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FBI seized $40k from Linda Martin without charging her with a crime
- tobyhinloopen 1y agoUSA, the land of the free!
- vincheezel 1y agowhoever told you that is your enemy
- zeroonetwothree 1y agoAs bad as CAF is I wouldn’t say it’s directly impinging on “freedom”. In fact it may be preferable to arresting a person in some cases so that could be said to be an argument in favor.
- b112 1y agoTaking your stuff is indeed infringing upon freedom, and money is indeed "stuff". And money is how you pay for food, and housing, so doubly infringing.
- watwut 1y agoWut, it is very directly impinging on freedom.
- chillingeffect 1y agoCongratulatulions, you're in the running for Apology of the Year.
- Jtsummers 1y agoIt may be preferable to lose your property in exchange for not getting arrested, but that's like saying I'd rather get pickpocketed than beaten and robbed. Most people would rather their legal property remain their legal property.
- esbranson 1y agoObviously. Hence the purpose of civil forfeiture, to discourage violations of the law. Civil forfeiture is a potential consequence of doing pickpocketing, beatings, and robbery, to keep to your example. Criminal fines are meant for after all the illicit money has been seized, they're meant to come out of their McDonalds paycheck not their robbery proceeds. Otherwise fines are useless against criminals who profit from their crimes.
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- Jtsummers 1y ago> Obviously. Hence the purpose of civil forfeiture, to discourage violations of the law. Civil forfeiture is a potential consequence of doing pickpocketing, beatings, and robbery, to keep to your example. Criminal fines are meant for after all the illicit money has been seized, they're meant to come out of their McDonalds paycheck not their robbery proceeds. Otherwise fines are useless against criminals who profit from their crimes. Are you really conflating civil asset forfeiture, where no person is convicted of a crime but their property is seized and not returned, with criminal fines which are imposed after a conviction? Are you ignorant or a troll? This isn't an either/or situation of course. You could also be an ignorant troll.
- esbranson 1y ago> Are you ignorant or a troll? … You could also be an ignorant troll. I'm a significant Wikipedian, so maybe. > Are you really conflating civil asset forfeiture, where no person is convicted of a crime but their property is seized and not returned, with criminal fines which are imposed after a conviction? No. They are independent and serve different purposes. Criminal fines are meant to be taken against legally possessed assets. When someone steals $10 million dollars, the $10 million dollars is seized via civil asset forfeiture. Hence when National Propaganda Radio reports some white collar criminal was fined $10,000 dollars for stealing $10 million dollars, what they're not telling you is that the $10 million dollars is going to be seized via a civil judicial process, regardless of any criminal judicial process. Otherwise it's easy to be confused when white collar criminals almost always get fines less than they stole. All criminals would have to do is steal more than the maximum fine, and NPR happily lets massive amounts of leftists think so.
- tobyhinloopen 1y agoAs long as it doesn’t happen to you, am I right? Surely theft by government without trial only happens to those that deserve it
- esbranson 1y agoIt's a holdover from Europe, which means most countries in the world have a form of it. Mexico, that socialist, gun-control utopia, is probably the best example. If another country besides the US ever gets something like PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records) from the 1980s, they would have a clue. Ignorance is bliss, but the US is probably still better.
- marcosdumay 1y agoAre you trying to say that most countries have something similar to civil asset forfeiture? If so, that's absolutely wrong.
- esbranson 1y agoYes that's my claim, as defined in Mexican law since that's more like most countries' legal systems. I don't know so my claim is weak, my Wikipedia articles on non-US legal systems is extremely slow going, and I have not written articles on this particular topic outside the US. :( The real basis of my claim is that most of the world would be expected to have judicial procedures for seizing assets more akin to our CAF. What the US considers reduced rights, like no jury trial, is just how things are elsewhere. (Ain't no one with a right to a jury trial anywhere in the world ever gonna choose a bench trial, it's that much of a difference.)
- marcosdumay 1y agoThe most prominent feature of the US asset forfeiture isn't that it's ruled by bench trial.
- esbranson 1y agoIs it the standard of proof? Preponderance (US), Balance of Probabilities (CA, UK, Ireland, SG, AU, NZ, PH, SA, NG), extinción de dominio (MX, CO, BR)?
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- JohnMakin 1y agoThe title is a bit misleading and seems to imply she didn't get her savings back - she did, but the suit she filed saying it violated her rights lost. Edit: title seems to have been edited since.
- indigodaddy 1y agoShe was very lucky to get it back. Probably the only reason was they hoped she would drop the suit.
- Etheryte 1y agoThe title doesn't say nor imply anything about her getting it back though? It says her assets were seized which is correct.
- peeters 1y agoThe article itself has the title: > The FBI Seized Her $40,000 Without Explaining Why. She Fought Back Against That Practice—and Lost I think it's decent, but still a bit ambiguous. Less ambiguous than if it just said "She Fought Back and Lost". My initial assumption formed by the title was still that she didn't get her money back.
- bandyaboot 1y agoAnd to add, the lawsuit didn’t lose on its merits, but on lack of jurisdiction.
- superkuh 1y agoNot unexpected. The FBI has generally been a gang filled with thieves for at least 20 years. I'm not old enough to know if it was always like this. It takes a lot of guts, and some real resources, to fight back when the FBI violates you like this. I never even considered it after some FBI stole all my computers(*1) and then, when 10 years later they gave them back, all my bitcoin was missing (the files and OS and everything there; the wallet was just wiped and replaced w/blank one with no transactions). ref 1. My apartment was raided and burgled by the FBI as part of a 50+ person cross-country fishing expedition warrant looking for wikileaks members to squash political dissent in 2011. I was never charged with a crime or even indicted.
- b112 1y agoIf you have your public address, you should be able to see if the coin is thieved away. If so, there are many a lawyer that would pro bono that I presume, especially with the price of bitcoin today.
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- superkuh 1y agoThey replaced the entire wallet. The new wallet has no transactions at all while mine should've had many many dozens. So there were no addresses to check. I certainly didn't memorize them back then. As for stirring trouble again with a lawsuit: I definitely don't want saurons eye back upon me. I just can't handle that kind of stress. Even if I'm in the right and it'd be a life changing amount of money. Even posting about it here on HN makes my anxiety spike and me start sweating. Just typing this kind of thing in public is risky. It takes a strong person to stand up to the FBI. I wish Linda Martin all the luck and support. Hopefully they don't use her fighting back as a reason to target her for more harassment.
- Mountain_Skies 1y ago"The process is the punishment" comes to mind. Not everyone is cut out to be a fighter and it's a shame that so many people end up needing to be one just to live their lives.
- Simulacra 1y agoCivil forfeiture is just one of those things that needs to die. Entire police department, prosecutors office, are exclusively funded by those funds. They have a gross incentive to violate peoples rights and take their money.
- wahnfrieden 1y agoPolice in the states steal more than all thieves combined. (The only other category which also steals more than burglars are employers through wage theft.) And that is just based off very incomplete data as we lack transparency into most civil forfeiture at the local municipality level. The money also does not go back into public service use. It's often funneled into items such as F-350 trucks for personal use, commemorative Super Bowl badges, or premium salmon-jerky dogfood (actual recent examples from Georgia).
- ljf 1y agoAnyone down voting, can you provide proof that proves the opposite? I know wage theft is massive (world over).
- wahnfrieden 1y agoThere’s no proof against it because it’s factual. They just don’t like the narrative it forms by pointing it out, or they think it’s justified by the other value police/employers create, or they think the victims had it coming (by committing “time theft” or being criminals themselves even if I convicted because police only go after bad people / they are bad people because police went after them)
- Nasrudith 1y agoWell "wage theft" is also rhetorically abused to go beyond fraud, lack of payments or similiar actual misconduct and into bullshit Marx-tautology territory of "all profit is stolen from the worker". They think it helps spread their point but it really undermines it to anybody who catches on to their bullcrap.
- xyst 1y agoPeople have been crying foul about civil asset forfeiture for decades. However nothing has been done yet because it’s yet another tool used to control the population. The current powers in government and their billionaire owners do not want civil asset forfeiture to disappear. Thus part of the reason we are stuck in this endless "culture war" when we should be aiming our frustration at the billionaire class.
- watwut 1y agoIt has nothing to do with billionaire owners. It was "law and order" agenda that has literally zero to do with them.
- iachimoe 1y ago“Why me?”, she may well have asked…
- jmyeet 1y agoThe real lesson here is you can use mental gymnastics to interpret the constitution any way you want. As such, judges are inherently political actors. Civil asset forfeiture should be a direct and obvious breach of the Fourth Amendment, specificially "unreasonable search and seizure" but no, the law has contorted civil asset forfeiture to be OK because money is property and property has no constitutional rights. The police exist to protect the wealthy and their property. The police as an institution began as slave catchers (ie returning slaves, being "property", to their owners). Even the FBI has its origin in the Mann Act [1], also known as the White Slave Traffic Act. Basically, it was anti-misagenation. More generally, if you look at any important course case, mainly Supreme Court precedents, just look at a decision with the lens of how the wealthy will benefit and you'll be able to prodict the outcome with at least a 90% accuracy. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mann_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mann_Act
- lagniappe 1y ago>The police exist to protect the wealthy and their property. As a thought experiment, what would happen if they existed to protect the inverse segment and their property?
- I-M-S 1y agoThe inverse would be to use the monopoly on violence to punish those who wish to use property for their self-interest at the expense of the common good. Basically imagine police throwing in jail people who declare a plot of land as belonging to them, or someone who has seized the means of production and is now pocketing all the profits.
- Nasrudith 1y agoSo basically bandit kings who declare greed is the ultimate sin because it denies them their "rightful" earnings?
- esbranson 1y ago[flagged]
- mfer 1y ago> That died last week, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia dismissed the suit for lack of jurisdiction. If the issue is one of jurisdiction, did they file the case in the wrong court? Following local news, I've seen the case where a case is closed because it was filed in the wrong court. A different court had jurisdiction in the matter. I wonder if that's what happened in this case.
- CGMthrowaway 1y agoThere are different types of jurisdiction. Subject-matter, personal, venue, procedural, etc. In this case, reading the opinion w/dismissal, there were two factors involved: 1) The court determined her individual claim was moot because the FBI had already discontinued the forfeiture proceedings & returned her seized property, with interest, before the appeal 2) Her class claim was also dismissed because no class had been certified before her individual claim became moot
- 0xfffafaCrash 1y agoIf you read the judgement it basically says that because the FBI eventually returned the money, she no longer has a live interest as an individual. They also denied that she’s part of some well defined class for a class action. It’s not like they are saying there’s some other court she can go to. US courts are generally infamous for denying justice whenever they see fit using technicalities like “standing” and other procedural grounds. Environmental law violations, illegal surveillance programs, civil asset forfeiture like here, and constitutional violations are quite often practically impossible to get courts to address, especially if parts of the US government are the defendant.
- potato3732842 1y ago>If you read the judgement it basically says that because the FBI eventually returned the money, she no longer has a live interest as an individual. This is how NYC dodged a Bruen type ruling for so long.
- qingcharles 1y agoJurisdiction is a complicated word. What most people think of as jurisdiction is talking about law enforcement -- "you're out of your jurisdiction" -- to mean they are operating outside their geographical area. That same term in law suits is called "venue", when you've filed in the wrong county, for instance.
- alphazard 1y agoI know there is an anti-cryptocurrency sentiment on this site. But this is one of the many "political" problems, that is being transformed into a mere technical problem.
- plorg 1y agoHow is that true? The FBI can, has, and does seize crypto assets with no more or less proof than in this case.
- seanw444 1y agoIt can be easier to hide or obfuscate your crypto assets if you do it correctly, than physical cash. Key word being correctly.
- yieldcrv 1y agoIt gives the option of better self custody for that attack vector. There are court filings where they included seized Monero wallets, and had no idea of the balance, no idea of the how to access the wallet due to lack of password, and most importantly, no proof that the balance they THINK they seized is still there since you can retain access in multiple ways and can move funds from that wallet, that means the FBI seized a copy of a lock where funds were ostensibly behind. But no key, and not the only lock. You can also use Monero as an intermediary mixer to fund anonymous wallets in other currencies. Since program and smart contract platforms have so many other assets to hold, like stablecoins. The governemnt won't seize those, while the government will seize your exchange accounts and the transparent wallets you transferred to from the exchange accounts. You want to unlink your assets. This has worked for 10 years consecutively, and Monero has increased its security and continues to as computation performance improves. It is likely that more blockchains go opaque with opt-in transparency, as computation continues to improve.
- jdietrich 1y agoGovernment agencies can - and frequently do - seize crypto. The US government now holds around 1% of all BTC, solely as a result of asset seizures.
- jimt1234 1y agoSeems I have to periodically re-post this old comment because civil forfeiture is still a thing, and it still sucks. Re-reading it gets my blood boiling. My ex's brother was a good guy; his life was destroyed because the Modesto Police Department (and the sheriffs) were crooked AF. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17395675#17398314 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17395675#17398314
- ljf 1y agoThat is wild - I'm not a 'defund the police' person, but at times like this, reading this story, that I fully understand the intent. It isn't about being unpoliced or lawless, it's about rejecting the system as it exists today and building something better and new. If you have experience of behaviour like this, I understand that leaning.
- OldfieldFund 1y agoI understand that too. But no matter what we do this is an unsolvable problem of policing/judicial system. There will always be people who are falsely accused/falsely convicted. Let's say less than 1%, as a hypothetical. Do we accept that due to that we might be reducing crime by a lot? That's a question society has to answer. I think the best solution here is not focusing on policing/courts, but making sure that everyone in the society is content, so that they don't commit crimes. Happy people with resources a typical human wants probably don't commit many crimes.
- pas 1y agoNot to mention that a better paid public defender system (and courts) would help too. Cases are backlogged too much, and so on. Not to mention the abysmally low number of police per capita (compared to EU countries). Funding, funding, funding.
- ljf 1y agoI'd be very happy with a happy/content society.
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- darksaints 1y agoWe have been suffering from this problem for nearly 50 years now, due to ineffective supreme court checks and balances in the face of psychotically expansive executive interpretation of the law in the era of the war on drugs. Americans will only do the right thing after they have exhausted all other options. Slavery, women's suffrage, jim crow laws, police brutality, civil forfeiture, reproductive rights, health care...we always seem to be among the last nations on the planet to figure out how to do things correctly. It's almost like our constitution is fatally flawed and designed for oppression rather than freedom.
- jofla_net 1y agoand there are too many individualists. Its great for settling a new land, but once established they refuse too look around and see community.
- c22 1y agoJust browsing through [0] it seems the US began abolishing slavery before it was even a country. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_abolition_of_slavery_and_serfdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_abolition_of_slave...
- SapporoChris 1y agoWhat does that matter? The country still engaged in slavery for eight nine years, but had actually started in Colonial America in Virginia in 1619. So, in Virginia slavery was legal from 1619 to 1863. Yes, a petition was filed in Pennsylvania in 1688. How is this relevant?
- c22 1y agoWhat does anything matter? How is anything relevant? All we can do is learn and grow.
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- SilverElfin 1y agoThis is just straight up theft. Obviously people are getting something for themselves out of it. It needs to be banned and investigated retroactively, with fines and jail times for all.
- insane_dreamer 1y agoCivil forfeiture is one of those things that makes my blood boil every time I read about it. It is so unconstitutional, if not literally then in spirit, that I simply cannot understand how we as a society have continued to put up with it.
- djrj477dhsnv 1y agoBecause the victims are often enough "bad people", so it's politically easy to sell to the masses.
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- shutupnerd0000 1y ago[flagged]