Such a depressing read, felt like I was right there with you after each line.

Pretty sick world we live in. Both the gambling world and third world countries. Be careful my friends.

Yeah this 100% if someone gets caught speeding they deserve a ticket and they certainly did something wrong but they don't deserve jail time. If someone tries to get past customs in a somewhat backhanded way they deserve a small fine or whatever but to compare the police making things up on the fly to being similar to OP trying to get >10K through customs by splitting it with his friend is ludicrous.

+1

"I asked about declaring it, and they said actually because I’m travelling with a friend and I have under $20k I can just give them a few thousand so that I’m under $10k and don’t have to declare."

stopped reading here, anything that happens after this is your own fault

I don't know where you are from, but in both the US and the EU, what you say is only true for family members. Splitting up money between friends to avoid declaring it is not legal.

Read the whole story, really crazy. Happy for you it turned out way better than it could have.

I don't understand how you could be so dumb as to yourself through something like this.

Actually I think what I said is NOT true for family members in the U.S., and if you're travelling with a family member and you have over 10k combined you can get in trouble.

I think the play is to ask customs officials at the airport if there's ANY doubt.

Wow sorry you had to go through such an ordeal but thanks for sharing to help others avoid a similar fate. Very scary what can happen in other countries.

Read the first part and just thought you were being an a**hole. Glad I scrolled back up and read the spoiler part. Well played.

wow you're so cool

This post is ******ed.

yup, but as we know they dont have any decency.

Thanks for the share, OP. Captivating read, as stated by others your writing is very good.

It is TERRIFYING (in this thread and in the similar) how many people subscribe to the logic "You should have known better, it's the law".

Roman law was a law that said you could leave an infant to the wolves if the sex of the baby was wrong.
Church law said you could burn a woman at the stake for wrong constellation of birth marks.
USA law said a ***** could be a slave.
UK law said suicide is punishable by prison.
Sheria law is a f****king law.

"Stone them bitches, they should have known better"

Those laws may look backward from today's perspective but ours will look the same if this sorry civilization ever evolves.

And while most people would consent that randomly killing a family should be punishable tell me what is SO WRONG with carrying 5-nights of hotel accommodation and a bottle of wine worth in your pocket.

THEY ARE ALLOWED TO PRINT IT OUT OF THIN AIR, COUNTERFEIT IT IN FACT, BUT WHEN YOU EARNED IT HARD THEY CAN RAPE YOU FOR CARRYING IT.

The saddest part is that so many see nothing wrong with it.

Thanks for sharing. I guess Bahamas will not be my next vacation destination.

lol. perfect.

Well then, I guess we should all just stay home in our houses where we're safe.

Amazing story, thank you for sharing and I'm glad you got out OK. My only criticism is I wished you had posted it sooner so there'd be enough time to get that clothespin tournament on the 2016 WSOP schedule.

The poker rooms and/or PokerStars should be educating people that leave the poker room with large sums of money about what is and is not allowed at the border. A pamphlet at the cage given to anyone with over 10k (or near 10k even) that says "this is what you can and can't do at customs with money" should be effective.

There should also be some higher officials involved to make these things more clear. You're talking about tough laws designed for one thing (drug laundering) being applied harshly for some misunderstandings on actual poker winnings.

It doesn't really seem in anybody's best interest for the status quo to continue.

Hahahaha I'm dead

Amen, brother!

100%. It would be that easy for them to help prevent a lot of future cases from happening.

Dude you have a serious knack for creative writing.
Your ability to descriptively describe your 5 days of hell so well is unreal.
It was like a movie reading that.
Its a great story for the grand kids.

Maybe you should dig some hiding hole in the mountains if you hate the government so much. LOL at comparing tax and customs law to any of your examples

It's quite easy to prevent this happening.

Declare the money.

If anything is going to happen to that 10k limit in the near future, I'd be willing to bet that the new number will be lower.

Right now there's some consideration in some countries to disallow cash purchases >5k. All efforts go towards making money laundering and financing terrorism as hard as possible, even if it also makes things more difficult for regular people.

Wow some reason in this thread. "Its the law" is the dumbest argument ever. Its not even worthy of being considered an argument.