Posted on 08/22/2011 7:12:50 PM PDT by rabscuttle385
New York businessman James Lieto was an innocent bystander in a fraud investigation last year. Federal agents seized $392,000 of his cash anyway.
An armored-car firm hired by Mr. Lieto to carry money for his check-cashing company got ensnared in the FBI probe. Agents seized about $19 million—including Mr. Lieto's money—from vaults belonging to the armored-car firm's parent company.
He is one among thousands of Americans in recent decades who have had a jarring introduction to the federal system of asset seizure. Some 400 federal statutes—a near-doubling, by one count, since the 1990s—empower the government to take assets from convicted criminals as well as people never charged with a crime.
Last year, forfeiture programs confiscated homes, cars, boats and cash in more than 15,000 cases. The total take topped $2.5 billion, more than doubling in five years, Justice Department statistics show.
The expansion of forfeiture powers is part of a broader growth in recent decades of the federal justice system that has seen hundreds of new criminal laws passed. Some critics have dubbed the pattern as the overcriminalization of American life.
(snip)
The more than 400 federal statutes allowing for forfeiture range from racketeering and drug-dealing to violations of the Northern Pacific Halibut Act, according to a December 2009 Congressional Research Service report. The report shows that seizure powers were extended to about 200 of those laws in 2000 in a major congressional overhaul of the forfeiture system.
Top federal officials are also pushing for greater use of civil-forfeiture proceedings, in which assets can be taken without criminal charges being filed against the owner.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
The first federal criminal statute, signed into law on April 30, 1790, includes only a handful of offenses: treason, counterfeiting, piracy, and murder, maiming and robbery in federal jurisdictions. It fit on to two sheets of parchment, each around 27 inches by 22 inches, and was handwritten in iron gall ink.
After all, due process is a delusional block to the will of the people. Why should social justice be ensnared in the rules promoted by dead white slave owners and capitalists?
Guess maybe hiring the AAA Armored Car Company, and then letting them keep your cash in their safe, was not such a grand idea.
Might’ve had no choice, I don’t know.
The Rico Act was supposed to allow the government to seize assets of organized crime. The government has become the organized crime it was supposed to protect us from.
yep.
power corrupts and all that.
God bless the War on Drugs for making this possible. Anyone with more than 1000 bucks on them is obviously up to no good and deserves to be put in jail for life.
New tagline ...
Sick!
FUMR!!!
this why the Revolutionary war was started.....
federal government is the largest criminal enterprise in history , unaccountable to anyone and immune to any threats to it’s tyranny.
Today, iron gall ink is probably banned by the EPA/s;)
“Did you really think we want those laws observed?” said Dr. Ferris. “We want them to be broken. You’d better get it straight that it’s not a bunch of boy scouts you’re up against... We’re after power and we mean it... There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt. Now that’s the system, Mr. Reardon, that’s the game, and once you understand it, you’ll be
much easier to deal with.”
Yup!
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