Don't Drive While In Possession Of Cash! - Lehto's Law Ep. 2.52

hello and welcome once again to Latos law I'm Steve lay to turn it law on state of Michigan we're practicing on over 25 years in the fields of consumer protection and lemon law I often write about the stuff of places like Road and track calm and I've written a few books along the way so here to talk about why you shouldn't drive while in possession of cash don't drive while in possession of cash we're top of the civil forfeiture laws and how those can be easily fixed and yet two topic not many people talk about they're shocked when they hear about it and then of course they realize it's such a simple fix they wonder why the government won't do anything about it and of course you'll understand why in seconds it's all about money so if you don't know what the civil forfeiture laws are and why they affect you or why you shouldn't drive with cash in your car let's suppose one day you wake up and you're going through Craigslist looking for buys you know good deals in other states and you see somebody lives that I don't suppose you're in Michigan like I am you see someone in Ohio who's got a really cool car for sale you call the person you look at the pictures online and it looks like it might be a good deal but having listened to me before you understand you never buy a car sight unseen so you're going to take a road trip to Ohio and the guy says by the way the cars will be ten thousand dollars and I don't take credit cards I don't take money orders all I take is cash and that's because he listens to me also so you get ten thousand dollars in cash you stick it in your pocket you hop in your car you're driving to Ohio somewhere across the county line or the state line and Ohio state trooper pulls you over because you got Michigan plates in your car I mean he pulls you over because he says you made an illegal or improper lane change while back and you don't remember doing that so for whatever reason the trooper asks you to get out of the car and he notices a huge bulge in your pocket and he says what is that in your pocket young man and you say oh it's just money and he says may I see it and you pull it out it's a big old wad of cash ten thousand dollars $50 bills it's about yay thick trooper says let me see that he takes it from you and goes get back in your car keep your hands where I can see them I got to make some phone calls and radio calls and do whatever I do back in my car and he comes back a little bit later he says well here's the deal we're going to let you go today because I've decided that that lane change you made back there was not that improper but we're keeping your money because we think we being a state of Ohio apparently we think that it is the proceeds of a drug operation you're obviously a criminal so we're going to keep that money and too bad if you don't like it and the cop drives off with your money and now you're sitting by the side of the road going well I didn't do anything wrong all I did is I had some cash on me and besides it now I can't buy my car so you go back to wherever you came from which I believe I said was Michigan at the beginning of this story when he contacted an attorney and the attorney tells you that well what happened to you is called civil forfeiture they've taken your money from you because they've deemed it was the product of an illegal criminal enterprise and they don't need to have a hearing they don't need to have a trial they just get to keep your money and if you want your money back you've got to file a lawsuit against either the state of Ohio or the municipality that took your money and the problem is that if you win that case all you get is your money back you say well Steve isn't it isn't it a good deal no because you've got to pay your attorneys and by the way it's going to take you six months to a year to do that so if you pay an attorney $10,000 to get your money back and it takes a year that means you'll break even a year from now and when people hear about civil forfeiture they actually think attorneys or journalists or whoever is talking about it they think we're making this stuff up it happens everywhere in all 50 states of america and it's such a weird and convoluted law that it's then getting more attention lately there's a very very simple fix but the government the politicians don't want to fix it because they get to keep your money and in fact John Oliver has done stories on this I'm pretty sure that all the other slightly off offbeat news organizations have covered it and civil forfeiture laws are a major problem in America and they need to be fixed and and like I said one of the problems is the police department that sees your money gets to keep some of it they've got to give some of it either to the state or the feds depending on which law they claim they seized it under but the police departments are incentivized that is they're paid to take your money because they get a portion of it they basically get a finder's fee so why wouldn't they just pull everyone over and take all of their money well it hasn't gotten that bad yet but it's gotten pretty bad and the way we know it's gotten bad as the Washington Post did a big article on this about a year ago maybe two years ago and the post actually crunched some numbers because part of the problem is that the agencies that seize the money aren't terribly transparent about it and they don't actually tell people by the way here's much money we stole from law-abiding citizens last year so the Washington Post discovered that since 9/11 which is basically when these laws got really radically changed to be bad for people on the side of the road there have been 61 thousand cash seizures cash seizures without search warrants or even indictments just through the equitable sharing program and that's the federal program that the feds started where they said basically hey if you pull over someone by the side of the road and seize their money we'll we'll share it with you we'll share someone else's money with you if you take it and those 61,000 seizures added up to more than two and a half billion dollars with a B okay state and local authorities got to keep more than 1.7 billion so they got more than half of the money and the Homeland Security justice and federal agencies received eight hundred million dollars and half of those seizures were less than eight thousand eight hundred dollars so that is the average person that was involved in this gets pulled over by the side of the road they got nine grand in cash on our eight grand in cash on them the cops just say well we're going to take your money from you because it's the product of an illegal criminal enterprise and there's nothing you can do about it so if you if you want your money back sue us well only one-sixth that's one out of every six people who had their money taken even bothered to legally challenge us and it's not because they were guilty it's because of the cost of the legal actions when you sue the government but but they point out that in the 41 percent of the cases where they were challenged the government gave money back okay so in other words the government admitted forty percent forty percent of the time the government had to give money back because they had no right to take it but what about the five out of six people who didn't bother challenging it because the cost was too much and so everyone knows what's going on here okay the government is overreaching taking money from innocent people for the wrong reasons pocketing it and on the rare occasions to get challenged up we'll give it back to you sorry and of course you're out the legal fees that you spent trying to get your money back so it turns out the hundreds of state and local departments Drug Task Forces appear to rely on the seized cash basically to support or supplement their budgets so if you're a cash-strapped police department someplace but you've got a major highway passing through your jurisdiction you just put a couple troopers out there and pull people over all day long and look for cash when you find cash you just keep it go ahead well that's that's how we're to pay our bills this month it's it's it's pretty crazy agencies with police known to be participating in black asphalt have seen a jump in 32 percent in their seizures now what black asphalt is black asphalt is this group that got together created a website and its members only but you have to be a police department remember and they share information back and forth cross jurisdictions and across states and so if you are say in Arizona you can log on to black asphalt and find out about any money that might be heading into your state from some other Police Department if you off and they share information back and forth basically on how to seize money from innocent people and they often even post photographs where they show off how much money they've seized from people and they never say hey by the way we seized this money from innocent people but they did you know do routinely post these photographs bragging about all the money that they've seized and what's crazy about this is they give some examples in The Washington Post of people who had their money seized and there was for instance a Chinese American restaurant operator from Virgil who was pulled over for speeding on i-10 and Alabama they detained him for a couple hours and he was carrying $75,000 on him because he's going to buy a Chinese restaurant in Lake Charles Louisiana which of course is made famous in a song by the band but I digress and he there's no question who's going to buy this restaurant and in fact he had all the evidence to back it up it took him ten months to get his money back he did eventually get his money back but it cost him thousands of dollars in lawyer fees and of course he lost the restaurant deal so he's traveling to buy a restaurant he's carrying cash on him the police stopped him take the money and force him to sue them to get the money back and by the time he gets it back he loses his business deal another example a 40 year old Hispanic carpenter from New Jersey stopped an i-95 in Virginia because he had tinted windows and police said that he appeared to be nervous so they searched him and they took $18,000 in cash he had on him which was uh he was going to buy a used car and he hired a lawyer and he eventually got his money back but um it took him some time and of course he wasted all that money and the attorney like I've said before in America if you have to sue somebody and you sue them and win you normally have got to pay your own attorney fees and that's true in these cases that's one of the things that's so wrong with this another example is a 35 year old african-american owner of a small restaurant in Staunton Virginia was stunned when police took 17 thousand dollars from during a traffic stop in 2012 the government offered to settle the case with him by saying we'll give you half your money back if you agree not to sue us for the other half and he said no and he eventually got back all his money but he lost the business because he didn't have money to pay his bills and that's the kind of stuff that happens when they take your money from you and force you to sue them to get your own money back now what's causing people to really freak out about this they say wait this is America the government can just take my stuff without a hearing without suing me without charging you the crime and they can that's the crazy part the civil forfeiture laws make you sue them to get your stuff and you've got to prove that what they took from you is in us in essence innocent okay so the government takes your money from you and they don't file anything against you they just take your money from you so you've got to file the action to get your stuff back now I will tell you that that after the uproar over the Washington Post article a couple years ago and other articles that have appeared in different news organizations some states have stood up and said you know we're going to end this right now this is out of control we're going to end this the state of Michigan for instance announced that they were going to resolve this problem and they're to pass new laws so Michigan passed new laws about a year ago and the new laws change the burden of proof that the government's got to meet to keep confiscated property okay and it used to be they had to prove it by a preponderance more likely than not it was the result of bad activity they changed that to clear and convincing evidence and they claim that that right there's a fix and you say wait but I still gotta sue to get my stuff back yes you can still take my stuff about nerve in charge of the crime yes and I still do pay my own attorney fees yes okay this is not a fix for whatever reason people in Lansing and other state capitals love passing laws so they can say look we passed a law and it doesn't actually do much if anything yes if you have to sue to get your stuff back and you do go to trial on it you do have a slightly better burden of proof that you you know don't have to meet or meet depending how you want to look at it but it doesn't really solve the problem and in case you're curious Michigan police agencies that voluntarily reported this stuff years ago because they don't they didn't have to report it reported more than 20 million dollars in civil asset forfeiture just in one year but that is only on drug specific cases and that's only about ninety two percent of the agencies in Michigan because they weren't required to you know file anything and they didn't bother many of them don't they just they just take the money and they keep it so I'm Steve later I'm an attorney in the state of Michigan and I'm going to tell you what the extremely easy fix is for this somebody needs to actually start agitating along with me everyone actually ought to because there's nothing more frightening than the concept that the government can just take your stuff I mean at least the IRS makes you fill out a form and explain their rationale right the cop by the side of the road now just give me your money and by the way he's wearing a badge and a gun he's taking your stuff any other country in the world they'd call that robbery the fact that you get pulled over by somebody who's armed and they take your money robbery in America no it's civil forfeiture here is the simple solution you change the law and you say the government cannot keep your money unless you are convicted of a crime and to make sure there's a link between the money and the crime you have to ask the jury during the trial if you find this person guilty of this crime you must answer one more question was the seized money or property a product of that crime if yes government gets to keep the money if no government gives Beth the money because otherwise for instance they can pull you over for speeding or they can charge you with something else take your money and just say well you committed a crime or to keep your money so what you do very very simple like I said is you make it part of the law that says that the forfeiture is only valid if there's a crime for which there's a conviction and the jury or the judge whoever's asked to determine guilt or innocence in this case if the if that particular entity also determines that the seized property or cash is a product of that crime and so you have to say number one is there's no indictment if the person's never charged with a crime you must give them their stuff back ok this is America I'm innocent until proven guilty my stuff is innocent until proven guilty and that's the way the law should read but number two make it so that it's part of the verdict decision so that if the persons found guilty then they can be forced to surrender their stuff and by the way if you're not charged with a crime they have a certain amount of time within which to give you your money back I would say and I believe that if you are forced to do the government to get your stuff back and you win by definition it was wrongfully taken from you they the government should pay your attorney fees and your court costs it's the only way to level the playing field and to discourage police departments from overreach and just takin stuff by the side of the road so for the last 20 years 15 years primarily since 9/11 but it's been going on for years prior that wasn't as widely publicized there have been robberies at the side of the road committed by police departments and police agencies they've been overreaching taking too much stuff they know what everyone knows it it's been in the news and the laws in turn pass to quote-unquote protect us against our lame their toothless they don't do what they're supposed to do very simple solution so here's like I said what you got to do change the law and say that if there's no conviction they can't keep the money if there is a conviction then you have to determine is the stuff tied to the crime if yes then the government can keep it if not give it back and if I'm forced to sue to get it back my attorney fees and court costs should be paid by the losing party in that case it would be the government so that of course is why you shouldn't drive wild possession of cash and a better explanation of civil forfeiture and this simple solution of how it can be fixed I know it's an easy solution and that's why I know the government won't do it that's why no politicians won't do it I wish some politicians would stand up with a little bit of backbone and say hey you know something let's fix this it's wrong that at the side of the road cops can just take your money and keep it okay they're incentivized to keep your stuff that's wrong okay so somebody needs to step up and change that law I know it's not going to happen but I can dream can't I so again don't drive well in possession of cash that's a civil forfeiture problem and how it can be easily fixed questions or comments shooting my way Latos law comm le h TOS lawm i'm on twitter at Steve let's even ele HT up and of course it shows an iTunes stitcher SoundCloud pod being Google Play and YouTube unless of course they get pulled over by the side of the road and the cops take it from me I'll talk to you later bye-bye

Channel: Steve Lehto

Views: 676,186

Rating: 4.9087052 out of 5

Keywords: Lemon Law, Michigan, Attorney, Lawyer, Civil Forfeiture, Seized Assets, Corrupt Police, Corrupt Politicians

Id: Jr2oItXC1eM

Length: 17min 59sec (1079 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 26 2016