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Comment by hoffspot | Hacker News Reader

I'm not saying the police are right, the whole seizure thing is ridiculous, but this story is so shady. You have 11 grand in cash and want to move it from A to B. The obvious and safe way is to deposit it in a bank and get a cashier's check or do an ACH transfer. Who in their right mind would carry it with them or even worse, put it in a checked bag that airlines notoriously lose? The point of the story is valid, but the example is ridiculous. Sounds like someone wanted an untraceable 11 grand. Shady.

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And therein lies the crux of the problem with these things being subject to zero checks or balances and such a low standard of proof.

People’s stories sound shady all the time. In Canada, in my lifetime, there have been four different men whom everyone was certain had murdered people, and it turned out that they were innocent.

In many cases, people are so sure that shady people are guilty, they make up testimony to make sure the bad guy goes to jail. This is why we need incredibly high standards for convicting someone of a crime. And we still get it wrong.

So when someone “seems shady...” I stop far short of assuming that they are shady. And even if they are shady, I stop far short of thinking that the police, with the incredibly asymmetric power relationship, should be at liberty to enrich themselves based on someone seeming to be shady.

Wow. Great response man. Thanks.

There is nothing illegal about doing it so it shouldn't be anyones business. Who in their right mind? A farmer or two going to buy some equipment, me paying my first year of college, and plenty of folks buying cars. ACH transfer and cashier checks cost money, and hell, even Walmart won't cash a cashier check.

Your attitude towards other people's business offends me about as much as the actual seizure. Its attitudes like this that make the US more dangerous since "Shady" is the same reason SWAT teams are used to throw flash bangs in houses and server warrants. That attitude escalates the danger to us all.

What's wrong with "untraceable"? How is it anyones business what anyone does with their money unless they are actually committing a criminal activity or defrauding someone? If those were happening and charges were brought and a guilty conviction happens, then fine seize the money, but not until.

You paid your university fees in cash? Is this normal?

As a Brit, all these stories about people carrying around huge chunks of cash seem completely outlandish to me. But then, we have free bank-to-bank transfers here.

The only time I want my bank to have knowledge of who and how much I pay is in the small number of cases where I need a neutral third party to be able to vouch for payment details.

For things like paying employees, paying my taxes, or spending other people's money: I want maximum electronic and paper trail. Bank fees are hardly a concern.

For my own spending, I want no third party records even if banking fees are 0.

At the time, yeah - I paid in cash. Financial aid wouldn't free up my money unless I paid my Business Office balance. Business Office claimed I owed $200 from the summer and wouldn't clear my balance until I paid that and the tuition ($734 if I remember correctly). So I walked $934 to the business office (Business Office had the odd policy that they didn't take checks with numbers under 2000 and I didn't write a lot of checks). Took receipt over to the finance office which got my damn financial aid freed up. The Business Office "discovered my payment" which lead to me getting cash and heading back to the bank.

Friend bought a $15,000 truck in cash. We were a bit vigilant about that one. Rural US still has a lot of cash and handshakes.

We do not have free bank to bank transfers and are ornery enough to not want to pay the damn fee.

Weighing that against the risk of being mugged and having all the money suddenly disappear? I understand the 1000. That's an acceptable risk. I've paid for college like that before.

But 15k for a used truck, all cash? No thanks. I don't suppose your friend also totes a shotgun around with him just in case someone decides they want that 15k too?

The vehicle we were in did have a shotgun rack, but someone mugging him was a pretty low possibility. It was a restored truck (very nice old Ford). It would have to be some stranger from out of area. Calling some dumbass's uncle for starting trouble is still a pretty effective crime solving technique in large parts of the US.

[edit] where the heck do you live that muggings are commonplace?

Never said it was common, I'm just saying I don't think it's worth the privacy to expose yourself to that amount of risk.

Also the gov is gonna know you bought the truck when you register it, anyway.

It wasn't about privacy, it was just buying a truck. I never said it was about privacy. Hell, the DMV knew about the truck about 40 minutes after he bought it. The seller reported it as income[1]. This had nothing to do with privacy or fraud, and his bank wouldn't let him write checks for over $5,000 and he sure wasn't going to pay some fee for a certified check that the guy selling the truck wasn't going to take anyway.

We didn't see it as a risk. It was just a bit odd to have 150 $100 bills. Puts a little weight into the cost of what you're going to buy. Good thing he bought it too as his old truck (which I drove back, that's why he brought me not as some security) needed about $3,000 in repairs. He sold it to a farmer who did the repairs himself. My friend kept the truck for about 2 decades.

1) I remember his receipt pad. It was styled like something I imagine came out of a Dickens story. He basically bought wrecks and stuff in garages and restored some or built mods out of others. Pretty good retirement gig.

I'm kind of surprised that the bank had that much cash on hand. I've known people that saved up enough to pay off their mortgages (less money than you were talking about), when they went to withdraw the cash from their savings to take to the bank that held the mortgage, the first bank was down to giving them 20s.

Deal with a lot of farmers and your bank has reason to keep a bit of cash on hand. 15k really isn't that much to them. They did count it twice (unwrapped the paper around the groups of bills).

I still think carrying thousands of dollars around is foolish, but thanks for the examples of ... that's just how things have to work, sometimes.

Why is it foolish? I'm not real fond of being called a fool. I've had more problem with credit card fraud (and the lost money in fees because of it even if the original money was restored) then I ever had carrying cash. I don't honestly get this "you could be mugged" thinking. If mugging happens often enough that its a risk factor in carrying cash, then you need to think about where you are living.

If you drop a credit card somewhere, you call and cancel it. If you drop $1000, well, don't do that. (carry it? drop it? either?)

> Sounds like someone wanted an untraceable 11 grand. Shady.

It is not "shady" in any way, shape, or form to want all of ones private financial affairs to be completely untraceable.

No one should, ever, under any circumstances, be required to justify or explain possession of cash or items of high value absent clear, tangible evidence of wrongdoing.

Furthermore, eleven thousand dollars is chump change, and not only that, these criminals and thieves with badges are harassing people for carrying as little as $500.

You are assuming in this case that the young man in this case has access to the banking tools that you do, which is a big assumption. Poor and minority populations are less likely to have bank accounts, and more likely to keep their savings in cash[1]. Combine that with the fact that he was more likely to be stopped for being black in the first place and you have a recipe for abuse.

1. https://www.fdic.gov/householdsurvey/2012_unbankedreport.pdf...

Yep. Go to the local Walmart and see how many people use their check cashing, money orders, bill paying, and debit cards. Heck, I use one of their Bluebird AmeEx cards for a lot of online bills. Its more convenient than my bank to throw a twenty on to pay for Netflix.

My dad is in his seventies and an immigrant from Russia. He would absolutely do this because he never got past his distrust of banks and other major institutions, nor did he lose his tendency to transport valuables in cotton linings sewn into a suitcase or a pair of pants.

Inadvisable? Absolutely. And I'm sure there's plenty of other examples of people moving around large amounts of cash for dubious reasons. So, if they lose the cash or get robbed, some degree of "I told you so" is absolutely in order. But getting robbed by your own government should not be on the list of possible consequences of dubious (but legal) ideas.

Shady? How have we gotten to a place where carrying a modest amount of cash like $11k is "shady"? I suspect you're not familiar with how many unbanked people there are in this country, or what kind of predatory fees for banking services are levied upon folks with non-existent or low credit ratings.

Yeah with only $11,000 he'd probably get hit with all kinds of fees if he tried to open a bank account. And forget about checks, you can't even write a check that big.

I'm not saying the cash was evidence of wrongdoing, but the elaborate excuses this thread is making for this guy's behavior are only highlighting how absurd it was.

I'm seeing minimum opening deposits on checking accounts between $10-$50. I don't imagine a person walking into a bank with $11k+ to open an account is the common use case...

I assume he was being sarcastic. But as a general rule HN doesn't do sarcasm.

I'm curious about the predatory fees for banking services you mention.

A Wells Fargo checking account can be had for $10/mo, a fee that is waived given 10 or more transactions a month or $500 or more in direct deposit a month or a minimum balance of $1500. Would people with non-existant credit be ineligible for an account like this?

It is possible to be denied a bank account based on overdrafting and abandoning prior accounts. This is not based on credit score with one of the 'big three' agencies, but another agency called Chexsystems that only deals with your conduct towards your bank accounts. Poor people frequently have this problem - an old overdrafted account prevents them from getting another one, even at a different bank.

The gag is that you'd think $11,000 would be enough to fix this problem. Usually people who have it couldn't put a few hundred together to close out the old account.

I'd have no qualms about carrying $11K in cash from A to B, and if I already had the money in cash at A, I seriously doubt I'd bother to go make a deposit, electronically transfer it, and then withdraw it at B. Far more likely that it would go into my backpack.

This is coming from someone who is very well-served by the banking industry; for someone less well-served, I can even more readily understand it.

Who in their right mind would do thing X where thing X is risky because of an out-of-control state agency.

Someone who is blissfully unaware of how out of control the state agency is, probably.

He said it was risky because airlines lose bags. He's right--doing that is insane.

You make the assumption that he had the financial instruments to make other arraignments. wadetandy pointed out a report that shows a lot of people don't.

My car got stolen about a week ago and I had to get another one in a hurry. The seller didn't want to work with the banks and effectively forced me to get the money in cash, which I did. Should I be liable to lose it on my way to buy the car because I move some money from A to B in its physical form?

You know what man, you're absolutely right. But most people here are going to disagree with you, downvote you, and your brand new account is only going to be visible when I click "showdead" because apparently HN can't handle an opinion without hitting the down button.

I would bet you so much, not a soul on HN would dream of carrying 11k in cash through an airport.

It's ok though, we should make sure people have the right to do that, since 300 years ago before we even had ACH transfers or airplanes the constitution guaranteed us protection against unreasonable search and seizure.

There are cases where I sympathize a lot with the victims of civil asset forfeiture, but this is not one of them.

... but technically, weed is still a schedule 1 drug, so he is a criminal.

> ... but technically, weed is still a schedule 1 drug, so he is a criminal.

So instead of charging him with any crimes, they just took his money? All the fun, without the need for that pesky innocent until proven guilty stuff? Nice.

My 0.02. The fallacy in the shady argument is you're justifying a bigger wrong with the much smaller one. It's like saying "if she didn't want to be raped she shouldn't have worn that short skirt" (i.e. blaming the victim).

It's guys like these, that although inadvertently, when they get snarled in asset forfeiture and choose to fight the system, they slowly induce change. And that matters. This is why states like Minnesota, New Mexico, and North Carolina, with Ohio on tap, are banning the practice before conviction.

(Disclaimer: I don't downvote either. I can't downvote right now anyway, but I think it detracts from the conversation.)

> not a soul on HN would dream of carrying 11k in cash through an airport.

I've carried over $11k through an airport dozens of times and occasionally carried $30k or more.

(I used to be involved with a professional blackjack team. :-) )

Building on that, here's an article from 1997 about the collision of professional gambling and civil forfeiture - http://www.blackjackforumonline.com/content/launder.htm :

> I had approximately $30K on me, but luckily I was wearing it.

> The airline x-ray detected approximately 100,000 dollars in cash and casino chips.

and a 2014 article titled "Poker Players Get Robbed Under Guise of Civil Asset Forfeiture" - http://www.cardplayer.com/poker-news/17922-lawyer-for-poker-... :

> The fancy legal term may be ‘civil asset forfeiture,’ but for a couple of poker players who saw Iowa police take $100,000 of their money it is just straight up robbery.

> In April of last year, poker players William “Bart” Davis and John Newmerzhycky were driving west through Iowa with out-of-state plates after a poker road trip. In their car was a lot of cash,

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