Amazon sent the FBI to take my family’s bank accounts
medium.com
medium.com
One issue is how long these cases take to resolve. This was a whistleblower blowing the whistle.
Basic deal was Watson (who ran Northstar) a property developer signed a deal to kick back referral fees to an entity that did literally no work (Villanova Trust) created by a brother of the two amazon employees (Nelson and Kirschner) who were the transaction managers for 9 data center lease deals. The kickback deal was signed after these two Amazon employees met with Watson (the Vendor).
Amazon then did $400M in deals with Watson, who then kicked back $5M to the trust in "commissions". Then amazon discovered deleted files indicating the employees were entitled to "shares" in these projects from Watson of something like an additional $16M.
Others in the mix at developer also did some kind of land flip thing. One example was property that they bought for $20M, then sold to Amazon for $116M. In one case there was something like a $20M increase in price on property that was sold to Amazon the day that it was bought?! So they were frontrunning things. Watson was pissed, and wanted a cut, so recorded a meeting with the folks doing the flip scam. But that backfired because the folks doing the flip scam knew about the leasing scam and said, hey, if you don't back off we'll blow lid on your lease scam - claiming "that's FBI". They did end up compromising on kicking back $5M to Watson from the flip scam.
Anyways, all allegations, and thousands of pages so I've no doubt got some parts wrong, but it makes for interesting reading!
My question - it seems to take a long time to get these white color criminal types into jail.
In the linked post, there is a lot of complaining that the FBI messed up the guys career, but man, this court case - why would you hire a guy like this into a position of trust?
Note these allegations are contested. “My only hope in defending myself against its false allegations is that the process will be fair and impartial.” Mr. Nelson said per a WSJ article.
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/17338366/amazoncom-inc-...
and this:
https://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinions/201743.U.pdf
With 500 filings you really see how justice is different for white collar folks!
They have a transcript of a recorded conversation between two parties to the alleged fraud (not including the person in the linked Medium article) who are communicating their concern that this what they're doing is "federal, FBI-type stuff", so they seem to be well aware that they were doing something wrong.
It's baffling that they not only would have recorded this conversation, but then kept it around for the FBI to find and enter into record. Unless, of course, the person who recorded it did so intentionally and offered it to the FBI in exchange for something.
Crime is strange.
But they turned out to know about the lease scam that he had going with these two amazon employees. So basically he was trying to catch them out on their flip scam and was trying to record for that.
Full disclosure, Nelson and his wife are apparently claiming al the allegations are false? So it's all allegations despite the insane paper trail.
Not sure what to say to that really - would you hire folks scamming like this?
Wasn't the "business" a shell company used to launder money from flip scams, and aren't those "family funds" the millions in ill-gotten gains from those scams?
See backstory in:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30388129
I love how someone caught in a corruption scandal scamming his employer out of a few millions spins this with an emotional tale led with a GoFundMe link.
It is unconstitutional and wrong, it also sets a precedent, how long before the FBI finds out someone politically unpopular is being "investigated" another nice thing is that once they take your money good luck affording lawyers fees. Ultimately I was watching a trial steam once and there was a defence lawyer stated that the purpose of a defense lawyer isn't to make sure their client gets off it is too make sure their clients rights are protected and the state plays by the rules. I don't care how guilty someone is they are innocent until proven otherwise.
That said, hard to believe they have no idea WHY it was seized.
And in white collar crimes, the case lengths are unnecessarily long and the money is often hard to recover. They should work on both those issues longer term.
After Amazon wins it's lawsuits these folks will be filing various bankruptcy claims and the money will have been distributed all over the place (some to lawyers, some not) over the 5-10 years it takes to fight these out.
That said, civil asset forfeiture is just theft.
Also, they didn't just seize the property allegedly acquired through illegal means, they also seized the entire family's unrelated savings (from prior/unrelated jobs). It was hardly some kind of crime family/syndicate situation that needed immediate law enforcement action to prevent further harm.
Might be a bit much to say... but I know some historic figures who would of raised arms over such a thing even existing. I have not heard a case where it even makes legal sense to do so.
Courts have gotten WAY, WAY too willing to seal things. In a healthy, functioning system, it should be damned near impossible to seal anything a court is supposed to consider. In fact, I'd be perfectly happy to make it totally impossible. Ignoring the intrinsic injustice, courts are supposed to be public, and proceeding in secret undermines their legitimacy.
Anyhow, generalities aside, the idea of sealing anything material to a complaint against access by the defendant is just plain unacceptable. That's true for both civil and criminal cases.
>The story begins around 2017. Amazon Web Services was opening new data centers in Northern Virginia at a rapid clip to handle the growing needs of its customers, including the *Central Intelligence Agency* and other branches of the U.S. government.
Having had a TS and dealing with government, my intuition is that there is something more involved here concerning the 3 letter agencies. Generally, things like this are usually settled as a lawsuit.
I'm against civil forfeiture, but the problem here is easy to see. If you come at someone and say "we think you got $large_amount via illegal means, but go ahead and do whatever you want with it until the court proceedings are finished", the money is going to be spent or stashed in nearly every case where the person is guilty. It would make it difficult to ever recover money for the victims of crime.
Not sure how to solve that dilemma.
If you laundered the money to hide it, and only retained 50% of the value in that transaction, that is your your problem. You knew what you were doing and you messed up.
If this was 1775, Americans would be launching a revolutionary war against such tyranny. Citizens have gotten real soft these days.
I absolutely agree
Of course, the real argument they're trying to avoid having to make with the forfeiture "hack" is: due process of law is not required for just legal outcomes and may be an impediment to a just legal outcome. Of course that line of thought, and the successful practice of civil forfeiture to such an aim, requires a purity of virtue, morality, and rationality of law enforcement officers and prosecutors that no thoughtful observer would think it achievable. That's the whole reason due process of law and the rights of accused exist: you simply cannot trust any one person or group to find a just outcome on their own... and even then our due process is often not enough to accomplish real justice.
There have been several times where they ACLU has stepped in on behalf of the KKK to garuntee their rights to protest/rally. Its ugly, but taking the rights away from one group because you disagree with them is a very slippery slope.
Bernie Madoff is their shining example of this, and routinely paraded by the authorities.
Made by an extremely large and powerful corporation with (apparently) connections in the FBI.
Unless proven beyond a reasonable doubt, there's no point at all to be made.
Stating this all as fact until proven is irresponsible.
"Anyways, all allegations, and thousands of pages so I've no doubt got some parts wrong, but it makes for interesting reading!" - from my note.
This is reddit type response, where you assert something in my post that is simply not there. Kind of shameful really.
The statement above is but one of many in your post that are very definitive as to what occurred.
No "alleged to" or any other equivocation on the verbs. This is all stated like these are indisputable findings of fact.
There's nothing shameful in pointing this out.
Having a statement buried elsewhere in a largish post doesn't fix the carelessness.
Here are the facts from the filings: the Nelsons got caught laundering more than $2M of the $11M in kickbacks they took. This $2M works its way through accounts and entities controlled by Nelson and Kirschner's lawyers, Kirschner's brother, and Amy Sterner Nelson's father. It then moves into and out of 8 bank accounts owned by the Nelsons, as well as two other smaller accounts owned by the Kirschers and Johnny Lim (who looks like just a conduit to launder $1MM to the Nelsons and Kirschners).
The US government seizes $658K from 9 accounts, each of which received funds laundered through the Nelson scheme. Only one of the accounts had a seized balance that was greater than the amount of kickback money laundered into it (Nelson Citi #7373, $25K seized versus $12K of kickbacks transferred).
Overall, $2.3M of kickback money was transfered into the accounts the government seized. Given the government seized $658K, the Nelsons were able to spend or move elsewhere nearly $1.7M of the kickback money.
From other posts, Amy Sterner Nelson's story was that there was no money. There was money, and the government has the receipts. There was at least $2M of kickback money transfered into their accounts, and $1.7M of that wasn't seized. Almost all of that $2M moves through a company controlled by James Sterner, Amy Sterner Nelson's father. I think I'm most baffled why you would move money around like this and not expect to get caught. I wonder what this all looks like through the IRS lens.
It's never hard to follow the money, but it does take a little time:
https://whimsical.com/followed-the-money-XKYwPPD6AhhGiPeePDi...
Although in this case the seized funds were apparently returned. I have a feeling a lot of crucial details have been left out of this piece (EDIT: See links below to the investigation details. There are multiple parties involved and some of they were keenly aware that they were breaking laws that were "FBI-type stuff"). The devil’s advocate take on this outcome would be that the person cooperated with the FBI to provide evidence and/or testify against bigger fish in the case in exchange for being let off the hook. If this was the case, we’d probably see some headlines about an Amazon-related criminal charges in the coming months or years. Although in our case the released documents were full of “Company 1” and “Individual 2” anonymity, so someone (usually a journalist) would have to figure out the connection.
Or maybe this really was some big misunderstanding with disastrous consequences to the family. Impossible to know from an article from this perspective.
EDIT: There's a more in-depth review of the case here: https://www.geekwire.com/2021/former-aws-real-estate-manager...
From the summary, it does appear that multiple people are involved in the case and the person in this article (Nelson) doesn't look like the key player in the alleged frauds, though he would have played a significant role in facilitating the accusations. There's definitely some shady business going on, but this guy could have been more of a pawn than active player.
One of the text messages from transcripts is notable (Note "Nelson" is the accused person in the Medium article):
> “Flip me a couple buildings … and let me really line your pockets like we were discussing! ” Ramstetter wrote in a Dec. 17, 2018 message to Nelson, according to a copy of the exchange Amazon filed with the court.
The transcript in that article is also enlightening, because it's literally a conversation between two of the partners who acknowledge that what they're doing is "federal, FBI-type stuff" and express concern over it. If you ever get a message like that from someone proposing to "line your pockets" in exchange for facilitating deals with your employer, maybe don't work with that person any more.
Sometimes you get the A team. Sometimes you get the geniuses that loaned APCs to the ATF.
So long as the incompetence of the second rate people continues to not effect the careers of the first rate people nothing will change.
I find even that devil's take to be problematic, because that sounds a lot like coerced testimony. It calls into question both the morality of doing so, and the authenticity of any testimony produced.
It almost begs for comparisons to the mafia. There's not a huge gap between "testify against this person or we'll seize your home and business" and "don't testify against this person or we'll burn your home and business down". Other than that the government makes the rules, and they've decided it's okay when they do it.
Unless you or/and accuser are criminals, the gap is huge. :-/
> 1) «testify against this person, which did the crime, or state may found you guilty and seize your home and business»
This is really "testify against this person, who we say did the crime, or the state will seize your goods without charging you with a crime". Civil forfeiture doesn't require any kind of conviction against you, because they're technically charging your property.
> Unless you or/and accuser are criminals, the gap is huge. :-/
Civil forfeiture doesn't require anyone to be a criminal; innocent people have their stuff seized all the time. Also, it's incredibly easy to find something you can charge someone with to get them to cooperate. You ever not paid taxes on something you ordered on the internet? That's tax fraud, you're a criminal and have to cooperate. Ever gone more than 15 over the speed limit? That's a crime in many states, you're a criminal and have to cooperate.
Even if you know you're innocent of what they want to charge you with, your options are to either cooperate, or spend the next year or two in jail fighting your case while you spend tens or hundreds of thousands on lawyers.
Also, whether someone is a criminal or not is rather arbitrary when the state gets involved, because the state defines what a crime is, and thus who the criminals are. E.g. if I tried to compel someone to testify by threatening to steal their car, that makes me a criminal. If the state does it, it's not, because they've written the rules that way.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2021-03-15/the-st...
In a nutshell, the Amazon employee in the article was accused of taking kickbacks for commercial real estate transactions, Amazon filed a lawsuit and the FBI raided the house and froze assets. And over a year later, no criminal case has been filed and none of the real estate transactions were renegotiated or broken.
I've had it bluntly explained to me by a federal prosecutor that they do it specifically so you cannot mount a legal defense due to your inability to hire a quality attorney.
The presence of frozen assets simply means federal law enforcement was engaging in an enforcement action, not anything exceptional due to the facts of the case.
https://www.markjobrien.com/blog/2016/03/groundbreaking-supr...
When assets are forfeited, they're seized by the government and just tossed somewhere likely to get lost (tons of things get lost, damaged, and stolen when seized). If you even have the money left to hire a lawyer, you might be able to contest the forfeiture. But because the assets and not you are being charged, well they don't have to try very hard to let you know of the case. In almost all cases, the assets are forfeited summarily because people can't afford to get them back or they're notified too late to find an attorney and start the process of contesting the forfeiture. This process is colloquially known as theft.
so it's standard procedure for the FBI to try to prevent you from adequately defending yourself, seems about right.
Which is exactly what's happening right now in the Sussmann case (brought by Durham), he's being accused of something based on the memory of an FBI agent when a videotaped interview would have made it trivial to prove/disprove.
And that's exactly the problem, where is the right to a fair trial if you cannot hire a quality attorney? I guess it levels the playing field somewhat in preventing people with money from defending themselves the same way poor citizens are screwed over by the judicial system and not being able to get adequate representation...
>I've had it bluntly explained to me by a federal prosecutor that they do it specifically so you cannot mount a legal defense due to your inability to hire a quality attorney.
That this authoritarian tactic is standard operating procedure makes this whole affair worse and more sordid, not better. If we had a functioning legal system the 4th Amendment would protect people from government activities like this.
https://www.geekwire.com/2021/former-aws-real-estate-manager...
https://www.geekwire.com/2021/riveter-ceo-husband-dispute-fb...
Just so people know, this is a blip of time in the legal world; financial fraud takes time to document. People need to go in, recover all of the relevant ESI, categorize it, then process it. Interviews with relevant stakeholders need to be undertaken - some of them who will have tight schedules, or be abroad, etc. I've been involved in fraud cases that take half a decade to hit the courts, then another decade to get through them.
As long as there's no statute of limitations style deadlines about to lapse and there's no risk that the assets being recovered are being wasted, there's little harm in spending pre-claim time on due diligence work prior to triggering court filing timelines.
Losing access to all of your money for an indeterminate amount of time with no recourse is a fairly large harm.
It’s not your legally narrow definition of harm, or the court’s definition of an unreasonable timeframe… yet it’s undeniably harmful to an innocent family.
We’re still doing that part - innocent until proven guilty - right?
Generally speaking, in order to get intrusive injunctive relief of this level, you need to have a VERY good record.
Without the ability to freeze assets, someone can defraud you then use the proceeds of fraud itself to fund a legal defense while hiding assets. Or draw out the case and take a decade long vacation in Ibiza on your dime.
Which happens. A lot.
The court isn't going to get it right 100% of the time, but it does the vast majority of times when it comes to these cases - evidentiary standards are so high that people regularly write off MILLIONS of dollars in fraud losses because of how hard these remedies are to get.
Without a desire to understand how the system works on your end, it's impossible on my end to explain WHY these rules exist.
Most of the money is being returned, no criminal charges are being filed against either a Nelson or Kirschner. ("The investigation hasn't led to criminal charges, according to court documents.") So it doesn't sound like there is anyone to testify against.
The civil suits between Amazon and the Nelsons and the Kirschner's continue, but the fact that Amazon is currently paying all of the leases in question (for DCs used by AWS) and there will be no criminal charges does sound like Amazon didn't get ripped off too badly, if at all, which means there will probably be a settlement with undisclosed terms and lawyers on both sides claiming to be very happy and moving on.
Even _if_ the author had turned out to be 100% guilty of whatever Amazon accused them of - this form of civil forfeiture is still punishment without trial and not in line with the sixth amendment.
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.
It's really, really easy for the government to justify it. All they need to do, is run out the one case in a hundred, where some death-dealing Walter White is stopped.
But we tend to think that unusual events are far more common than they actually are, and they use that to manufacture outrage and justification.
I don't remember what the term is, but this fallacy is a known one.
E.g. look at that famous chart showing 'the police steal more than criminals': https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/files/2015/11/...
Nearly $2B of that 2014 total was JP Morgan having their funds 'civilly forfeit' to directly pay restitution to the Madoff victims (https://www.nathanslaw.com/articles/bank-to-pay-almost-2-bil...).
Restitution can be ordered by a court without requiring a process to confiscate money without so much as a charge
The goal itself seems reasonably (though not perfectly) noble.
The use of this ability in the real world though ... not so much.
This belongs in maritime law, and nowhere else.
I remember one time the prosecutor was trying to forfeit a man's brand new $60,000 SUV because the man's son had borrowed the car and driven drunk. Luckily it was a cool judge (the rarest of the rare!) and she beat the prosecutors down "Did this man know his son borrowed the car? No." "Does this man have valid license and insurance? Yes? Give him his car back. And you know what, give him all his fines and fees and his towing fee back too. What do you mean you don't know how to give him his towing fee back? FIND OUT."
The same judge.. on her first day on the bench in the forfeiture court.. I was there early and she brought the two forfeiture prosecutors up to the bench and whispered to them "Look, you two win 95% of the cases in this court simply because no-one can even figure out how to file the paperwork to get their case into court. I won't stand for that. That isn't happening in my court room. That's all."
Which is true. In Illinois at least, if your assets get seized, you just get a letter saying you have 45 days to file all the required paperwork to even get your case into court to START defending yourself. And it says specifically on the paperwork that the State will not help you with any aspect of this filing, nor will they provide any of the required forms.
Most forfeiture cases are very, very badly prosecuted because they so rarely get challenged. If you ever have your assets seized, fight it. Most of the time you'll easily win, or the prosecutor will give up.
The BIGGEST thing by far is that the prosecutor will do a plea negotiation with you on your assets!! I proxy negotiated for people all the time. To avoid trial (no party wants this) the prosecutor will come and tell you "We'll give you 50% of your money back today if you sign away the rest". I promise you, you can get this to 80% of your money back.
You can also use frozen assets as bargaining chips in a criminal case. With the drug dealer I mentioned earlier, he had $150,000 taken from one account. For the final deal on his prison time I got his lawyer to negotiate them giving him back $80,000 of the drug money! I could have got his cars back too, but the feds had them and he didn't want to poke that bear.
p.s. if you have a new car with a loan and you've not made many payments, let the prosecutor know - they usually don't want your car as it'll become a paperwork nightmare.
p.p.s. if you have your assets seized, check the jurisdiction. In these cases the asset is considered a guilty party to the crime and must be prosecuted in the correct jurisdiction (court), which might be different to where the crime happened or where the assets were seized.
That may have happened in this case, where the couple agreed to a deal in which the state kept 1/6 of the funds.
If he gave the car with permission, he has a big problem.
If the son drove it without permission, it sounds like the son ought to get both a DUI and an auto theft charge.
There's been a serious problem in BC, where kids afflicted by affluenza race their parents' cars on public roadways. Luxury cars doing 50, 70 kmh over the speed limit. If I did that in my car, it would be seized from me. If these cars' legal owner doesn't want their cars seized for this sort of stuff, they shouldn't be giving the kids the keys.
Dad might be a bad parent, he might not. Lots of good parents have kids who do dumb stuff. I had great parents and I ended up in jail. So I can't say I think Dad deserved to lose his car.
There is no way justice would be served by convicting the son of auto theft if the owner of the vehicle (i.e. the dad)—the only one with any actual standing in the case—has no interest in pressing charges. Fines or jail time for a DUI conviction with no evidence of actual harm resulting from the event is already pushing the boundaries of a rationally justifiable, proportional response. (Revoking the son's driving license, on the other hand, would be a reasonable and predictable outcome.)
The vehicle was either taken with permission, or without permission.
You don't get to launder responsibility by doing crime using someone else's stuff.
> Fines or jail time for a DUI conviction with no evidence of actual harm resulting from the event is already pushing the boundaries of a rationally justifiable, proportional response.
No, it's not. This isn't the 60s anymore. Every time you drive drunk, you are playing Russian roulette with the lives of everyone around you. It's gross disregard for human life. It's going out onto the street, loading a gun, closing your eyes, spinning in a circle, and pulling the trigger.
If you're an idiot minor whose teenage brain cannot bridge the concepts of cause and effect, as with most crimes, some leniency can be expected, but in the general case, this is an incredibly serious thing.
Google says they settled in federal court forfieting 100,000 dollars with no admission of guilt and getting the rest of their money back. A civil suit is ongoing.
For example, I can accuse you of murder without any evidence. You know what I did, but you do not know why I did it. I think what she's trying to say.
Of course, "I have no idea why" makes a better headline...
There are no words too strong or negative for this. It is sick-minded and dangerous.
Personally doesn't seem like a good enough reason to me. (I'm suspicious it's partly to help their case by intimidating suspects, give a reason for keeping TAC units budgets high, and b/c the TAC guys think it's fun lol)
Especially considering that if you knock down doors in the USA you're bound to get people who shoot back.
Reminds me of an old Chappelle's show skit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeOVbeh2yr0&ab_channel=Comed...
That because we live under capitalism first and democracy second. So when capitalist ask government to jump, they ask how high.
>The government’s seizure of the funds in 2020 was related to an FBI investigation into Carleton Nelson’s role in arranging Amazon real estate transactions. The investigation has not resulted in any criminal charges against him. In an ongoing civil suit, Amazon alleges that Carleton Nelson and a colleague conspired to receive millions of dollars in kickbacks in exchange for directing Amazon Web Services data center deals to a Colorado real estate developer. Carleton Nelson denies the allegations.
>In a joint motion filed in federal court in Virginia, the Nelsons agreed to forfeit almost $109,000, while the government agreed to return the remaining $525,000 in seized funds.
Protection racket.
I see it often in cars taken and sold from people with traffic violations.
I'm a realist though, and I accept the argument that criminals can be sophisticated enough to operate in that margin of error without getting caught. The system will need to get creative to handle these people, without being unconstitutional. Yes, I'm sure it is extremely hard work when compared to breaking the rules and calling it a day, but too bad. The willingness to put in extra work to avoid the illegal shortcuts is critical to preventing the total corruption of these institutions.
Own at least 5 figures of Monero and Tornado Cash notes.
Forget about localbitcoins and ATMs, your lawyer can cash them into their IOLTA account for benefit of you. Assuming your lawyer has some crypto exchange instead of just a bank account. Otherwise do take the risk of using a local trader and ATM. You should probably fire your "everything crypto confuses me" lawyer. The government doesn't get to know who your lawyers are, and they don't know what your legal strategy will be which creates risk for them. Yes, they have theoretical capability of stalking you in person and all your communications including attorney-client ones, this alone can void their case. Form a couple relationships.
Congratulations, you can afford your rights again in America, and everything else.
protip: do it before you need to, because by then you probably can't.
b) government freezes accounts one by one, it isnt a sanction on you accessing the financial system, it is based on allegations raised against the money they find and have control over at financial institutions via an order on the licensed financial institutions looking for your name. it remains legal - if you are a citizen or not a foreigner on the OFAC list - to have fungible money.
b) The government can seize your fungible money. They aren't limited to just freezing accounts. If your crypto is at all tainted by the underlying cause which led to the government freezing your account, you're going to have a bad time.
You are not barred from having other money and using that money. You can stay liquid and retain counsel and interact with the electronic financial statement
so always have some they won’t know about. the beauty these days is that you dont need to deal with the minefield of going both offshore and not reporting it, you dont need cash hidden around or gold bars buried in the desert, you can just have liquid fungible private crypto ready to be liquid when you need it
For example, did you know that cops can seize all your cash during a traffic stop, regardless of you having receipts of withdrawal? See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkeS_0NQUZs
Or, government took all of a family’s money (incl. from bank accounts of two teenage daughters) based on mere suspicion that one family member committed a crime: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gI3hHVcIcdY
They are excellent stewards of donations, https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/521744337. If you are looking for a good cause for your donations this is one. https://ij.org/support/give-now/
I disagree with their position on school choice, I still donate.
"For nearly two years, we waited as the Justice Department has held onto our money while one of the planet’s most powerful corporations paid its lawyers millions of dollars to kick us in the ribs."
We live in a dystopia
but I agree in general empire/oligarchy/ruling class won't relinquish control out of feeling bad.
If you don't have civil forfeiture and the former Amazon employee ends up indeed guilty, it could be after decades of court battles that are literally paid for with money obtained through fraud, and during which time the family enjoys the benefit of the money (using it up on vacations, depreciating assets, etc) and the real victim is deprived of it permanently.
On the other hand, if you do have civil forfeiture and the Amazon employee is found not-guilty, then not only are they deprived of those years of enjoying their justly earned capital, they are also disadvantaged during trial by not being able to afford appropriately skilled representation.
In summary, if you do civil forfeiture then some not-guilty will have their assets unjustly seized and held. If you don't do civil forfeiture, then real victims of theft and fraud will be deprived of their property.
It seems to me though, that if a judge determines you have a high likelihood of success in a court of law, that can and should be used to take some advance – yet reversible – action, such as happens with court injunctions. And then save the final decision for the complete trial.
What are some strategies you could use to insulate yourself from this, even a little?
I've got two ideas off the top of my head...
1. Cash stashed somewhere. 2. A lawyer with a big retainer paid years in advance.
Both of those would be really painful to do. What are some better ideas?
This is why we as a society need to stop civil forfeiture. It deprives the accused of the right of defense.
Don't inflate the value of real estate deals in exchange for kickbacks.
Apes stronger together and all that.
Now now also available to people other than minorities!
[1] For the record, I very against
I haven't seen any left leaning groups cheering this on; but there's too much irony to ignore. Akin to watching Capital rioters worry about getting prosecuted under the rules Trump and the DOJ put in place to harshly prosecute BLM protestors.
Here's a podcast covering the actual common sentiment of the left [3].
[1]: https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/police-hug-protesters-a...
[2]: https://apnews.com/article/state-courts-violent-crime-arson-...
[3]: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-it-could-happen-here-307...
Completely untrue. Civil forfeiture is a uniquely American experience. The Emergencies Act will not lead to broad civil forfeiture in Canada. That is, the Prime Minister of Canada freezing bank accounts will not grant Canadian police officers the ability to seize your assets indefinitely without trial.
It is rhetorically convenient to try to link freezing a bank account to civil forfeiture, but they are not the same thing.
Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_Unit...
While I focused on the outcome above, I think both violate the "presumption of innocence" attitude that our legal system is supposed to be built around.
Edit
I don't watch the news, so I didn't know what's happening in Canada. Here's some links:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/ottawa-protests-frozen-bank...
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60383385
This is fairly wild on every level.
As far as I can tell, frozen bank accounts continue to accrue interest at their normal rate. The relative impacts are very different.
In this story, money was taken and they had to sell their house to cover legal and living expenses.
If you freeze assets the same thing can, and commonly does, happen. Civil Forfeiture is definitely awful, but so is freezing someones assets is my point.
The US civil forfeiture system seems rife with abuse. It's not nearly as bad in Canada.
The system is in place to muzzle anyone and everyone that would dream of thinking of getting out of line.
In my experience, they don't do their due diligence of a victim's reporting: they take what they say at face value if it's a corporation. Multi-million dollar loss? Couldn't have possibly been calculated in bad faith.
It was.
> It was.
Lying to the FBI is a serious crime. There’s no way the corporate counsel from Amazon would just allow some “bad faith” calculations to be used to give a false story to the FBI.
Generally, these criminal cases involve multiple employees at the company. The story doesn’t say who else was arrested as part of the investigation or what their outcome was. The FBI can prefer to target the people at the center of a crime.
> Two officers arrived and located the suspect, a male believed to be in his 40s, in his car. He was order to step from his car. After he got out, he physically resisted officers. Officers were able to get the suspect into handcuffs and noted he appeared to be suffering medical distress. Officers called for an ambulance. He was transported to Hennepin County Medical Center by ambulance where he died a short time later.
The above is part of the original police report of George Floyd's death. I would say it was made in bad faith, but there is little there that is an outright lie.
The government isn't some omniscient, omnipotent entity. It's made of people with all the flaws of regular people. The only difference is they have legal ass coverage in the form of qualified immunity, they investigate themselves, they know the system and how to hide their mistakes, and they protect their own. We should consider putting the beast on a diet.
Like everything else they orbit centers of power and serve those structures. There has to be real wealth involved to get 'service'
If he had kept the money in cryptocurrency then they’d just imprison him until it was turned over.
FBI agent: What cryptocurrency assets do you own?
You: 2 BTC, 1 ETH.
FBI agent: We found some Monero transactions in your past, we think you're holding XMR and lying to an FBI agent about it. Off to jail for you.
They need evidence
>You: 2 BTC, 1 ETH.
bzzzt
You're supposed to remain silent, not expose yourself by lying.
The crimes in question involved real estate deals with paper trails. They also have transcripts of conversations where the partners acknowledge what they're doing is wrong and could potentially trigger an FBI investigation.
Monero won't save anyone from that.
The first part you can do with any cryptocurrency, the anonymity provided by Monero may allow you to succeed at the second.
Has this been tested in court? If your crypto is stored in a brainwallet, you can invoke fifth amendment rights to prevent that from being divulged.
Edit: Civil asset forfeiture already runs afoul of the fifth, and no one seems to care:
> nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
"right to remain silent" is literally for that purpose. There are ways around it, if the government grants you immunity, but it's still far more onerous than freezing a bank account or invoking civil forefiture. Not to mention, disclosure of the key and/or wallet addresses may plausibly result in you incriminating yourself (eg. by proving that you bought drugs on silk road or whatever).
The article is literally titled "The Day Amazon Sent the FBI to Take My Family’s Bank Accounts" (emphasis mine). I'd imagine the FBI would have a much harder time to seize someone's crypto wallet than freezing their bank accounts.
> After they knew we had no money to pay for legal representation [due to the asset seizure], Amazon’s lawyers sued my husband in federal court. If we can’t afford to defend ourselves, Amazon automatically wins.