the cash and wants to return rest of the money as settlement. CAF is a program that should be completely abolished.
- steve_g 5y ago
  You're right that it's not extralegal action. But you're wrong that rarity makes it newsworthy. It's newsworthy because it's so obviously unjust and corrupt.
- romwell 5y ago
  >CAF cases make the news when the victim doesn't get their money back in a timely fashion, for the same reason that fires and earthquakes do: because that's not the normal state of things. Yeah, and we have an awful lot of news like that. >The OP asserted that CAF was extralegal, and it absolutely is not. In practice, there have been enough cases to justify saying that. We live in a country where the authorities can confiscate cash when they see it without reason and consequence. That, to my eyes, is extralegal. Whether the law gives them this de-facto power is beside the point; the justice system clearly does.
  - kelnos 5y ago
    I think you're conflating ethics/morals with legality. Something that is legal, by definition, is not extralegal. Civil asset forfeiture is legal, and is therefore not extralegal. > We live in a country where the authorities can confiscate cash when they see it without reason and consequence. That, to my eyes, is extralegal. No, it's not, because it is, unfortunately, legal. "Your eyes" aren't really relevant here; the law is what matters. > Whether the law gives them this de-facto power is beside the point No it's not; "legal" and "extralegal" mean specific things. You can't just redefine them to mean whatever you want.
    - lolwut09883 5y ago
      I think you’re conflating the systems outcomes with the systems intents, and you think if we made the system with good intent, the outcomes cannot be questioned. But in reality, the system is poorly constructed, and often co-opted by bad actors in law enforcement. All apples in that barrel are bad, when they’re strong arming money from people, wouldn’t you agree? If this was a story about China, I bet your little angry dick would be shuddering with rage, wouldn’t it?
- hapless 5y ago
  In the incident described in the local news story, an officer of the law demanded the money extra-legally, and only resorted to civil asset forfeiture after the victim refused to play along. I think it's important to note that it began with an extra-legal demand, no matter the legal substance of the procedure that followed. Civil asset forfeiture proceeds in the USA are already a larger amount than substantially all losses to property crimes combined, and we have no way of knowing how much more was lost to extra-legal demands that didn't pass through C.A.F. proceedings. ------------- We've made law enforcement into a thousand squabbling gangs of thieves, and it's going to take a lot of time and effort to un-make that monster.
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    We've officially authorized law enforcement to be a thousand squabbling gangs of thieves. This is not to say they weren't already. So un-making the fact will be much harder. Without authorization, the cop would have stolen the money anyway. The law just makes victims more resigned to it -- if the money goes regardless, the cop might just as well get it. Maybe they'll even take less, that way?
  - q1w2 5y ago
    > it began with an extra-legal demand That's not what happened. The quote from FoxNews reporter was: "Then offers the man a way out: surrender his cash & no investigation" This does not mean the officer was planning on pocketing the money personally. This likely still would have been considered a seizure under asset forfeiture. I agree that it should be entirely legal to carry around hundreds of thousands in cash, but the reality is that it looks very suspicious for someone who's been previously convicted of a felony drug conviction carrying around hundreds of thousands in small bills. Asset forfeiture is a mixed bag. You have to appear in court prove the money was not gained through illegal means. The fact that most asset forfeitures go uncontested is telling that a lot of them, IMO, are probably indeed drug money (this is obviously controversial). It's important to remember that every state is different - as is the Fed gov't. In any case, it is absolutely not "extra-legal". That's nonsense. Asset forfeiture is literally codified in almost every state.
    - 5y ago
- phkahler 5y ago
  >> The OP asserted that CAF was extralegal, and it absolutely is not. How does it jive with the constitution? Particularly the 4th amendment, but others as well.
- 8note 5y ago
  The civil system does not assume innocence, so as a defendant you have a to prove a negative. CAF cases make the news because the defendant actually gets their money back, and it didn't already get spent building a new hot tub for the police station lounge
- tshaddox 5y ago
  I mean isn’t everything in the “civil legal system”?
treeman79 5y ago
If a girl lists you as the parent on the birth certificate, some places will require you to make child support payments even if you prove that your not the father, never had anything todo with the child, etc. Welfare office Argument being is that someone should pay for the kid.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > If a girl lists you as the parent on the birth certificate, some places will require you to make child support payments even if you prove that your not the father, never had anything todo with the child, etc. “Some places”? Really, which exactly? The only case I am aware of in any US jurisdiction where child support is required even in the face of proof of biological non-paternity is for children born in wedlock (sometimes with other requirements, such as marital cohabitation) in states where the marital presumption of paternity is conclusive (or conclusive when other requirements are met) rather than merely presumptive. And in that case it is literally what you legally signed up for.
  - kelnos 5y ago
    That's... still pretty terrible. Let me see if I have this right. A man and woman marry. The woman cheats on the man and gets pregnant, but lies about it and passes the kid off as the husband's child. After the birth, husband is suspicious, gets a paternity test, finds out he's not the father, and divorces the mother. And yet the now-ex-husband is still required to pay for child support? If that's a thing that happens, that's genuinely awful. That is not something I (or anyone?) would want to legally sign up for; presumably people in those jurisdictions get married without knowing about this.
    - Maursault 5y ago
      Yes, divorce based on infidelity of the female due to non-paternity is terrible. If she was just sleeping around, maybe he'd have a point, but if procreation is her goal, then she is merely exercising her evolutionary imperative to ensure genetic diversity and quality of her offspring; having higher-quality offspring could theoretically give her more and healthier grandchildren later. I don't see how non-paternity is damaging to the male in any way, unless he is already mentally ill, iow NPD, which in itself justifies her infidelity and her own grounds for divorce. It just goes to show the institution of marriage is sexist. I'll never understand why a woman would ever want to be married. "fsck studs; get money" is the advice I give to the fairer gender. btw this is the Internet, and I am a straight man that is confident enough not to hold others to my own choice of fidelity for my own relationship. It's her life, she can do as she pleases, and even if I were married to her, it still would be absolutely none of my business.

by aazaa 5y ago

gamblor956 5y ago

Civil asset forfeiture is an extralegal action. This is categorically wrong. CAF is outside of the criminal legal system, but is very much part of the civil legal system, and the governments loses CAF cases more often than they win them in CAF cases preceding or not involving related criminal cases. (But conversely, the governments almost always win CAF cases that occur after succesful criminal cases involving drugs, racketeering, fraud, or financial crimes.) CAF cases make the news when the victim doesn't get their money back in a timely fashion, for the same reason that fires and earthquakes do: because that's not the normal state of things. CAF is problematic, especially the way it is run in the South and Midwest, but don't make it out to be something that it isn't. EDIT: The OP asserted that CAF was extralegal, and it absolutely is not. CAF is specifically authorized by the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984, a federal law. The OP asserted that the "terrorists won" even though CAF predates 9/11 and was created to combat organize crime. (CAF laws in the U.S. date back to the 1700s, but were infrequently used until roughly 1920 when they were used to target organized crime during Prohibition. The modern federal CAF law was passed in the 1984, to fight the "war on drugs", specifically referring to the drug cartels, and were modeled on the Prohibition Era CAF laws.)

aazaa 5y ago
> CAF cases make the news when the victim doesn't get their money back in a timely fashion, for the same reason that fires and earthquakes do: because that's not the normal state of things. Got a source for that?
- gamblor956 5y ago
  That's its normal for the victims to get their money back without much of a hassle? No, because people showing the cops they have a legitimate reason to have the money and getting it back isn't news, it's just how the process normally works. (And note, this is my professional experience from when I was a public defender, which included helping clients recover assets seized pursuant to CAF claims.) It's like how there aren't any news articles about how most Tesla owners don't have problems with their car driving into obstacles every day. Normal isn't news. I agree that it sucks that someone has to prove they have a legitimate reason to have their own money (in cash), but that's the way the laws are currently written, and they were written that way because their intended use was against organized crime. Most of the abuse of CAF laws can be addressed by eliminating the incentives for LEAs to seize the money (namely, that it currently goes toward their budgets), since prior to that incentive CAF laws were rarely used except in organized crime cases.
  - ch4s3 5y ago
    Even if you could expect to get your money back most of the time, it's still a morally repugnant thing for armed agents of the government to do. As a society we should not tolerate it at all.
cortesoft 5y ago
I don't think the fact that the government loses most of the CAF cases means this isn't a problem. Winning the case will cost the person money and time, and they will be without their money for that time.
- bena 5y ago
  Not to mention, this is a matter of "losing cases" not "returned assets wrongly seized". If it never becomes a case, the government can't exactly lose that case, can they?
- gamblor956 5y ago
  I agree that's a problem, but that's not what the OP was claiming. The OP asserted that CAF was extralegal, and it absolutely is not. The OP asserted that the "terrorists won" even though CAF predates 9/11 and was created to combat organize crime. (CAF laws in the U.S. date back to the 1700s, but were infrequently used until, roughly 1920 when they were used to target organized crime during Prohibition. The modern federal CAF law was passed in the 1984, to fight the "war on drugs", specifically referring to the drug cartels, and were modeled on the Prohibition Era CAF laws.)
- wrycoder 5y ago
  Many people won't contest the action if the amount is relatively small - say $5000 - because the legal fees will eat most of it and they don't want to spend the time. Others are simply not savvy enough with the system to follow through with legal action. Or, they are too intimidated. I've heard stories of people being stopped while driving through a small town, having the car searched, and having $1000 confiscated for no good reason.
mountainb 5y ago
They downvoted you because you speak the truth.
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  The comment is in part correct and in part incorrect. As is the comment it responds to. Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Karishma1234 5y ago
I think it is very complicated. CAF comes in many forms, Judicial AF and Administrative AF. In many cases you can't even reach the courts as the government attorney needs to allow the case to reach the court. If it is CBP that confiscates your cash, it is supposed to inform DOJ about it and then you are supposed to reach out to DOJ to get it back. Now despite the law CBP simply refused to inform DOJ, as you have to chase this alphabet soup of agencies. In most cases CBP offers to keep a portion of the cash and wants to return rest of the money as settlement. CAF is a program that should be completely abolished.
steve_g 5y ago
You're right that it's not extralegal action. But you're wrong that rarity makes it newsworthy. It's newsworthy because it's so obviously unjust and corrupt.
romwell 5y ago
>CAF cases make the news when the victim doesn't get their money back in a timely fashion, for the same reason that fires and earthquakes do: because that's not the normal state of things. Yeah, and we have an awful lot of news like that. >The OP asserted that CAF was extralegal, and it absolutely is not. In practice, there have been enough cases to justify saying that. We live in a country where the authorities can confiscate cash when they see it without reason and consequence. That, to my eyes, is extralegal. Whether the law gives them this de-facto power is beside the point; the justice system clearly does.
- kelnos 5y ago
  I think you're conflating ethics/morals with legality. Something that is legal, by definition, is not extralegal. Civil asset forfeiture is legal, and is therefore not extralegal. > We live in a country where the authorities can confiscate cash when they see it without reason and consequence. That, to my eyes, is extralegal. No, it's not, because it is, unfortunately, legal. "Your eyes" aren't really relevant here; the law is what matters. > Whether the law gives them this de-facto power is beside the point No it's not; "legal" and "extralegal" mean specific things. You can't just redefine them to mean whatever you want.
  - lolwut09883 5y ago
    I think you’re conflating the systems outcomes with the systems intents, and you think if we made the system with good intent, the outcomes cannot be questioned. But in reality, the system is poorly constructed, and often co-opted by bad actors in law enforcement. All apples in that barrel are bad, when they’re strong arming money from people, wouldn’t you agree? If this was a story about China, I bet your little angry dick would be shuddering with rage, wouldn’t it?
hapless 5y ago
In the incident described in the local news story, an officer of the law demanded the money extra-legally, and only resorted to civil asset forfeiture after the victim refused to play along. I think it's important to note that it began with an extra-legal demand, no matter the legal substance of the procedure that followed. Civil asset forfeiture proceeds in the USA are already a larger amount than substantially all losses to property crimes combined, and we have no way of knowing how much more was lost to extra-legal demands that didn't pass through C.A.F. proceedings. ------------- We've made law enforcement into a thousand squabbling gangs of thieves, and it's going to take a lot of time and effort to un-make that monster.
- ncmncm 5y ago
  We've officially authorized law enforcement to be a thousand squabbling gangs of thieves. This is not to say they weren't already. So un-making the fact will be much harder. Without authorization, the cop would have stolen the money anyway. The law just makes victims more resigned to it -- if the money goes regardless, the cop might just as well get it. Maybe they'll even take less, that way?
- q1w2 5y ago
  > it began with an extra-legal demand That's not what happened. The quote from FoxNews reporter was: "Then offers the man a way out: surrender his cash & no investigation" This does not mean the officer was planning on pocketing the money personally. This likely still would have been considered a seizure under asset forfeiture. I agree that it should be entirely legal to carry around hundreds of thousands in cash, but the reality is that it looks very suspicious for someone who's been previously convicted of a felony drug conviction carrying around hundreds of thousands in small bills. Asset forfeiture is a mixed bag. You have to appear in court prove the money was not gained through illegal means. The fact that most asset forfeitures go uncontested is telling that a lot of them, IMO, are probably indeed drug money (this is obviously controversial). It's important to remember that every state is different - as is the Fed gov't. In any case, it is absolutely not "extra-legal". That's nonsense. Asset forfeiture is literally codified in almost every state.
  - 5y ago
phkahler 5y ago
>> The OP asserted that CAF was extralegal, and it absolutely is not. How does it jive with the constitution? Particularly the 4th amendment, but others as well.
8note 5y ago
The civil system does not assume innocence, so as a defendant you have a to prove a negative. CAF cases make the news because the defendant actually gets their money back, and it didn't already get spent building a new hot tub for the police station lounge
tshaddox 5y ago
I mean isn’t everything in the “civil legal system”?

treeman79 5y ago

If a girl lists you as the parent on the birth certificate, some places will require you to make child support payments even if you prove that your not the father, never had anything todo with the child, etc. Welfare office Argument being is that someone should pay for the kid.

dragonwriter 5y ago
> If a girl lists you as the parent on the birth certificate, some places will require you to make child support payments even if you prove that your not the father, never had anything todo with the child, etc. “Some places”? Really, which exactly? The only case I am aware of in any US jurisdiction where child support is required even in the face of proof of biological non-paternity is for children born in wedlock (sometimes with other requirements, such as marital cohabitation) in states where the marital presumption of paternity is conclusive (or conclusive when other requirements are met) rather than merely presumptive. And in that case it is literally what you legally signed up for.
- kelnos 5y ago
  That's... still pretty terrible. Let me see if I have this right. A man and woman marry. The woman cheats on the man and gets pregnant, but lies about it and passes the kid off as the husband's child. After the birth, husband is suspicious, gets a paternity test, finds out he's not the father, and divorces the mother. And yet the now-ex-husband is still required to pay for child support? If that's a thing that happens, that's genuinely awful. That is not something I (or anyone?) would want to legally sign up for; presumably people in those jurisdictions get married without knowing about this.
  - Maursault 5y ago
    Yes, divorce based on infidelity of the female due to non-paternity is terrible. If she was just sleeping around, maybe he'd have a point, but if procreation is her goal, then she is merely exercising her evolutionary imperative to ensure genetic diversity and quality of her offspring; having higher-quality offspring could theoretically give her more and healthier grandchildren later. I don't see how non-paternity is damaging to the male in any way, unless he is already mentally ill, iow NPD, which in itself justifies her infidelity and her own grounds for divorce. It just goes to show the institution of marriage is sexist. I'll never understand why a woman would ever want to be married. "fsck studs; get money" is the advice I give to the fairer gender. btw this is the Internet, and I am a straight man that is confident enough not to hold others to my own choice of fidelity for my own relationship. It's her life, she can do as she pleases, and even if I were married to her, it still would be absolutely none of my business.