Indiana Cops Seized Their Cash From a FedEx Hub. Prosecutors Just Agreed To Return It.

A class action lawsuit claims Indianapolis law enforcement is using civil asset forfeiture to seize millions in cash from packages routed through a major FedEx hub, without notifying the owners of what crime they're suspected of committing.

Indiana prosecutors will return $42,000 in cash they seized from a California small business, several months after the owners filed a class action lawsuit alleging that law enforcement is exploiting a major FedEx shipping hub in Indianapolis to seize millions of dollars in cash from innocent owners.

The Institute for Justice (I.J.), a public interest law firm, announced last week that prosecutors in Marion County, Indiana, have agreed to return the money to its clients Henry and Minh Cheng, who run a California jewelry wholesaler business. Police seized the cash from a FedEx package en route to them from a client in Virginia. County prosecutors then filed a lawsuit to forfeit their money through a process called civil asset forfeiture, claiming the Chengs' money was connected to a violation of a criminal statute. However, the complaint never stated which statute.

The Chengs' suit says they're not the only victims. According to I.J., the Marion County Prosecutor's Office has sued to forfeit $2.5 million in currency from at least 130 FedEx parcels in transit from one non-Indiana state to another over the past two years through civil asset forfeiture. I.J. alleges that the Marion County Prosecutor's Office then files deficient forfeiture actions against seized cash, which fail to notify owners of what crimes they're suspected of committing. I.J. argues the whole scheme violates a wide range of constitutional rights, including the Fourth, Eighth, 10th, and 14th Amendments.

"I'm ecstatic at the prospect of getting my money back," Henry Cheng said in an I.J. press release, "and this is just the beginning. What happened to my company shouldn't happen to anyone. Indiana should stop trying to steal from law-abiding citizens by seizing property and figuring out later whether there's any basis for keeping it."

Under civil asset forfeiture laws, police and prosecutors can seize property suspected of being connected to criminal activity, even when the owner is not convicted, charged, or even arrested for a crime. Law enforcement groups say civil forfeiture allows them to interdict and disrupt organized crime like drug trafficking by seizing its illicit gains.

However, civil liberties groups like I.J. argue lax safeguards and perverse profit incentives lead police to brand any large amount of cash as drug money, even in cases where no drugs are found and even though traveling with large amounts of cash is legal.

For example, the Justice Department last month ordered the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to suspend most searches of passengers at airports and other mass transit hubs because of a significant risk of constitutional violations and lawsuits. The order followed years of media investigations, government audits, and reports from civil liberties groups that identified abusive cash seizures by DEA airport task forces.

I.J. is currently also litigating a class action lawsuit challenging the DEA's airport forfeiture practices. One of the lead plaintiffs in that suit, Terrence Rolin, a 79-year-old retired railroad engineer, had his life savings of $82,373 seized by the DEA after his daughter tried to take it on a flight out of Pittsburgh with the intent of depositing it in a bank. As in the Chengs' case, after it went public, law enforcement returned Rolin's money.

Most asset forfeiture lawsuits are rendered moot when the government returns the plaintiff's money, but I.J. says it will continue litigating its class action lawsuit to stop Indiana law enforcement from continuing to improperly seize cash.

"Indiana had no basis to forfeit the Chengs' money, and so it's only right that the government has agreed to return it," I.J. attorney Marie Miller said in a press release. "But many other people are affected by the state's practices of taking money simply because it goes through Indiana and failing to identify a crime that would justify the forfeiture. The counterclaims aim to end this abuse of civil forfeiture not just for Henry and Minh, but for everyone."

Comments

[Longtobefree]

If only this were a free country.
You know, where the only times the state could take property was in connection with an arrest, as evidence, or as a fine after conviction in a trial.

Silly me.

[NM Dave]

Hey, I have an idea! We should establish a constitutional amendment prohibiting unreasonable search and seizure! That was the police would have to use due process! Why hasn't anyone thought of that before?

[Zeb]

Part of the problem here is that law enforcement agencies and officers start seeing their jobs as, for example, stopping drug smuggling or stopping money laundering or whatever, when their actual job is to enforce the law, as it exists, according to the constitution.

[InsaneTrollLogic (Factio Democratica delenda est 5/30/24)]

Exactly. They also have zero business inside that facility unless called for a crime or other issue where they’re needed.

[Idaho-Bob]

Another part of the problem is there is no punishment for constitutional violations. Returning seized cash is not punitive.

[Rossami]

Agreed. Until police and prosecutors start going to jail, these abuses will continue.

[jimc5499]

Several years ago we had a Local Police Department disbanded because they weren't generating enough revenue to pay for themselves. It's not just the Police. We had Local Magistrates charging blatant DUI's with Reckless Driving because DUI money went to the State while RD money stayed in the Municipality.

[Sometimes a Great Notion]

Just sent my end of the year donation to the IJ. Keep up the good work.

[Randy Sax]

I'm not married. IJ is my current life insurance beneficiary.

[SQRLSY]

Good job, Randy Sax!!! That's a saxy thang to do!!! Support IJ!!!

[Dillinger]

>>even in cases where no drugs are found and even though traveling with large amounts of cash is legal.

these criminals are a fucking smear on society what are they even doing in the FedEx building?

[Zeb]

I thought they had snitches that worked at the Fedex facility.

[Dillinger]

rain on my parade thanks.

[bacchys]

Enjoy this temporary victory.

The orange moron loves asset forfeiture. He'll have federal law enforcement adopting these and other shit seizures.

[Dillinger]

I totes remember 2018 when all my shit was taken by the feds

[diver64]

Yes because Trump ran around seizing everything during his first term. You really should get that TDS looked at.

[Iwanna Newname]

Don't you see? Only criminals need to carry cash.

[AT]

Indiana prosecutors will return $42,000 in cash they seized from a California small business ... "I'm ecstatic at the prospect of getting my money back," Henry Cheng said

Oh look, another example of how I'm always right.

From two weeks ago: Yea, but you can get it back. (And no, not just in the instances Ceej mentioned, "After the case went public, the DEA returned the money; the DEA returned her money after she challenged the seizure as well; the DEA returned $28,000 to Kermit Warren.")

Thanks for illustrating to the Reason readership that this process is not all that difficult.

Also, I love this:

"Indiana had no basis to forfeit the Chengs' money, and so it's only right that the government has agreed to return it," I.J. attorney Marie Miller said in a press release.

ACTUALLY, Marie - they had probable cause. That was their basis. The dog altered on the package, and casual scrutiny of it revealed it was hella sus ("From the Complaint: f. “The listed phone numbers are duplicate numbers for the sender and receiver.” g. “The receiver’s name listed, only has a first name and no surname.”")

The Cheng's then appropriately challenged whether the State could connect it to a crime - and the State couldn't. So, back it goes - easy peasy Vietnamesey. It didn't mean they HAD no basis, it means they couldn't CONFIRM that basis.

Big difference.

And it's the reason why CAF isn't as big a deal as ACABs like to make it out to be. (But let's be honest - the only reason they do is because they're all a bunch of crime loving drug addicts and don't like having their black markets disrupted.)

[InsaneTrollLogic (Factio Democratica delenda est 5/30/24)]

The dog altered on the package...

The problem with the use of dogs like this is they don't alert on the item, they alert on the handler's cue. The cops have no business within the FedEx facility unless they're called for a reason.

[AT]

This is something that idiots intentionally think, and I already repudiated this nonsense the last time CJ posted this same story.

https://reason.com/2024/08/12/lawsuit-claims-indiana-unconstitutionally-seizes-millions-in-cash-from-fedex-packages-every-year/?comments=true#comment-10685356

Do you really, really believe that a handler would TRY to get his dog decertified and his warrants based on his dog's alerts thrown out of court (both of which would blow back on the handler) just to... what, make arrests and seizures they ultimately can't defend? How hard does going ACAB retard your guys' brains?

I'm seriously asking!

I said it then, and I'll say it again now: If anything, you would think libertarians (which we all know nobody here is, more marxistarian or lolertarians or losertarians) would be the greatest proponent, advocate, and defender of K9 searches. They are, without a doubt, the least intrusive means of police investigation and the single greatest check to avoid unreasonable invasions of privacy.

[Zeb]

I'm glad you at least acknowledge that K9 searches are searches. Which require warrants.

[AT]

Depending on the reasonable expectation of privacy one might have.

[Chaino]

I don’t think you have to attribute malice to the handlers when unconscious actions have already been shown to influence the responses of the dogs.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2011/01/07/132738250/report-drug-sniffing-dogs-are-wrong-more-often-than-right

Dog handlers can accidentally cue alerts from their dogs by leading them too slowly or too many times around a vehicle, said Lawrence Myers, an Auburn University professor who studies detector dogs. Myers pointed to the "Clever Hans" phenomenon in the early 1900s, named after a horse whose owner claimed the animal could read and do math before a psychologist determined the horse was actually responding to his master's unwitting cues.

Regarding the dogs being the least intrusive means of police investigation, even the least intrusive means is intrusive when the police are routinely searching many packages with absolutely no prior suspicion. And I know that the courts have ruled that a “free air sniff” is not a search, but having a dog check all of these packages at a FedEx hub sure seems like searching to me.

[AT]

Yes, I've said since the beginning that the whole dog in the FedEx hub seemed squirrely.

But we don't know the basis for how that all began because ACAB Ceej refuses to report (or even investigate) his stories before he just goes off blathering marxistarian narratives.

[AT]

The cops have no business within the FedEx facility unless they're called for a reason.

You'll also note that I called that highly into question in that same article. "Unless there’s an added layer to why cops are hanging out at the FedEx hub with K9’s on site that CJ failed to report on," were my exact words.

So, maybe you agree with me a whole lot more than you think you do.

[Bill Poser]

Even if the dog's alert was valid in the sense that it detected an illegal drug, it is well known that a very large percentage of US currency is contaminated with detectable levels of cocaine. Valid detection of cocaine on currency does not indicate that the current owner of the currency is involved in the drug trade.

[AT]

True, but it wasn't the only thing that made Chang's parcel suspicious on its face.

Plus, point of fact, K9s - especially military, but to an appreciable extent police as well - are often trained in cross-association. Now, this is more for suspect/fugitive hunting and rescue ops, where they're trained to scent on a primary odor (the person they're hunting) but might also alert on a secondary scent (like blood) if the scent them in tandem. In a similar vein, they're also taught scent rejection; to disregard a secondary scent that might be there but obviously isn't related (like animal dung).

They can do this same kind of thing with money and drugs, but admittedly I've not often heard of those kinds of training regiments (usually it's just drugs).

My point being that it may not have been just drugs it scented on. It might have been trained to scent on significant sources of money itself - drug trace or otherwise. Which might explain its dispatch to a FedEx warehouse (but I have doubts about that) if the good people of Indiana had reason to believe that large sums of loose cash were being moved through commercial shipping. Because what kind of idiot criminal enterprise does that.

But, ultimately, your point is valid - yes, the current owner of currency containing trace drug evidence does not indicate involvement. But it does establish probable cause (in general, again, I have my doubts about whether this flies in a FedEx warehouse), which then justifies the seizure. Which is why there's a due process system in place for anyone challenging the seizure of their monies to force the State to prove that said monies were part of a criminal enterprise.

Which is precisely what Mr. Chang did here.

[jimc5499]

Actually with the amount of drugs on money a dog would hit on any large sum of money.

[Bill Poser]

The owners of the cash were deprived of their funds for a substantial time. That could badly damage a small business. And they had to pay a lawyer and filing fees. Even though they got their money back, it caused them significant inconvenience and money.

[AT]

So what?

[Squirrelloid]

So what was the probable cause? "Suspicious" is not probable cause. Probable cause requires that they have reason to believe a *specific crime* has been or is being committed, or evidence of that crime is present. If they can't identify the crime before they begin the search, they can't search.

There's no 'figure it out later'. Which means when they can't inform the people whose cash was seized the reason why it was seized immediately, that's proof positive there was no probable cause and the search was illegal.

[AT]

So what was the probable cause?

The dog alerting on the package.

If they can't identify the crime before they begin the search, they can't search.

Nonsense. If they hear a scream, they don't have to determine you're in danger before they kick down your door and clear the place. Doesn't matter whether someone had a gun to your kid's head or whether you peed your pants because you saw a spider. A scream is a scream.

The ideal goal is to intervene in the commission of a crime. More often than not, the reality is that they're usually trying to put it together after the fact. CAF exists to try and keep the former from getting to the latter. It's not perfect, but that's explicitly why we give people the ability to challenge it and put the burden on the State to defend it.

There's no 'figure it out later'.

Of course there is. Suppose instead the dog had scented on explosives or human remains or the fresh smell of cordite in a random and suspiciously labeled FedEx parcel. Do you really think the cops wouldn't - or shouldn't - seize said contraband in transit? And then do some very pointed investigation as to why the sender or recipient is mailing them?

FFS, if they find a firearm or bunch of drugs or a sack full of cash next to a dumpster in an alley, they're GOING to seize it - knowing literally nothing about whose it is or why it's there - but knowing darn well that A) it shouldn't be there; and B) it sure as heck shouldn't be left there. Why would you possibly think anything to the contrary would be reasonable?

That's very much and very appropriately immediately intercept the parcel and then "figure it out later."

Which means when they can't inform the people whose cash was seized the reason why it was seized immediately, that's proof positive there was no probable cause and the search was illegal.

You should probably go take an Intro to CrimPro class. You're using terms I suspect you don't fully understand.

As I've mentioned before, in a situation like this the first thing they do is inform the recipient that their property was seized. Which they did. And they explain why. Mr. Chang (like so many others as outlined by CJ, as he pretends that CAF is a problem for anyone that isn't actually a criminal) then disputed this and prevailed. So, what's the issue?

An alternative situation is one in which they make a seizure but can't determine ownership. They can't just abandon the suspected (or certain) contraband at that point - so procedure is to invite a declaration of ownership. Far more often than not, nobody elects to claim it. Gee I wonder why.

Also, bear in mind that a thing you're not considering is the legal definition of a reasonable expectation of privacy. For all your attempts at sounding learned on the subject, you conspicuously avoid that.

[Zeb]

So they were harmed for no good reason. Being deprived of the use of your money for any amount of time is damaging.

[AT]

Which is why one should try using banks or a wire service instead of depositing large stacks of money into highly suspicious packages with really weird labels on them.

[Medulla Oblongata]

Civil forfeiture of this nature is an abomination and should be done away with.

Barring that, the next best thing we could do is to remove as much incentive for abuse as we possibly can. Not one cent of forfeited assets or proceeds from sale of forfeited assets should end up in law enforcement budgets, nor should any physical assets like cars, TVs, etc. end up as cop props. Nor should it go into general funds (which then get allocated back to law enforcement).

Every single penny should be mandated to be placed into victim restitution funds.

[AT]

Why should it be done away with? It does tremendous amounts of good when it comes to interrupting criminal enterprise and limiting their cash flow.

Like I said a couple weeks ago when CJ wrote, "the DEA seized more than $4 billion in cash from people suspected of drug activity over the previous decade, but $3.2 billion of those seizures were never connected to any criminal charges."

OK, so let's think about this. $3.2 billion never connected to any criminal charges. So.... why aren't the owners of that $3.2B making ANY effort to get their rightful property back? [CJ] mentioned three cases totaling $150K. Drop in the bucket compared to $3.2B. What about the rest? What's going on with the other $3.19985B?

Answer: it likely was (and $800M+ definitely was) connected to criminal activity, and Crimey McCrimerson didn't want to expose his criminal activity to try and get it back. So, even if they can't ultimately secure some kind of conviction with the seizure, at the very least they've had a positive impact on curbing criminal activity.

Every single penny should be mandated to be placed into victim restitution funds.

I mean, I don't object to it on principle - but so many of those end up slush. I'm not saying I have a better solution for what to do with it, but using CAF funds to continue encouraging the practice of CAF is a useful motivator that has an ultimately positive effect on hindering crime and interrupting criminal enterprise.

[diver64]

Jesus you sure tie yourself into knots justifying this crap.

[AT]

Language.

Also, I don't have to justify it. It justifies itself. You're just upset because it's effective.

[diver64]

ACTUALLY, Marie - they had probable cause. That was their basis. The dog altered on the package, and casual scrutiny of it revealed it was hella sus ("From the Complaint: f. “The listed phone numbers are duplicate numbers for the sender and receiver.” g. “The receiver’s name listed, only has a first name and no surname.”")

None of which is illegal.

[AT]

Doesn't have to be illegal to be suspicious.

[Jerry B.]

Biden has proven that the rule of law only applies when the government decides it should.

[MasterThief]

Why is this amount of cash being sent through the mail and how were they in a position to intercept it? I'm definitely concerned about illegal search and seizure, but I need to understand their justification before taking sides.

[diver64]

Who's justification for what?
The police were in a trans shipping facility and routinely wandered around with a dog trained to sniff money. When the dog "hit", they seized the package and since it is FedEx not the USPS they can do it.
Chang's "justification" for sending money? Doesn't need one to do that. You don't need to justify a lawful action to anyone including the police. This " i'm seizing your money and you have to prove to me that it's legal" is entirely backwards.