Hacker News Reader

Comment by pcurve | Hacker News Reader

"In civil forfeitures, no criminal conviction is required. The government just needs to prove that it’s more likely than not that the money or property it seeks to confiscate was linked to criminal activity."

Wow... I had no idea. This feels like some third world country shit.

View on HN

It gets much much worse. Did you know that civil forfeiture recently surpassed the $ amount burglars steal from people.

https://www.nemannlawoffices.com/blog/law-enforcement-seized...

The way I see this federal government steals from people with:

1. No mechanism to get their assets back

2. No mechanism to lawfully prove whether civil forfeiture was rightful

3. No special political mechanism to moderate civil forfeiture

We're essentially dealing with police stealing money from us.

What surprises me is all these people who are against taxes, which is a legal framework for individuals to pay their debt back to society in a way:

1. You can always argue your money back. There is an established mechanism.

2. It needs to be proven precisely whether you owe that money.

3. It is one of political institutions primary goal to moderate taxes. Not to mention countless tax breaks people have almost every year.

I feel extremely confused how people look at this data and decide taxes are a much bigger problem, when government has ability to straight up steal from us for whatever reason, and they do so more than other private citizens (i.e. burglars). Complete bonkers. This is beyond 3rd world country issue, this is systematic, formalized theft -- in a way that can only be possible in the US.

That's the "civil" in civil asset forfeiture. It isn't a criminal legal action, it takes place in a civil court. Essentially the government is suing you, which has a variety of implications. First is the reduced standard: instead of "beyond a reasonable doubt", we have "more likely than not". You also don't have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford legal counsel you have to represent yourself, no public defender will be made available for you.

Another surprising fact: immigration courts are civil courts, so the same facts as above apply to them. There's been multiple cases where undocumented minors (including those as young as 3) have been forced to represent themselves in court.

oh! It gets worse. The value of goods taken yearly through civil forfeiture is greater than the value of goods reported stolen.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/23/cops-...

Well there are way more and easier ways to get illegal money without directly stealing it.

Similarly, after civil asset forfeiture the #2 form of theft is wage theft.

EDIT : I've been corrected by someone below - wage theft is the #1 form of theft, civil asset forfeiture is #2

But let's have a moral panic about the "organized gangs robbing Walgreens" instead, perhaps 67 news stories a day about it?

Libertarians have been making noise about this issue for years/decades, but few people seem to care.

If it's really that bad that problem will just solve itself: they'll just close all the stores.

We'll save the moral panic for when those businesses inevitably leave the neighborhood and create "food deserts". You know, after the damage is already done.

They're not going to leave until it threatens their profit line, and even then others will grow to fill their place.

Food deserts aren't and never were created by shoplifting.

> They're not going to leave until it threatens their profit line,

It does.

> and even then others will grow to fill their place.

Filling their place will be family operated corner shops that charge 3x as much. I have lived in such neighborhoods and seen it myself. You can't gaslight me sudosysgen.

It will never do so - they will simply increase prices, and not by 3x.

I'm not gaslighting you. There are many ways to make a grocery store for produce where people can't shoplift. Good luck stealing potatoes from a farmer's market. And they're not more expensive either.

I live in such a neighborhood and I can see it.

I think you have those reversed. Wage theft is like $9.2 billion [1], and civil forfeiture is like $68 Billion total across 20 years [2]

[1]: https://www.nelp.org/publication/forced-arbitration-cost-wor... [2]: https://ij.org/report/policing-for-profit-3/

Huh, you're right. I'll try to correct my comment!

And it gets worse again. Federal, state, and local police often get to keep the seized property for the benefit of the police. So they are incentivized to seize property.

Makes you wonder why they are even wasting their time with all the speed traps and traffic ticket quotas.

Because that's how they manufacture probable cause. If they can manufacture probable cause, they can search the car for things that are valuable enough to justify the paperwork.

> And it gets worse again.

Of course! We could go on for ages.

And if you want to go on for ages, I recommend Reason, the strident Libertarian rag — not because I want to be a cheerleader for the libertarians (ick) but because they've been covering this topic since March 1989 (!) (!!) (!!!) (but more regularly and in more depth since 2007.)

Lots of fun reading awaits you: https://reason.com/tag/civil-asset-forfeiture/

There's a scene in "True Detective" season 1, where one of sheriff's in the show is driving a Maserati to the country club he golfs at, and says he, "Seized it off some good old boy last year." I'd been aware of civil forfeiture for years before seeing that show, but just the way it was presented really stuck with me for some reason; just how much the system can be abused by "bad actors."

The suggestion that ill-gotten items must have been stolen is just flat-out wrong and illustrative of your typical modern-day "reddit lawyers." For example, one could buy lawn mowers with drug money (to resell them). Those lawn mowers weren't stolen, but they would still qualify for civil forfeiture.

Not saying civil forfeiture has no problems, but it's a complex mechanism that people don't quite grasp (much like any other hot-button social issue).

I’m pretty sure you’ve misunderstood. The implication here is that the FBI has “stolen” more assets than burglars have.

Yes, but the comparison is useless. Presumably, at least some of that civil forfeiture is "legitimate", i.e. illegal gains. So what are you actually comparing here?

I was correcting the commenter; not judging the value of the comparison - as weird as it is that civil forfeiture is more rampant than burglary.

They're saying that the total amount of stolen good isn't an upper bound on things that could be legitimately forfeited, because there's other ways to colors goods enough that they become subject to forfeiture. But that wasn't my argument or point.

Like how you put it, it's that the scope of forfeitures is bigger than stolen goods. The comparison is only useful to help give a size of the problem. The critique is in 2 parts: 1, at least a significant portion of civil forfeitures are illegitimate, if not most of them and 2 this isn't a small problem but instead on the same order as stolen property.

Some amount of assets listed as stolen by burglars is insurance fraud. Does that matter? Not really, because it's a small percentage that doesn't change the fact that most of it is crime.

Civil forfeiture doesn't require the government to convict anyone, or even arrest them, for that matter. The vast majority of the money that comes from this process comes from people we're supposed to assume innocent, since they haven't been proven guilty. Due to that, we have to assume that all of the money that comes from this process without convictions is stolen from innocent people.

If the government wants to seize the assets of people it convicts, that's one thing, but taking money from people and making them pay to prove it wasn't related to crime is absolutely theft.

Is there anything in this pile of complexity that might turn around my impression that civil forfeiture exists in flagrant disregard for the American values expressed in the 4th and 5th Amendments?

Or is this argument the intellectual equivalent of when my kid says "You doooon't understaaaaaaaand!"

> Is there anything in this pile of complexity that might turn around my impression that civil forfeiture exists in flagrant disregard for the American values expressed in the 4th and 5th Amendments?

I mean, there's clearly a need for something akin to "civil forfeiture" -- what if Bob steals your car and sells it to Alice? The cops have to literally take it back; that's civil forfeiture, as Alice might not be criminally liable, but the car was still stolen and belongs to you.

Law enforcement, of course, might abuse it (as it often abuses just about every other power it gets). So there's need for oversight, but civil forfeiture is very obviously needed for remedying some harms.

Those are not equivalent at all!

Legally, Alice does not own the vehicle in that scenario, and most/all states are quite clear on that. Bob had no legal right to transfer the vehicle to Alice. Alice is committing a crime by possessing stolen property the moment she is aware or reasonably should be aware it is stolen. The police do not seize it at all, and do not use Civil Asset Forfeiture to return it to it’s owner either.

Bob committed a crime of fraud and selling stolen property against Alice in your scenario, as well as the crime of grand theft auto (assuming the vehicle is worth much) against the owner. Alice would be committing the crime of possession of stolen property if she kept the vehicle after learning or if she reasonably should have known it was stolen.

The police, assuming they find the vehicle impound it and/or notify the owner to come pick it up.

Also, the owner is responsible in most states for the vehicle until a legal transfer has occurred, meaning they are on the hook for impound fees, towing fees, parking tickets, etc. in most states.

Civil Asset Forfeiture is when property is charged with the crime of being an ill gotten gain/related to a crime. It is then ‘held’ or seized like a criminal, except not being a person, it cannot defend itself, and has no rights. It is a rather bizarre legal fiction. It forces the owner to go to court to ‘bail it out’ or defend it against the charges, which is difficult for many people to do, and most criminals wouldn’t even try.

How would you show that your Yacht was paid for from legitimate proceeds beyond a reasonable doubt for instance, unless you kept detailed proceeds and an army of accountants to trace the funds? Most criminals (and many regular folks), don’t keep the records to do that anyway.

It is used when, say, the police can’t prove someone committed a crime, but they are wealthy and have assets, and even if they can’t prove they committed a crime, they know it will be almost impossible to prove it WASN’T from money earned from crime! So easy payday

The very idea is abhorrent to me, that we need civil forfeiture because the criminal justice system is inadequate to the task. If we can't take away ill-gotten gains in a court of law (and not by shenanigans like filing lawsuits against cash), then we're effectively stealing it.

It is effectively theft. Since it is being done to ‘bad people’, as long as it keeps the fig leaf of due process on however it generally gets a pass - both at the voting booth and in the courts, same as FISA, rendition, and similar overreach.

This isn’t THAT new - very real government documents that leaked decades ago on COINTELPRO and MKULTRA should hopefully disabuse anyone of the notion that the gov’t doesn’t do pretty abusive things at times to it’s own people. Pushing back, downsizing gov’t so they do have the budget for large scale shenanigans are important.

Unfortunately not the direction it has been moving for some time however, or is likely to go anytime soon.

The problem is the unsubstantiated claim that all of the items seized were ill-gotten, not even that "ill-gotten items must have been stolen". If all it takes is one bad apple with a safe-deposit box to taint all of the boxes, regardless of owner, this is by definition guilt by (loose) association.

I have zero problem with FBI, or whatever police, seizing a specific deposit box for which they have a valid warrant. But, I have tons of problems with this. It's a huge unwarranted governmental overreach, depriving people of their property without due process. That "they" have done a procedural end around by calling it "civil" instead of "criminal" and somehow gotten the courts to go along with it so far is abhorrent.

The 4th Amendment: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

No where does the 4th amendment proscribe an exemption for civil asset forfeiture. CAF may be a complex mechanism, but the prohibition of such acts is not. It's almost like the foundering fathers saw this behavior from a different tyrannical government before...

> your typical modern-day "reddit lawyers."

Somewhat a tangent to your point, but your point may be more spot on than you imagined: r/legaladvice is moderated almost exclusively by police. They routinely give factually incorrect and personally detrimental "cop folk law", and regularly ban actual attorneys giving reasonable, citation supported, general advice.

Comparing the amount of money seized by civil forfeiture to the amount of money stolen by criminals is like comparing the number of people in jail to the number of people enslaved by human traffickers. The institutional systems tend to be much larger, and they will always be abused and will hurt innocents (e.g. the war on drugs), but this doesn't say anything about whether they are good or bad as a whole (few people would suggest closing all jails).

> This feels like some third world country shit.

It’s very frustrating when people say things like this because until it “feels like some typical US shit” nothing can get better.

Let’s get past all the American Exceptionalism ASAP please.

You don't have to believe in American exceptionalism to believe that America is not as bad as most 3rd world countries in most metrics.

I would much rather live in most 3rd world countries than the USA.

If I was forced by an evil wizard to choose between switching places with a random American or a random Kenyan (the single 3rd world country I’ve been to as an adult), I would absolutely choose American.

Harder to say if I was still me with my current skills and wealth and it was a forced relocating to Kenya or the USA, but I strongly suspect I’d still choose the states. Not certain, but strongly suspect.

Luckily, this is something you're free to say and free to do.

Don't make unfounded assumptions. Most humans are not "free" to live in USA.

While I disagree, your gotcha won't work on someone who already lives in a third world country like me.

...but just that it is worse in most metrics than some of them, and worse in some metrics than most of them?

Jokes aside though, this s*t is pretty bad. I can't believe it is legal.

These laws continue to be abused by law enforcement to bully business owners who are operating in gray areas of the law, whether the gray-ness is caused by misaligned state vs. federal laws or unclear licensing and operation requirements.

https://web.archive.org/web/20200101161314/https://www.sandi...

https://www.inc.com/will-yakowicz/james-slatic-asset-forfeit...

It's an important tool for repressing criminals and minorities.

Also in padding the budgets of the law enforcement agencies!

You don't have to be a criminal or a minority to be affected. There have been lots of reports of old, white men being hit by this for having the audacity to travel around with >$10k in cash.

Steve Lehto's YouTube channel covers these stories a lot.

no its not.

I too can make claims without any evidence.

The article we’re all commenting on is really good evidence. But here’s more:

> A 1993 investigation by The Orlando Sentinel revealed that nine of every 10 motorists who were stopped and stripped of their cash by police in Volusia County, Florida, were either black or Hispanic, and three out of four were never charged with a crime. In Philadelphia, where nearly 300 houses are seized annually, African Americans make up 44% of the population but 63% of house seizures and 71% of cash forfeitures unaccompanied by a conviction. Forfeiture is also most likely to affect economically disadvantaged communities: One study found that areas with high income inequality were targeted for civil forfeiture operations, likely because these police departments have limited funding and are inclined to use forfeiture to secure needed revenue.

source: https://www.splcenter.org/20171030/civil-asset-forfeiture-un...

Have the race numbers been regressed against wealth/income? I'd reckon it's mostly just poor discrimination (i.e. people who can't afford a lawyer) rather than straight racism.

“Indirect” racism is also racism. There may be a semantic difference, but no practical difference to the victims.

I disagree. Correct identification of root cause guides effective solutions. If you solve "indirect racism" just for one race, the rest of poor people are still screwed. If you solve the original cause (poverty), everyone is better off.

Nirvana fallacy: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy

While it would be great if we could Solve Poverty (TM), I think reducing legalized theft of poor people’s assets would be a great first step.

Nobody in this thread was arguing that we should solve it only for some races, rather that it does seem to affect them more often.

I was more referring to the "criminals" part

Yeah, whyties always get refund from police. After showing their race ID and prooving their aryan purity!

"If you've done nothing wrong, then you have nothing to fear." is the mantra of people who don't yet realise how flawed legal systems across the world really are.

> Wow... I had no idea. This feels like some third world country shit.

There is coverage over this area of law being abused at least once a month. You had no idea because you aren't reading the journalism that is reporting it.

I mean, you're right. This is indeed third world country shit. But most of the time it happens to poor black guys so no one cares.

Here's an excellent overview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kEpZWGgJks

It gets even scarier. I don’t want to get political, but our current President, Joe Biden, was the driving force behind our civil forfeiture laws as they exist today. So any push for reform certainly won’t be coming from the executive branch.

https://fee.org/articles/how-a-young-joe-biden-became-the-ar...

We have been there for a while.

It's Los Angeles baby.

Decent enough summary from John Oliver here (if you can put up with his daft, sitcom-like humour)

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3kEpZWGgJks

Reply on news.ycombinator.com