I remember a lengthy discussion of law enforcement seizing cash with no evidence of other crimes committed. However, I can’t find it so it was probably on the AO rather than here.
Apparently the locals have expanded beyond the traditional traffic stop and are searching carryons of travelers at the airport. If they find a large amount of cash on you, they take it. The police departments /agencies get to keep the proceeds.
A couple of noteworthy quotes from the article:
“Merely flying from Atlanta to Los Angeles is suspicious, according to multiple probable cause statements, because it’s a ‘known drug trafficking route’.”
Another one: “The DEA officially calls its stops and searches at airport gates, ‘cold consent encounters’. Passengers are free to end the discussion and walk away, according to the DEA, even if they’re unaware of those rights.”
These agents simply say they are doing a random search and don’t identify themselves. Up to you to know that they don’t have the right to do this unless you consent.
This is a frequent topic in the Lehto’s Law Youtube channel, basically just because civil asset forfeiture is so common. It’s apparently not uncommon for TSA to tip off the DEA if they see any cash coming through the TSA line. I’m also guessing that the whole “end the discussion and walk away” part doesn’t really work well in practice. I’d guess they have some right to detain someone who they deem, for whatever reason, suspicious. And just letting them go through your luggage might seem like a reasonable idea if you think you’d otherwise miss your flight. I’d think most people would never imagine the government could just take your money with absolutely no reason.
I’d probably take one for the team and deny them a search if they pull me aside. I am not willing to take one for the team by carrying 10K cash to see what happens. Of course I probably wouldn’t ever get pulled aside, as a clean cut white guy in their 50’s isn’t likely going to be the victim of a “random” search.
I probably wouldn’t resist a request by a uniformed TSA agent to “randomly” search my bags, but the first words out of my mouth if anyone else asks (or if someone who is not obviously a TSA agent is accompanying a TSA agent) probably would be “may I please see some identification?”
The TSA agent’s desire to search luggage is understandable, and I’m not going to be willing to risk missing the flight. However, anybody else, and I think I’m entitled to see a warrant or have the probable cause pointed out to me.
to be clear, I have been the recipient of multiple random TSA searches. I have no problem with that. I wouldn’t cause a problem with TSA if I wanted to fly again.
Related, I just recently saw a video of a TSA employee who was later fired just taking something like $200-300 out of a wallet going through the scanner. Plenty of cameras around and they knew. Very unlikely to have been the first time.
Personally if there’s any better option, I don’t take any cash I’m unwilling to lose through the airport. Between on my person or in my luggage, there is no safe option.
Geez on my trips to Africa I had thousands of dollars cash. First one went through ATL. It wouldn’t have occurred to me that there was a problem.
I think on my first trip the group brought $12,000 cash and there were 7 of us traveling together, so 5 of us carried $2,000 and 2 of us carried $1,000. We split it up in case anyone was robbed, so we wouldn’t lose it all if that happened.
One person arrived early and one was traveling separately from the group so we had $12,000 for 9 people. That was to cover meals, hotels, donations to many of the places we were going, supplies for our projects, and bags of groceries for the families of the sponsor children we visited. This was a 2.5 week trip. Not unreasonable IMO.
The second trip was 3 years later and the number of vendors accepting credit cards had increased dramatically. And there were only 7 of us on that trip. I was the treasurer but I think I only brought $3,000. Still… it never dawned on me that the feds would just steal it.