‘We want cash’ Drug agents seize $209mn in random profiling of 5,200 travelers
mo4ch.com
mo4ch.com
This is an anecdotal story, but could be "New Yorker level" vetted if someone tried.
About 20 years ago my friend John was living in Salt Lake City, Utah -- where he grew up -- and had rented a house in CA for the sole purpose of growing pot in. He spent almost 5 years bringing about 50-100lbs of high potency pot into Utah in his Prius 2-3 times per month, making countless trips back and forth, before his first contact with the authorities.
They pulled him over about a block away from his house and told him they had been watching him and knew what he had in the car -- about 50lbs of pot in duffel bags. He was arrested and charged with... wait for it... failing to pay taxes on the marijuana. He was out of jail within 6 hours.
His lawyer told him he had three choices: pay the taxes, to the tune of about $350k, or fight it, or plead guilty. He wrote a check for $350k and never heard from the authorities again. He continued to do this for another 10 years and was never bothered again. Strictly pot.
You may wonder how he was able to write that check without raising eyebrows. A few of his clients were business owners who had him on the payroll (taxes and all) to pay for their regular supply of pot. Plus he was "an independent artist" and filed 1099-Ts every quarter via his accountant. Through these methods he made plenty of money on paper, and obviously lived very cheaply (in an apartment). He has still never had a real job and retired at 35, with no record what so ever.
There are so many tens (hundreds?) of thousands of people whose livelihood is tried up in arresting people for drug crimes that shouldn't be illegal in the first place. Think about all those DEA agents making $100k a year plus their pensions, all those judges and public defenders, all those private prisons full of people doing possession charges. All those local cops employed to keep an eye on them during probation.
It's absolutely disgusting and ruins peoples' lives on a daily basis, but totally expected behavior in a society that only cares about money (aka capitalism).
I am sort of surprised there isn't a lot more backlash against the DEA for this horrible move last week, but then again, the pro-pot legalization movement isn't all that impressive either. The most annoying thing about marijuana is fucking idiot stoners representing the brand.
edit: and don't even get me started on the huge amount of needless deaths in northern Mexico directly caused by the War on Drugs. Go read 2666 if you want a sliver of an idea of how bad it is there. But hey, to the average American, they are brown people so they don't care. Disgusting.
this so much - most people associate pot with braindead pathetic existences in the fringe of society, who are the loudest of the crowd. i've met senior software engineers, doctors, managers of all levels and so on doing it recreationally, for decades and having a normal life. those using alcohol for similar relaxing effect after hard day ended up in worse state, and it costed them much, much more in long term
Well, enter the "Equitable Sharing" program, which was halted/curtailed in 2015 when there was a furore about it, but has apparently resumed[1]. This is where the actual local PD that seized your money really does get to keep 80% of it themselves, with only 20% going to the feds.
But for some reason the locals aren't allowed to spend this money on op-ex (salaries etc) so they often spend it on crazy equipment which they can obtain via the Department of Defense's 1033 Program[2][3] which allows PDs to buy excess military equipment like weaponized vehicles, armored personnel carriers, grenade launchers, and helicopters -- obviously contributing to the increasing militarization of police[4].
Conflict of interest much? More confiscation of citizen funds == more toys for the boys at the PD.
All funded by money and assets seized from citizens on highly questionable grounds, with no real semblance of due process. Not great.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/28/the-f...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1033_program
[3] http://www.businessinsider.com.au/aclu-report-on-police-mili...
[4] http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/10/11/as...
Have not set foot there since 2012 and don't intend to, even though my wife really wants to visit NYC. Frankly, right now I feel I would be safer visiting North Korea or Syria or Yemen, than the US. I'm absolutely terrified by just about anything that has to do with the USofA.
I have also come to distrust Americans more than any other group of people.
[For context, I'm a white, middle-class entrepreneur / software engineer, originally from east Europe, now living in the UK]
And for Yemen - I have been dying to visit Sana'a, such a deeply beautiful place. And I'm devastated that this seems like an impossible dream now, after the US/Saudi invasion.
Visa laws for countries can be very, very serious. Violating them can get you in a lot of trouble - certainly not unique to the United States. In comparison to a lot of other countries, the United States isn't even particularly harsh if you overstay your visa - certainly no caning.
Given the scale, would it make sense to have a similar work done for civil forfeiture?
Of course, as we see here, that's becoming more common.
People who are paranoid about banks, for example, or people who cannot, for one reason or another, use a bank account without raising eyebrows.
Possibly the most innocuous example I can think of would be someone who is paid mostly in cash tips, and does not put them in the bank to avoid any paper trail requiring taxes. If they then paid their living expenses entirely out of their "base" wages, they could accumulate a substantial under-the-table pile of money.