TSA’s “See cash, seize cash” policy
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Here's the real problem. Civil asset forfeiture is an extralegal action. It's outside the legal system, which is why it's nearly impossible to get your money back. It's why the legality of what Lyon was doing doesn't matter. It's not a system of law, but power. He who has the power makes the law on the spot.
That the US collectively has resigned itself to this level of clear overreach, utterly indefensible on any legal grounds, not to mention the bill of rights, says a lot about what 9/11 has done.
The terrorists won the battle the people of this country thought they were fighting.
This is categorically wrong. CAF is outside of the criminal legal system, but is very much part of the civil legal system, and the governments loses CAF cases more often than they win them in CAF cases preceding or not involving related criminal cases. (But conversely, the governments almost always win CAF cases that occur after succesful criminal cases involving drugs, racketeering, fraud, or financial crimes.)
CAF cases make the news when the victim doesn't get their money back in a timely fashion, for the same reason that fires and earthquakes do: because that's not the normal state of things.
CAF is problematic, especially the way it is run in the South and Midwest, but don't make it out to be something that it isn't.
EDIT: The OP asserted that CAF was extralegal, and it absolutely is not. CAF is specifically authorized by the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984, a federal law.
The OP asserted that the "terrorists won" even though CAF predates 9/11 and was created to combat organize crime. (CAF laws in the U.S. date back to the 1700s, but were infrequently used until roughly 1920 when they were used to target organized crime during Prohibition. The modern federal CAF law was passed in the 1984, to fight the "war on drugs", specifically referring to the drug cartels, and were modeled on the Prohibition Era CAF laws.)
Got a source for that?
No, because people showing the cops they have a legitimate reason to have the money and getting it back isn't news, it's just how the process normally works. (And note, this is my professional experience from when I was a public defender, which included helping clients recover assets seized pursuant to CAF claims.)
It's like how there aren't any news articles about how most Tesla owners don't have problems with their car driving into obstacles every day. Normal isn't news.
I agree that it sucks that someone has to prove they have a legitimate reason to have their own money (in cash), but that's the way the laws are currently written, and they were written that way because their intended use was against organized crime. Most of the abuse of CAF laws can be addressed by eliminating the incentives for LEAs to seize the money (namely, that it currently goes toward their budgets), since prior to that incentive CAF laws were rarely used except in organized crime cases.
If it never becomes a case, the government can't exactly lose that case, can they?
The OP asserted that CAF was extralegal, and it absolutely is not.
The OP asserted that the "terrorists won" even though CAF predates 9/11 and was created to combat organize crime. (CAF laws in the U.S. date back to the 1700s, but were infrequently used until, roughly 1920 when they were used to target organized crime during Prohibition. The modern federal CAF law was passed in the 1984, to fight the "war on drugs", specifically referring to the drug cartels, and were modeled on the Prohibition Era CAF laws.)
Others are simply not savvy enough with the system to follow through with legal action. Or, they are too intimidated. I've heard stories of people being stopped while driving through a small town, having the car searched, and having $1000 confiscated for no good reason.
Yeah, and we have an awful lot of news like that.
>The OP asserted that CAF was extralegal, and it absolutely is not.
In practice, there have been enough cases to justify saying that.
We live in a country where the authorities can confiscate cash when they see it without reason and consequence.
That, to my eyes, is extralegal.
Whether the law gives them this de-facto power is beside the point; the justice system clearly does.
> We live in a country where the authorities can confiscate cash when they see it without reason and consequence. That, to my eyes, is extralegal.
No, it's not, because it is, unfortunately, legal. "Your eyes" aren't really relevant here; the law is what matters.
> Whether the law gives them this de-facto power is beside the point
No it's not; "legal" and "extralegal" mean specific things. You can't just redefine them to mean whatever you want.
I think it's important to note that it began with an extra-legal demand, no matter the legal substance of the procedure that followed.
Civil asset forfeiture proceeds in the USA are already a larger amount than substantially all losses to property crimes combined, and we have no way of knowing how much more was lost to extra-legal demands that didn't pass through C.A.F. proceedings.
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We've made law enforcement into a thousand squabbling gangs of thieves, and it's going to take a lot of time and effort to un-make that monster.
Without authorization, the cop would have stolen the money anyway. The law just makes victims more resigned to it -- if the money goes regardless, the cop might just as well get it. Maybe they'll even take less, that way?
That's not what happened. The quote from FoxNews reporter was: "Then offers the man a way out: surrender his cash & no investigation"
This does not mean the officer was planning on pocketing the money personally. This likely still would have been considered a seizure under asset forfeiture.
I agree that it should be entirely legal to carry around hundreds of thousands in cash, but the reality is that it looks very suspicious for someone who's been previously convicted of a felony drug conviction carrying around hundreds of thousands in small bills.
Asset forfeiture is a mixed bag. You have to appear in court prove the money was not gained through illegal means. The fact that most asset forfeitures go uncontested is telling that a lot of them, IMO, are probably indeed drug money (this is obviously controversial).
It's important to remember that every state is different - as is the Fed gov't.
In any case, it is absolutely not "extra-legal". That's nonsense. Asset forfeiture is literally codified in almost every state.
I don't care who was planning to pocket the money, specifically. The end beneficiary is not the primary problem in this clusterfuck. The fact that officers and departments, generally, can benefit from arbitrary harassment of citizens is the main problem. The final disposition of the stolen money is secondary.
No. Your big assumption here is that that seize wouldn't have also been done under Asset Forfeiture rules. It was used as a threat to try to get a suspect to confess to a crime.
Remember that officers can lie during interrogations.
> I don't care who was planning to pocket the money, specifically.
Well that's what makes it legal or not. If the officer pocketed it, then it's illegal. If the gov't did it using the law of asset forfeiture, then it's literally LEGAL.
You are conflating "illegal" with "immoral".
No, it was used as a form of intimidation. I.e. give me the money or else I'm going to use the power of the state to systematically go through your life and fuck with you and people you know via an investigation
>then it's literally LEGAL
Who cares if it's legal or not? it's an extremely immoral and unjust way to handle law enforcement. The fact that it's legal is a blemish on the legal system that undermines the respect people should have for it.
Correct - which is a common tactic in law enforcement. That is why people are advised to shut up until they speak to their lawyer.
> Who cares if it's legal or not?
The people above describing it incorrectly as illegal.
> a blemish on the legal system
No. It would be a blemish on the legislators who wrote the law, and those who voted for them. The legal system enforces laws - it is not meant to judge ethics.
https://www.fox46.com/news/investigations/government-seizes-...
The threatened "investigation" in was the civil asset forfeiture procedure. They were asking him to voluntarily surrender the money, or else they would initiate civil asset forfeiture. In other words, law enforcement officers offered the victim a choice between plans A and B.
Plan A was the extra-legal course: give us your money, and we'll forget we ever had this discussion. This was the officer's preferred outcome. Free money, minimum paperwork.
Plan B was what actually happened: the civil asset forfeiture process. The victim refused to sign the papers, so everything goes to court, and then the government has to come up with something, at least a notional reason, to take the money.
However you read the laws around civil asset forfeiture, I am pretty sure that "plan A" was not an intended part of the picture.
Also, you can't skip work to go contest it because you won't be able to pay your bills.
I'd guess that one covers most cases and that police target people who can't afford to take time off to go to court
And, actually, poor people frequently don't trust banks and will keep their life savings in cash. That can easily be tens of thousands of dollars, it only takes putting away $500 a year for 20 years. Do you think they're gonna have adequate records to prove that all of that was legal income?
You don't generally have to “prove your innocence”, the burden of proof in federal forfeiture is on the government to prove that the property is subject to forfeiture. 18 USC § 983(c)
The only case where you would have to prove your innocence is for the “innocent owner” affirmative defense that applies only after the government has met that burden; that is, where the government proves then seized property was, e.g., used in crime, but you assert that as the owner, you were either unaware of the use of the property in the crime or did everything reasonable to stop it being used in crime once you became aware. 18 USC § 983(d). It obviously isn’t an issue when the theory of forfeiture charged and proven by the government is your crime.
There is no way this isn't a significant factor in how many people leave the seizure uncontested. I wouldn't be so quick to assume anything uncontested is drug money.
Is this just pure speculation? You seem to be making this claim with no evidence whatsoever. There are many reasons cases might go uncontested. For example, the individual might not have the means to pursue the case. There are innumerable other possibilities as well.
No, it doesn't say that.
It says that the funds were seized with the explicitly stated intent to pursue forfeiture, and also a drug and money laundering investigation was threatened, with surrendering the funds (presumably, meaning not fighting CAF) given as an alternative to the investigation being pursued.
This isn't “CAF is an extra-legal process” this is the very-legal criminal process being used as a stick to threaten with to undermine the integrity of the equally-legal civil asset forfeiture process, because federal rules allow local law enforcement agencies to keep a share of federal-law seizures the local agency participated in (while most state forfeiture laws dedicate funds to the State general fund and not to the seizing agency), exacerbated by the use of cross-sworn local officers in airports, the chokepoint nature of airports on travel, etc.
I think this should read:
> We've deputized thousands of squabbling gangs of thieves, and given them the "special powers" of law enforcement
This CAF stuff is an expected and reasonable byproduct of that starting condition.
"How do we fix law enforcement then?"
You don't. Disband it. It's a recent creation, obviously a "failed experiment" (from the perspective of 'does LE promote a fair and safe society').
LE _isn't_ a failed experiment from the perspective of rent-seeking LE, but, well, dictatorships work out great for the dictators.
How does it jive with the constitution? Particularly the 4th amendment, but others as well.
CAF cases make the news because the defendant actually gets their money back, and it didn't already get spent building a new hot tub for the police station lounge
Welfare office Argument being is that someone should pay for the kid.
“Some places”? Really, which exactly? The only case I am aware of in any US jurisdiction where child support is required even in the face of proof of biological non-paternity is for children born in wedlock (sometimes with other requirements, such as marital cohabitation) in states where the marital presumption of paternity is conclusive (or conclusive when other requirements are met) rather than merely presumptive. And in that case it is literally what you legally signed up for.
Let me see if I have this right. A man and woman marry. The woman cheats on the man and gets pregnant, but lies about it and passes the kid off as the husband's child. After the birth, husband is suspicious, gets a paternity test, finds out he's not the father, and divorces the mother. And yet the now-ex-husband is still required to pay for child support?
If that's a thing that happens, that's genuinely awful. That is not something I (or anyone?) would want to legally sign up for; presumably people in those jurisdictions get married without knowing about this.
Oversensitivity, low or no empathy, entitlement, control issues, holding grudges, passive-aggressive behavior, these are clear symptoms of mental illness, and unlike nearly all, of one that can be cured.
Here's some wisdom about marriage from Kahlil Gibran:
Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.
https://lawandcrime.com/video/man-legally-forced-to-pay-chil...
https://thefreethoughtproject.com/court-forcing-man-pay-chil...
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7591411/Florida-man...
https://ij.org/case/dea-tsa-forfeitures/
IJ is the leader on this issue, and if you oppose civil-forfeiture abuse, you might consider supporting IJ's work.
(Disclosure: the IJ attorney pictured in the thread is a friend whom I admire greatly.)
The fact that we have a failed government is not something we should all just bend over and accept as status quo
Second of all the government itself should be striving, and one of its strongest foci should be to catch such infringements and correct them.
I suppose the donations are tax deductible which is a decent compromise, but my point is a) that such organization exist b) they have more work than they have the resources to do and c) citizens have to fund them out of their own pockets seems like a pretty big failure of government to me.
With that in mind I wonder whether it is TSA policy to always have these officers cross-sworn in with the FBI, or if it's a legal loophole which officers can exploit?
From the tweet-thread it looks like local police departments have similar "double-agents"...
So if it is a loophole the guy in the video just figured how to maximize his reward for his moraly derelict actions. Like the luggage handler at Havanna-Airport.
[0] https://www.bloomberglaw.com/product/tax/bloombergtaxnews/da...
[1] https://www.cuna.org/advocacy/actions/grassroot-action-cente...
I would definitely call this emergence[0]. For example the IRS has been known to push more against poor people than rich people because it is simply easier. That isn't IRS officials taking the stance "fuck poor people" but rather that it is extremely frustrating to go after rich people who have massive amounts of wealth and are using that power to make it very difficult for auditors to track everything. We see this kind of emergence happen all over, where people aren't doing things that are actually planned but patterns emerge. I think economists would mostly agree and just point to incentive structures, but I don't think this is a common way of thinking.
Anyways, I fully agree that we shouldn't be pushing regressive systems. Even if it is easier. Maybe we should start thinking about "Not because they are easy, but because they are hard."
[0] Actually I think a lot of what people believe is "deep state" and organized actors can more easily be explained by emergence.
"One of the starkest differences is who will pay for it all. While Biden pledged to increase corporate income taxes to fund infrastructure, Republicans drew a line in the sand. The new deal pulls together a patchwork of increased IRS enforcement, selling off petroleum reserves, [...]" [0]
[0] https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2021-06-24/factbox-b...
The distinction is important because Social Security only applies on income up to ~$140k (this year). Due to that, the amount of Social Security tax revenue from a poor person is fairly close to the amount paid by someone rich. A family of 4 at the federal poverty line ($26,500/year) pays $1,643 dollars to Social Security. Someone who makes $4M/year pays $8,853.60.
So 5 families at the poverty line == 1 bajillionaire from a Social Security perspective.
I'm not in favor of the proposal, but it's not as absurd as it looks, policy wise. Morally, I would agree with you. This is an inevitable outcome of combining low wages and 1099s. It's really hard to force yourself to put your payroll taxes away in savings when you're only netting $7/hr and your bills are past due. It does also put them in a position where they should really have a tax professional, instead of just doing TurboTax or whatever.
Less common but not exactly rare in Spain, I would assume also Greece and Portugal. Can’t comment of France but in Germany it would be really weird, though probably legal.
The government have tried to crack down on this by increasing ATM fees and imposing daily limits, but I don't think it will really change anything.
The entire idea of 'in rem' actions is absurd on the face of it, and is the kind of nonsense that causes people to lose faith in the justice system. There are often comments here that (correctly) castigate software engineer types as having too much of a game-playing 'gotcha' sense of how the law works - or ought to work - but "Department of Justice vs. $137,425 in US Currency" is exactly the same kind of too-tricky-by-half game-playing, only by the lawmakers.
[0]https://www.chicagotribune.com/nation-world/ct-customs-agent...
Step two: Pay no taxes for few decades, adding funds as required.
Step three: Withdraw your capital and retire.
Crack down on this garbage.
No, it clearly isn't. The law says that a government employee can take your money as long as they write some words on a bit of paper, and if any of that money ever came in to contact with any drug (which are legal in many states), or for many other reasons, then they can keep it forever.
Claiming it is legal is just a way to get more clients.
Civil asset forfeiture is a power trip by the government that neither political party wants to touch, and it does a great job at reducing trust in the US's governing bodies. When I was a kid, I thought that kind of low level brazen corruption only happened in poorer or less developed countries. Now I get to see my countrymen doing it and admitting to it on video, year after year.
The prosecutors offices get their cut too, so they have an incentive to keep their mouths shut. Everyone else can be bullied into submission.
Is this documented somewhere?
https://twitter.com/JodyBarr/status/1440856532959170566?s=20
Also, do I really want Visa International to know what brand of constipation medicine I take and which anarchist magazines I subscribe to? (None, I swear!) Anything I buy on a credit card is something I can expect to have to explain to the police or the immigration authorities sooner or later, possibly after the next military coup, or maybe just because there was a protest nearby that turned violent and they'd like to know why I was in that neighborhood that day. Also, why do I need acetone? I'm not cooking meth, am I?
If you think this stuff will never affect you, well, nobody ever thinks it will affect them, until it does. Most people alive have lived through an invasion, a coup, or an episode of extreme governmental repression, and most people who haven't yet will.
Bitcoin is a nice alternative when it's applicable, but transaction costs are a bit high for buying a cigarette or a restaurant meal, and it's a headache when the confirmation time is 45 minutes instead of 10 minutes. Hopefully Lightning will fix this.
______
* Inflation is bad here, yo. $1000 is about US$6, but printing $2000 bills hasn't been approved yet.
How does this approach scale?
The biggest advantage, though, is that when the covid pandemic hit, the people in the US went totally nuts, saying that the government is controlled by a secret Satanic cabal of pedophiles who sacrifice children to drink their blood, that masks cause covid, that the vaccines are fatal, and all kinds of nonsense like that. Europe doesn't seem to be coping that much better. Here in Argentina, meh, it's just another crisis. It's shitty but not as bad as the crisis in the 70s when military dictators overthrew the democratic government, outlawed playing cards, and started rounding up their political opposition and dropping them out of airplanes. I literally don't know anyone who got raped because of covid, much less murdered.
But yeah credit card transactions can take a minute or two, the economy sucks, and ordering things from overseas is difficult and risky.
It's been pretty helpful in gaining perspective on the bullshit I grew up with in the US.
That’s good, right? :)
Have you considered, that if they agree they don't like their country, maybe they have to look after ageing or ill parents, or have other responsibilities they can't just abandon? Not to mention money ofcourse.
Checking bank statements is easier (they are very short).
You don't have to worry who will abuse your credit card or bank details.
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[0]: https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/how-long-is-the-life-spa...
Also, it's not just cash they go after. There are plenty of "State v. Diamond Necklace" or "State v. Various Electronics Valued at Approx. $1000" cases out there.
You could deposit the money in a national bank (JPM, BoA, etc), call ahead and plan the withdraw from a local branch. I'm sure there are other players in this marker who would only charge a few grand to provide you the cash on site if you had the money in a trusted escrow. To me, that is cheap insurance, but also to me it's worth the $70 bucks to have my bank wire the money instantly to any bank account in the US.
Not saying this guy did wrong, just saying you can't trust anyone to be on their best behavior when they see $115K.
Well there you go. You answered your own question. He had every right to do so, so he did it. End of story.
Maybe he just didn't know about CAF, maybe he thought it wouldn't happen to him or could other reasons. Either way, I hope other folks in the future take heed and don't trust LE with their bags of cash in transit.
Bitcoin would have solved his problem, sure, but so would a simple bank account.
Literally all he had to do was put the money in a bank account and then pull it out once he landed.
Traveling with that amount of cash is insanely stupid. So many things can go wrong... Someone steals the bag or it gets lost, etc.
I.e. screw slightly fewer people so public forgets about it but law enforcement gets to keep screwing people. They'll never get rid of it completely.
If the progressive Democrats could take over the party and control it then I'd agree with you about a), but effectively what the Democrats can do is controlled by Krysten Sinema, not the progressive wing.
And both Trump and the progressive wing of the Democrats shows how untenable the current situation is, and how insufficient the Democratic party has been.
If you start to view the Democratic party (aside from the progressive insurgents) as being bought for by large corporations, and then understand that all the failings and excuses of the Democratic party are really just delivering to the customer what they want, it all makes a lot more sense.
And when it comes to the failings of the Democratic party -- like Krysten Sinema -- the trick is to stop going "oh if only she wasn't in the way we could have fixed everything, we have failed due to this externality" to realize that she's playing the role that the people who have bought the Democratic party want her to play and she's a feature, not a bug. And there's always been an excuse like that for the past 30 years.
Hopefully the progressives do eventually succeed or else we're likely to get some actually competent fascist on the right wing.
People who've never carried a sum of cash on their person are often terrified of the prospect and assume everyone is as frighted of as they are.
I used to walk cash from a retail store safe to the bank as part of the morning routine. I've had so many lectures about why I should have never done it. I should have forgone my paid leisurely stroll and "just" arranged an armored truck. Or I should have quit over principal, like it was some sort of uniquely risky job compared to all the risky jobs out there and no owner should ever put on an employee. It wasn't even that much money. One day's worth of cash transactions from a small store in the age of credit cards.
The real risk in ghat endeavor was the manager convincing me to split the cash and run off with it…
The police are powerful though, and proceeds from this don't seem to terribly well accounted for in every PD. We know the feds and the local prosecutors get their cut, but after that... They are going to throw everything they can at keeping this gravy train alive.
1. If there was some civil asset forfeiture, the victim must've done something wrong because cops certainly can't be wrong.
2. If you've committed even a minor, non violent, crime, it doesn't matter how harsh the penalty is, you deserve it.
3. A majority of voters don't see themselves as criminals and aren't hassled by cops like some segments of the population are. They think this will never affect them, so they pay it little mind - until the day it does affect them.
Though the Democrats would probably come up with some sophisticated explanation why this particular case does not fall under BLM.
Remember that Biden is the guy who pushed the Clipper Chip.
Can no one mount a legal challenge against this?
Because the other side of the aisle will crap on you for doing it, and why burn political capital on a minor problem, when you have more pressing issues, like waging a war, digging through fallout of the largest economic disaster since the Great Depression, getting a crappy single-payer healthcare system through, filling three supreme court seats, dealing with a global pandemic, or keeping the wealthy and powerful happy.
The only people who actually ground their elections on this kind of platform are anti-authoritarian contrarians, which have a rolling average of two seats in Congress and one in the Senate. Constituents, frankly, don't care about this.
The problem is, nobody cares about these things MORE than "stopping abortion", "muh guns", "fuck taxes", "status quo" that most incumbents scream about. We have a two party system that discourages caring about anything.
Remember the patriot act when the next round of powers come in because of covid.
Completely false, there are countless instances of government giving up a power it previously had. Previous presidential administration rolled back environmental regulations, Covid regulations across the country have greatly lightened up since last year, there’s no draft going on right now…
Things have gone too far, by all appearances, for the self corrective constitutional mechanisms to repair the situation.
Otherwise, welcome to the new normal. Enjoy your cake.
Conceivably, other people in the same system might also leave the policy in place, while the same people in a different system might change the policy.
So if it happens, you can go to court for your individual case and possibly win, which according to this comment happens all the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28635430
So more is needed, obviously. It seems to me that the status quo is that you're effectively guilty until proven innocent, and the people accusing you don't have much of an incentive to stop.
The Las Vegas shooter is kinda-money related in that he was a problem gambler. That’s the closest I can think of.
Do you have any citation where this has happened? Because if not, that’s probably a pretty poor “bet” you’re making…
The IRC is distinct from civil asset forfeiture, but they're both obtuse bureaucracies that care not for the individuals they crush.
(idk what's with the downvotes. What I said is pretty factual unless you're like an accountant)
Declared in paper that I have those money and verbally when asked upon entry, then had to go with an officer to fill out some additional form, that’s it.
A thousand bad outcomes that are possibly more likely than this scenario could have happened. The bag could have been lost in the taxi, lost by the airline, stolen by a passerby, left at home, and the list goes on.
Has this guy ever heard of Western Union? Bitcoin? A cashier's check? Anything else besides a suitcase full of cash?
This method of making a large transaction is so stupid that it's hard for me to even blame the government for considering it automatically suspicious. Of course, having no due process surrounding civil asset forfeiture is not right, but that doesn't mean that this transaction isn't suspicious.
I'd go ahead and play devil's advocate here: the only reason to carry this much cash is to do one of the following:
1. Evade sales and income tax (You can say this isn't your problem, or that the government should take less of our money anyway, but countries that have high tax avoidance rates have poor infrastructure and public services – tax avoidance hurts honest people the most)
2. Make a transaction to exchange illegal goods or people
It's entirely possible that this guy's story is just a lie. I think it's naive to pretend that this guy isn't likely to be connected to organized crime. That's the whole "organized" part of it: they're going to be armed with a good story and disciplined behavior, not like the people you see on Cops admitting guilt the second a beat cop starts asking questions.
If CSCS type programs take hold outside of china, you will need cash to do many basic things without the support of the government who will be busy regulating if you can fly, take a train, open an account, throttle your internet etc. etc.
Those do not work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterfeit_banknote_detection...
I've been hoping to go to one of the big national-attraction bourses after the Covid crisis ends (all the budget not spent on vacations in 2020 and 2021 would pay for a nice $3 gold piece) but I've been thinking about this exact scenario.
I've noticed my bank, despite being a large national bank, has a habit of not having branches in the places I want to visit. So there's a fair chance I can't just do an in-person withdrawl on arrival. The ATM is limited to like $500 per day and might incur distasteful fees. So the obvious idea is to pull $5000 before I leave and carry it on my person. Except now I've got to worry about the TSA grabbing it. Since we have no large notes anymore, trying to pack fifty Franklins in my wallet is going to be pretty obvious when you put it in the little X-ray bowl.
Something like this[1] may help.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Travel-Security-Hidden-Money-Pocket/d...
However, there are valid reasons people -- including criminals -- still use cash.
If you think someone is a criminal, prove it first; without that, shut up.
The 'victim' likely had his money seized because there is an investigation linked to him but not enough evidence to convict in court (or he was associated in an investigation with someone who was already convicted). The reason for travelling is to buy 'game machines', which just seems absurd since such business deals can be conducted entirely from email or phone anyway.