one helpful thing to do is withdraw the amount you are carrying in cash from a bank and have the receipt with you. that at least shows you have the money legally and in full view of the government. have your room reservation to and from the casino and any supporting information to help your cause. in most cases this will get you a quick pass on the line if you are detained. never give them any sh--t.

If it was up to me drugs, like online gambling, would be regulated and taxed, but as long as the laws are on the books I believe they need to enforced, otherwise the only people selling drugs/offering online gambling will be people unethical enough to break the laws, and these are certainly not the people that society should empower by giving them a monopoly on any form of business.

Again, by law the travelers in this case should have been able to complete their itinerary with the cash for which they had documentation (the individual agent was overzealous), and could have gotten the rest of it back within days had they immediately been able to document it.

So had the law been enforced properly the inconvenience would have been minimal, and anyone concerned that much about having their privacy violated has other options than carrying large amounts of cash through an airport.

The law wasn't enforced properly and the plaintiffs have won their right to sue the agent, all in all the system seems to work as long as you have the resources (lawyers) to engage in it - but how many poor people not involved in crime need to be worried about getting stopped with large amounts of cash?

The crooked Irish cops and politicians of that time had more honor than any of the phony do gooders and reformers we have in charge now.

No, the government doesn't work that fast to return your money, at least not when there's an overly zealous and dishonest officer on the case.

Even after they had submitted substantial documentation, they had to wait another six months. In a previous post, you stated that this was because they didn't want to waive their right to sue, but this is not the case.

Straight from http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastor...2/08-17558.pdf

On August 30, 2006, and September 15, 2006, Fiore and Gipson sent Walden, from Las Vegas, various documents showing the legitimacy of their funds, including federal tax returns demonstrating that they were professional gamblers; the itinerary, hotel records, and receipts from their trip, which showed the legitimacy of their seized money; and a win record on El San Juan Casino letterhead stationery stating that Gipson left the hotel with over $30,000 in winnings immediately before leaving for Las Vegas via Atlanta. Fiore and Gipson asked that their money be returned to them as Walden had promised

The funds, however, were not returned to Fiore and Gipson. Instead, the matter was forwarded to DEA headquarters in Virginia for additional investigation. According to the complaint, the DEA’s background searches on Fiore and Gipson showed them to be “squeaky clean.” Nonetheless, according
to the complaint, Walden and another DEA agent provided a false probable cause affidavit to the United States Attorney in the Northern District of Georgia, to assist in bringing a forfeiture action...

Walden left out exculpatory evidence he knew about when he submitted the affidavit: that Fiore and Gipson had no history of unlawful drug use or
trade; that they had documentation showing them to be advantage
gamblers; that their bags had passed through an agricultural x-ray and other inspections used for contraband detection without incident; that Fiore and Gipson had provided actual receipts for most of the funds that they carried;
and that the $30,000 Gipson was carrying could be traced directly to a legal source, his winnings at El San Juan Casino.

The case was referred to Assistant United States Attorney Dahil Goss. After determining that Walden had in fact omitted information, with the result that the probable cause affidavit he provided was misleading, Goss concluded
that there was no probable cause for the forfeiture of the funds. Goss contacted Fiore and Gipson and offered to return their funds in exchange for a release, presumably of any possible legal claims, but they refused to execute one. Nonetheless, Goss directed the DEA to return Fiore and Gipson’s
money. The $97,000 was returned to them in Las Vegas on March 1, 2007, nearly seven months after the seizure at the Atlanta airport and six months after Fiore and Gipson had provided Walden with the requested documentation showing the legal source of their funds.

Have you guys not even been reading the papers concerning diminishing rights and freedom in the US? It just stuns me that the practice of taking peoples money goes on without proper due process, and hardly anyone even knows about it!!! And no one is doing anything about it... But you could just be heading to a poker tournament series and suddenly find all of your cash has been taken by Law Enforcement without any real reason.

If you walk in the wrong part of New York City (high-crime areas) the police have a policy of 'stop-and-frisk', a strategy that police officers use to reduce crime in an area by stopping and searching people they consider suspicious. They just stop people on the street and frisk them!!!! What do you think would happen if you just happened to be in one of those areas and you had 'poker cash' on you?

Stop and Frisk Policy - New York City Police Department
People who have been stopped say that if they show the slightest bit of resistance, even verbally, they can find themselves slammed against walls, forced to the ground and, on rarer occasions, with officers’ guns pointed at their heads.

Luckily, the courts are starting to at least take a close look at this practice in NY and Philadelphia has already changed their practice.

Courts Putting Stop-and-Frisk Policy on Trial

Have any of you listened to this?

The famous Ron Paul guy who was grabbed and threatened by TSA simply for having $4700 in cash (demonstrating that there's nothing at all magical about $10K... TSA and DEA and friends have no more right to take $470,000 from you than $470): (Yes, he was sorta asking for it by being uncooperative, but he has the Constitutional right to be uncooperative--silly 4th and 5th amendments are so annoying.)

The cash was detained on August 8, but for some reason it took at least one of the parties until September 15 to provide documentation, and by that point Secret Agent 007 appeared to have already began processing the (bogus) forfeiture.

It is possible that he may well have begun the process the same day he over reached on the detention as the plaintiff argues, but more likely it began after some (seven day e.g.) holding interval which they neglect to mention.

I would have been faxing documents the moment I got home, taking more than a month is serious procrastination with 97K on the line.

The document states that when the agent filed the misleading affidavit, he was already aware of their documentation, so it was sometime after September 15th.

As for your considering five weeks a long time for all their paperwork to be submitted, bear in mind that the officer had already seen and disregarded receipts for their travel history at the airport and they may have been waiting for documents from 3rd parties, for instance, the letter from the casino stating their winnings.

Then this should not be considered probable cause.

Does not compute

The "risk" I referred to is not the risk of the government confiscating the money, which is mainly an issue if you not only carry the money in cash, but don't declare it. I was referring to the "risk" of being robbed. The basic reason not to carry around 100K in cash (and I'm talking about in situations where doing so is %100 legal in and of itself) is the danger that it will be taken.

The "risk" I referred to is not the risk of the government confiscating the money, which is mainly an issue if you not only carry the money in cash, but don't declare it. I was referring to the "risk" of being robbed. The basic reason not to carry around 100K in cash (and I'm talking about in situations where doing so is %100 legal in and of itself) is the danger that it will be taken. Maybe the issue is this - consider the case of declaring money during international travel - for me 100K is a lot of money - the risk of losing it by carrying it as cash versus the evil of having to declare it is a no brainer - I'd rather wire it - perhaps for someone for whom 100K is not so much money or for someone who cannot explain where that 100K came from the calculus is different. In my case I can always explain where my $$$ come from. The claim that protecting the privacy of one's possibly illegitimate financial and business transactions is a noble fight against the evils of intrusive government seems potentially rather self-serving, even though I agree that the US government's interest in all my foreign bank accounts and all my big financial transaction is excessive. While I'd agree there are evil laws that should not be followed - somehow I don't think hiding (protecting the privady of) one's tax evading transactions is quite the best example (nor do I say you said it was).

It seems to me that those taking risks to insure the privacy of their financial transactions and money movements are mainly doing so not because there is nothing more important to them than their privacy but rather because those financial transactions and money movements, were they known, would prove to be illegal or unethical or otherwise directed to circumventing honest and social norms (legal and otherwise) of behavior. I am skeptical that men with lots of money who profess a love of privacy as their principal reason for assuming the risks associated with transporting it as cash are simply trying to convince themselves that their shady behavior is ok.

If I'm wrong, I'm sure someone will helpfully explain to me why.

Can you not just carry proof that it is income, i.e. a tax return form or something?

I know you shouldn't have to be seems like a sesible thing to do.

And so begins the end of privacy (and then, inexorably, freedom)

If you have nothing to hide why not let me search you?

If you have nothing to hide, why not let me listen to your phone calls?

If you have nothing to hide, why not let me read your emails?

Etc....

Of course it would be a world where being successful at crime was much more difficult if the government had open and complete access to everything people do, think or say.

But it is not a world I would wish to live in.

Skallagrim