Civil asset forfeiture originated from (and kinda made sense in the context of) dealing with smuggling. Its expansion to all sorts of other situations (such as this one) are abominable perversions of justice though.

Civil asset forfeiture is wild shit. John Oliver had a great episode on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kEpZWGgJks

They make criminal accusations against your property and not against you, and because of that, you have no rights or recourse. This is just blatant nonsense under the US legal system, but that's kind of irrelevant.

Civil forfeiture was introduced to take houses and cars from drug dealers as part of the War on Drugs, which was really started as war on minorities and hippies. The government wants to take stuff from drug dealers, so it gets to do it (see legal realism: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/legal_realism).

I can’t imagine ever working for a company like that and being capable of falling asleep at night.