http://www.ca8.uscourts.gov/opndir/06/08/053295P.pdf
Facts of the case: Mexican (-american?) stopped in his car for routine traffic inspection. Lies to police about several things, police search car and find 124,700 in cash. Police dogs detect drugs on the bills (in a ‘control’ experiment the same dogs do not detect drugs on cash borrowed from various police officers – good doggies). Cash is seized by police under 21 U.S.C. ss881(a)(6).
The seized cash was initially deemed returnable to the claimants by the district court, but this was reversed on appeal and the cash was ultimately held subject to forfeiture to the government.
The court said that, prima facie, “the possession of a large sum of cash (in one case, $84,615) is strong evidence of a connection with drug activity”. Further, the totality of the circumstances – the unusual mode of travel (check), the inability to identify characters of the alleged transaction (check), false statements to police officers (check) and police dog alert (check) – leads most naturally to the inference of illegal drug activity.
Ouch. Mind you, in that case the claimants were Mexican dirt farmers, so things could go differently in the present case if our wealthy Japanese entertainer can show it is not unreasonable for her to carry that much cash. It’s going to be very interesting to see what argument she comes up with – if she trys to show that large cash transfers are not unusual for her then I think the IRS will be quite interested in what she has to say.
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