Reason Magazine - Topics > Asset Forfeiture

St. Louis Cops Turn Forfeiture Policy Into Free Car Rental Service

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 11:03:00 EDT

Seems that the city of St. Louis, like many cities, allows the police to confiscate the cars of people suspected (but not necessarily convicted) of certain crimes. They have a contract with a city towing firm, and said firm was allowing police officers and their families to "rent" confiscated cars free of charge, sometimes for months on end. Officers and their families could also sometimes purchase the confiscated cars at a fraction of the cars' value.

All of that is pretty outrageous. But it gets better. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch stumbled onto the story after investigating the daughter of the city's police chief. She had been involved in a number of accidents with different cars. On several occasions she had wrecked a car, then simply gone down to the towing service to get a 60-80 percent discount on a new one. After one accident, her blood-alcohol concentration tested at .17. She wasn't arrested or charged. The department says it has "no idea" why she was let go.

The police department hired a law firm, which concluded that the towing arrangement broke no rules or laws. The chief improbably claims he was oblivious to the deals his daughter was getting (her relationship with the towing service apparently goes back to 2002). The Post-Dispatch reports that the chief's last public statement on the matter was that, "the absolute necessity in maintaining transparency in the eyes of the public."

He has since declined to comment.

(Via TheNewspaper.com)

Business Is Booming for the Repo Man

mriggs@reason.com (Mike Riggs) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 11:16:00 EDT

The Miami Herald reports that not everyone is taking the credit crunch as hard as kids in Britain:

While the recession means hard times for most people, it's a godsend for the repo man, the person who shows up—often unexpectedly—to snatch your property when you're behind on payments.
At [Repo man Charlie Clarke's] employer, Fort Lauderdale boat repossessor and auctioneer National Liquidators, business has tripled in the last 18 months as higher maintenance fees, fuel and docking costs—as well as the real-estate crisis—have put boat owners behind on payments.
"Before the house, everything else goes,'' says Clarke, a former navy engineer who's never seen more boats in five years on the job. He has taken small motorboats, sailboats and multimillion-dollar yachts. For the 63-footer he takes on this day, its loan hasn't been paid for months, with $200,000 overdue.

I grew up in a Florida neighborhood where repos were a daily occurrence long before the housing bubble burst, and as such, I view folks like Clark with a mixture of disgust and awe: they make their money off saps who can't pay the bills, but they do so with incredible efficiency. As Bryan Burrough points out in his Vanity Fair story about the collapse of Bear Stearns, one person's (or company's) bad news, is another person's cause for celebration.

Katherine Mangu-Ward blogged here about the repo man's alleged credit crunch cohort: payday lenders.

"Always Think Forfeiture"

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 15:14:00 EDT

Earlier this year, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives put out a request for bids to produce a bunch of Leathermans for ATF trainees. Part of the request was that the Leathermans be inscribed with the phrase "Always Think Forfeiture," a reminder to the agents-in-training of what the agency apparently sees as its most important task.

The plan was halted after objections from Idaho Rep. William Sali. Sali is now introducing legislation preventing any federal agency from pushing a forfeiture-first mentality on its agents.

Well, at least overtly.

Uncle Pennybags Imprisoned for Counterfeiting?

kmw@reason.com (Katherine Mangu-Ward) — Fri, 23 May 2008 12:01:00 EDT

Careful there, Uncle Pennybags.

Learn a lesson from the Liberty Dollar fiasco. If you keep offering U.S. citizens alternate currencies (print your own![PDF]) you might be in for an FBI raid, courtesy of the grumpy U.S. Mint.

And I suspect a "Get Out of Jail Free" card won't carry much weight with the Feds.

Via Kottke

Offer a Ride, Lose Your Car

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Mon, 19 May 2008 09:56:00 EDT

Thank God this criminal has been stopped before he strikes again:

A man who said he thought he was just helping a woman in need is accused of running an illegal taxi service.

Miami-Dade County’s Consumer Services Department has slapped Rosco O’Neil with $2,000 worth of fines, but O’Neil claims he is falsely accused.

“I ain’t running nothing illegal,” O’Neil said.

The 78-year-old said he was walking into a Winn-Dixie to get some groceries when he was approached by a woman who said she needed a ride.

“She asked me, ‘Do I do a service?’” O’Neil said. “I told her no. She said, ‘I need help getting home.’”

O’Neil told the woman if she was still there when he finished his shopping, he would give her a ride. She was, so he did.

As it turned out, the woman was an undercover employee with the consumer services department targeting people providing illegal taxi services.

“She said the reason she targeted him (is because) she saw him sitting in his car for a few minutes,” said Ellen Novodeletsky, O’Neil’s attorney.

After O’Neil dropped off the woman, police surrounded him, issued him two citations and impounded his minivan. On top of the fees, it cost O’Neil an additional $400 to retrieve his minivan from the impound lot.

There are no prior complaints that O’Neil was providing illegal transportation for a fee.

“It’s not entrapment because she didn’t expect him to provide her transportation,” said Sonya Perez, a spokeswoman for the consumer services department.

O’Neil claims he was just being kind and providing a ride to a lady in need.

“There’s all kinds of possibilities, but the fact of this particular case, what our enforcement officers witnessed — because we had several on the scene, plus a Miami-Dade police officer — and all the information came back the same, that this was a business transaction,” Perez said.

O’Neil said he never even discussed money until the woman insisted upon it.

“She asked me, ‘How much you charging?’” O’Neil said. “I said, ‘Anything you give me.’ She said, ‘No, I need a price.’”

Update on the Ricks Forfieture Case

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 12:34:00 EDT

Bob Ewing of the Institute for Justice has an op-ed in the Cleveland Plain Dealer today on the outrageous case of Luther and Meredith Ricks, a Lima, Ohio couple who lost $400,000 in life savings to civil asset forfeiture.

(Disclosure: After reading about the Ricks case on my personal site and at reason, a friend of mine persuaded his law firm to represent the Ricks pro-bono.)

Click a Link, Go to Jail for 10 Years

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 09:03:00 EDT

reason contributor Declan McCullagh uncovers the latest in hi-tech lynching:

The FBI has recently adopted a novel investigative technique: posting hyperlinks that purport to be illegal videos of minors having sex, and then raiding the homes of anyone willing to click on them.
Undercover FBI agents used this hyperlink-enticement technique, which directed Internet users to a clandestine government server, to stage armed raids of homes in Pennsylvania, New York, and Nevada last year. The supposed video files actually were gibberish and contained no illegal images.

Read the whole investigative nightmare here.

Your Liberty Dollar Raid Update

info@reason.com (Jeff Taylor) — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 10:35:00 EST

Updating from the previous post on the topic, the FBI did indeed raid the Liberty Dollar office in Indiana on Wednesday. Documents filed in U.S. District Court in North Carolina indicate that the raid was the culmination of a two-year undercover investigation of Liberty Dollar and its officers.

According to an affidavit (PDF) filed by FBI agent Andrew Romagnuolo in support of a federal seizure warrant obtained from a U.S. Magistrate last week, the feds have been investigating Liberty Dollar not just for violating federal bans on circulating alternative currency, but also for mail fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering.

As for the mysterious connection to the Western District of North Carolina, the document names William Innes of Asheville as a Regional Currency Officer for Liberty Dollar and an executive committee member of the company. Undercover government agents made Asheville a focus of their investigation as a result, attending area meetings of Liberty Dollar prospective buyers and sellers.

The affidavit further details Liberty Dollar's structure and terms it a "multi-level marketing scheme." The FBI claims the company realizes a profit by selling the Liberty Dollars into circulation. The feds also went back to October 2002 for bank records of Liberty Dollar principals and cite large sums of cash moving between accounts said to be controlled by those individuals.

The document also mentions that the company continued to circulate Liberty Dollars after it had been warned by the US Mint not to do so. Part of the evidence cited for this is an FBI agent purchasing a "The US Mint Can Bite Me" t-shirt at a Liberty Dollar University event in October 2006.

The affidavit concludes that because the Liberty Dollar operation uses Federal Reserve Notes to conduct its business, it is fraudulent. "This reliance upon FRN's by a group opposed to FRN's demonstrates that the American Liberty Dollar Monetary system is simply a drain on the United State Government's monetary system for financial profit via fraudulent means," the feds claim. The document further claims there is probable cause that violations of federal law took place as a result of these activities.

At no point in the affidavit are Ron Paul Dollars mentioned, although many other coins are mentioned including a Hawaii dala offering. As such, accounts of the raid focused on the Ron Paul angle seem off-base, at least given the available facts.

Turn It Up; Lose Your Wheels

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 08:06:00 EDT

A new Rockford, Illinois law allows police to seize the automobiles of owners who play their stereos too loud.

But it gets worse.

There is no requirement that a police officer responding to a complaint objectively measure sound levels with electronic equipment or even personally witness an alleged offense. Instead, the ordinance states that "hearsay evidence shall be admissible" and that property will be seized upon the assertion of probable cause.

The only way to protest the seizure is to prove you weren't driving your car at the time virtually anyone could have lodged a complaint against you. But look at what you have to go through to get it back:

If a motorist believes his car has been unlawfully towed on a Friday after 5pm, he may challenge the taking by "depositing a written request for a hearing in the silver drop box located behind city hall," according to the ordinance. The city must then respond by the following Wednesday. If the registered owner was not driving at the time the car was taken, he will be mailed a letter within ten days. After this time he is given less than fifteen days to request a hearing. The city may then wait another 45 days to schedule a hearing while storage fees accumulate up to $1100.

A hearing officer designated by Rockford will decide under a preponderance of evidence standard whether it is likely the motorist is guilty, in which case the hearing officer's employers will collect the fine and fee revenue from the motorist. If the vehicle's owner does not receive the mailed notice or cannot pay the fees within 30 days, the city will confiscate the vehicle permanently.

"I'm just informing you, I'm going to punch you in the face"

bdoherty@reason.com (Brian Doherty) — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 11:29:00 EDT

The LA Weekly with the latest dispatch from the federal DEA's grim war on LA-area pot dispensaries, against the will of local government. Excerpts:

Within the next 10 days, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is expected to sign what is officially known as the Medical Marijuana Dispensary Interim Control Ordinance.
.....[Meanwhile] On July 6, the Los Angeles branch of the DEA sent letters to nearly 150 of the landlords in Los Angeles County who rent sites to marijuana collectives, pleasantly reminding property owners that selling cannabis is a federal crime punishable by up to 20 years in the federal pen, and that even peripheral involvement could trigger the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act of 2000 — meaning that the property owners’ land could be confiscated by the U.S. government.

.......
The letter triggered a rash of freak-outs among targeted landlords, causing scores of them to phone the DEA office — and their personal attorneys. “I’d say about 80 percent of the people we sent letters to called us,” says DEA spokesperson Sarah Pullen. She says many believed that California state law trumps the federal statute, when, in fact, the opposite is true.

Attorney William Kroeger, who represents some collectives who rent space in L.A., says that if he represented targeted landlords, “I’d tell them, ‘You should be in court five minutes from now filing eviction papers.’ ”

For its part, the DEA claims it simply sent the letters out as a courtesy, “to inform property owners about the law.” Nobody in city government, or among the medical-marijuana activists, really bought it. “That’s like me saying, ‘I’m just informing you, I’m going to punch you in the face,’ ” says one unhappy collective owner.

......on July 25, Los Angeles City Councilman (and former LAPD officer) Dennis Zine held a press conference before the Wednesday City Council meeting, calling for DEA Administrator Karen Tandy to stop threatening property owners and to allow L.A. to proceed with regulating medical-weed distribution without federal interference.
...............

Zine and other council members were furious. “What the feds are trying to do is flex their muscles,” Zine said when told of the raids. “They want to show us who’s boss. We’re not trying to legalize marijuana,” he said. “We’re just trying to regulate it for compassionate use for those who need it.”

Some earlier blogging on the topic from Dave Weigel.