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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

I'm sure he wasn't a heroin dealer, but why was your brother carrying $80k?

This sort of question should not need to be answered, or raised. Carrying a lot of money around should not be grounds for suspicion.

Should the police take the money without cause? No. Can we question what he was up to? Yes. It's risky, as cash can be stolen from you with no recourse. It's also a very inconvenient way to pay someone, since it's physically large and would take a long time to count out.

I think you are vastly over estimating the size of 80K USD in $100 bills. Each bundle of $10K is about 1/2” thick. You can easily carry 80K in 100’s without looking out of place.

It'll fit comfortably in a shoebox.

No, I think raising the question is just fine: if you tell a story about someone carrying more money than most Americans ever have in their bank accounts in their entire lives, in cash, on their person, you're describing something extraordinarily unusual.

Again: I'm not saying he's a heroin dealer, and I said that specific to avoid this pointless preening about how it's everyone's right to carry large amounts of cash on them. Sure, I'm fine with that; in fact: I think you will find it difficult to find anyone to take the other side of that argument on HN (and HN is a big, complicated place, giving you some idea of just how banal that argument is.) So let's assume that's not what I'm talking about.

If it helps, though this isn't really my intent, assume my subtextual allegation is that this story is copypasta.

>if you tell a story about someone carrying more money than most Americans ever have in their bank accounts in their entire lives, in cash, on their person, you're describing something extraordinarily unusual.

I used to play poker semi-professionally. Traveling with upwards of $50k wasn't an uncommon thing at all among the people I knew.

I knew a card counter who was detained at an airport carrying well in excess of $100k and, comically, the money and the inside of his bag were covered in white powder at the time. Because he was a nerdy jewish kid, they believed his story that it was powdered caffeine (it actually was) and sent him on his way.

There's a rather famous court case about civil asset forfeiture involving somebody who had just closed on their house for cash. Cops stopped the car, decided the money was dirty, stole it.

Carrying a ton of cash is unusual, but does really happen.

Yes: this definitely happens. I'm not making a broader argument about the legitimacy of civil asset forfeiture.

The key point in my comment is "closed on their house for cash." It isn't unheard of to carry around such a massive pile of cash even if you aren't a drug dealer.

The end of this particular story was "charged with several felonies, plead guilty and received probation" so it's safe to assume this cash wasn't a civil asset forfeiture, and certainly wasn't from the sale of a house.

They charged him with money laundering. He plead guilty to attempted money laundering. I don't know the exact laws he was charged with breaking.

Maybe it was happening in the past, but nowadays you can’t really sell a house for paper cash. Title & Escrow companies will require settled money on a verified checking account from a buyer and they will not deliver you duffel bag of cash - they will deposit into an account of your choice.

There are stories everywhere. They are very varied. So no, one more story is actually detrimental, making the reader feel good "Oh, some silly unusual situation I would never find myself in". This is already all too common a position "Well, I have nothing to hide".

Sure, people carry around cash all the time, there isn't a problem with that - but carrying around $80,000 in cash is highly unusual. It's not something normally done. I don't know anyone who would travel with that kind of cash because it could be stolen, by cops or by anyone.

When receiving a large amount of cash for a legitimate sale of something, or other kind of legit transaction taking place, the first thing most people would probably think to do is to go to their bank branch in the local area and deposit the money ASAP, and then get on the train. Large deposits are tracked, I think you have to fill out a form, so maybe he just didn't want to have the tax man look at what's going on (points to possibly shady dealings).

The fact is that walking around with $80,000 in cash is a huge risk (unless you're a billionaire - but then you're probably not taking a train), it's not something most people would typically do. It appears a bit shady without OP giving any other details. He claims it wasn't for heroin, but what if he's purposely omitting that it was actually for cocaine. I'd like to know more about OP's story, but I doubt we'll get any answers.

Hanging out on HN and arguing in favor of the gestapo is unusual.

Shall we send them over to your place next, so they can tell you what exactly you have to hide?

When I see these kinds of arguments I realize how important and how fragile the rule of law is. People jump to conclusions very readily and are easy to whip into a frenzy by malicious authorities.

You're trolling - I never "argued in favor of the gestapo". I specifically called out the reason why it's not great to carry around $80,000 in cash is that anyone can steal that cash from you if you're carrying it around, not just "the gestapo".

Anyone can steal it, sure. And anyone who did so would be a criminal, unless they were the police.

The fact that it's unusual is not relevant. Or it's relevant in that - pretty much by definition - these situations are unusual. It's not okay to violate people's rights merely because "unusual". It's not okay to demand a good story just because "unusual". Instead we get the all too common a reasoning "well, I don't play cards", or "well I have nothing to hide". None of this is relevant. The opposite is true: if you believe in freedom of speech for another example, then it's only for socially uncommon speech that it will matter. In particular, speech that few people would support. If cash is legal, it's only in unusual situation that it has to be particularly protected by the law.

I never once advocated that it's okay to violate people's rights. You must have misread my comment.

The fact is, if you want to keep your money safe, don't walk around with large sums of it. Period. It's really that simple.

Not sure about that. If he took the money out of a bank, there are forms to be filed. If he received it from someone in a trade or business, there are forms to be filed. If he found it and was on the way to the bank to deposit it, there are forms to be filed.

The money didn't magically appear in his pockets.

Which forms are legally required to have on file whilst traveling to the bank to deposit it?

It's a free country and people should be allowed to transport money with them. He was on his way back to Northern California to pay someone for some stuff that had been fronted + re-up

In cash? Did you tell him "this is a bad idea, you should wire the money instead"? What if he had been mugged? What if he lost the suitcase? I arranged the transportation of $25,000 in cash (I sold a car, it was a gag, I was very young, and it was an extraordinarily bad idea that cost me thousands of dollars), and just as a physical object that's pretty big. Also: where did he get the cash from? I had trouble getting it.

At larger banks, there’s usually a teller that has their own cubicle with a locked door. They buzz you in in and you ask for amounts > 1k.

Sure, nobody (here) would disagree that people should be able to carry as much cash as they want without fear of illegal search but the whole “he plead guilty and had multiple years of probation” rightly makes people wonder what did he plead guilty to? since it clearly wasn’t civil asset forfeiture if they charged him with criminal charges and then he plead guilty to criminal charges.

so it for was drugs, just not heroin.

>He was on his way back to Northern California to pay someone for some stuff that had been fronted + re-up.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this very much sounds like "drugs". If that's the case, your point about him never being involved in "heroin" sales is now just semantics, because he's still engaged, to some degree, in the movement of drugs between states.

It's not semantics because that was their justification for the search. They claimed to have been following him since Chicago even though he had only got on the train in Fargo. They also claimed that the money was from the sale of heroin, another lie. I'm not saying what he was involved in was legal, I'm saying that he was targeted and arrested on false pretenses.

I'm thinking they saw a young guy on a cross country trip who had purchased a ticket on short notice and decided to go after him. Maybe he was "acting suspicious" if he was nervous, but I kind of doubt that; he used to take beta blockers for that type of thing and what he was doing wasn't really out of the ordinary for him. Maybe they saw he had a history of taking the train that route. I don't know. But I do know that they lied in their justification for making contact with him.

>It's a free country

Obviously, it isn't.

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