After Having His Motel Seized by the Government, Victim of Civil Asset Forfeiture Reflects on His Fight. Like our favorite bumper sticker says: Don’t steal, the government hates competition.
And when Caswell filed a lawsuit challenging the seizure, a DEA agent confirmed his suspicions.
During depositions, Special Agent Vincent Kelly told lawyers that he was tasked with finding properties to be forfeited. Often times, he said, the agency wouldn’t go after a property unless an owner had more than $50,000 worth of equity.
Motel Caswell was worth $2 million.
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This actually turns "innocent until PROVEN Guilty" on it's head. The way the government works now your automatically guilty until you prove your innocence beyond a shadow of a doubt. The criminals in this case are the DOJ/DEA/BATF/IRSS and other the other agencies that are run but demotwinks and are out of control. Too bad the supreme court or another federal court does not put an end to this shit. But Judges are too busy ruling against non gay bakeries, and school districts with no transgender bathrooms to look into it.
It should be a simple task to fix this problem - just prohibit seizure of assets until the owner of the assets is convicted of a crime. However, when Congress is involved there is never a simple way for the government to adjust it's revenue collection mechanisms.