> Where it all goes wrong in other cases is "Bob claim it's his and applies for a writ". i.e. it becomes Bob's responsibility to prove his ownership in court, r

> Where it all goes wrong in other cases is "Bob claim it's his and applies for a writ". i.e. it becomes Bob's responsibility to prove his ownership in court, rather than the government's job to prove anything at all. I said at least twice that it's the government's job to prove that it's Alice's and not Bob's. You proposed a hypothetical scenario where there is plenty of evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that this cash was the result of a crime by Alice. So, when Bob comes and claims the cash is his, present that evidence. It's not a matter of Bob proving that it's his; it's a matter of Bob proving that this "beyond reasonable doubt" evidence you have of Alice's crime is bogus. We're getting really into the weeds here; I'd expect a lot of the precedents to be established by a series of cases. But I would think that a reasonable starting point would be that possession implies ownership by default; and that if the government wants to prove that the money that was in Bob's possession is not Bob's, then the burden of proof is on the government to prove that. In your hypothetical scenario, there is plenty of evidence that the money is not in fact Bob's, so it's not an issue. If it turns out the evidence that the money is really Alice's drug money is actually pretty thin, that's a reason Bob should get the money back.