ONLY THEY WERE SUSPECTED OF MONEY LAUDERING
Having cash is not a sufficient “cause.”
Anyone having any amount of money would otherwise qualify for this brand of confiscation. It is a perversion of Law to take any situation as the cause of illegal activity and work back to the possible crime, when no crime was initially identified. For instance, driving to the store cannot be considered evidence of a crime because it’s possible you stole the money to buy your ten year old car. Nor can a phone call to your mother be evidence of a crime, because you could have illegally obtained a landline phone from criminal drug sales, without any evidence of theft or drug sales or drug sales.
They needed to identify the activity fueling the cash, not strike out at the cash.
Everyone with boxes in the building, even when the FBI didn’t know who they were or what they would find in the boxes?!?