Loretta Lynch’s Money Pot: Someone Should Ask the AG Nominee About the Hirsch Brothers.
http://online.wsj.com/articles/loretta-lynchs-money-pot-1416615114?mod=hp_opinion
Prosecutors have taken a yen to civil forfeiture laws, which they’ve used to shore up state and municipal budgets with sums from confiscated private property. One happy joiner is Attorney General nominee Loretta Lynch, whose U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York has been an enthusiastic grabber of private assets.
Prosecutors love the practice because it allows them to seize cash and property before the target is charged with a crime. Intended to be used against drug dealers and their ill-gotten gains, the law has become an all-purpose cash machine for police departments and prosecutors who often make forfeiture calls based not on the suspected crime or the perpetrator but on the desirability of the available goods to be seized.
For Jeffrey, Richard and Mitch Hirsch, three brothers in Long Island, the law allowed the federal government to drain their bank account while never charging them with a crime. In May 2012 the feds confiscated $446,651.11 from the account the brothers use for deposits from their 27-year-old Bi-County Distributors, which stocks convenience stores in the region with candy and snack food.
According to the federal government, the brothers came under suspicion because of the frequent small deposits they made in the bank. Under federal law, banks are required to report cash deposits of more than $10,000 at a time to the Internal Revenue Service. Frequent deposits beneath the $10,000 threshold can also trigger federal scrutiny on suspicion the depositors are seeking to evade federal oversight for crimes like money laundering or drug trafficking.
The Hirsch brothers run a small business that deals in small amounts of cash, a fact that the government surely noticed, since they were never charged with a crime. But more than two years after the government grabbed the hundreds of thousands of dollars, none of it has been returned. According to the Institute for Justice, which is representing the family in a lawsuit, the government has also denied the Hirsches a prompt hearing on the forfeiture, putting it in violation of the 2000 Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act.
Ms. Lynch’s office is a major forfeiture operation, bringing in more than $113 million in civil actions from 123 cases between 2011 and 2013, according to the Justice Department. This is a trend across the country. Under a program known as equitable sharing, state and local law enforcement also get a piece of federal civil forfeiture actions. Between 2003 and 2011, annual payments from that program rose to $450 million from $218 million, according to the Government Accountability Office.
The asset seizure threatened the Hirsch business, which relies on cash flow to pay vendors and other overhead. But for the government, the financial incentives of civil forfeiture have trumped concerns about the due process rights of citizens. The prospect of a big payday is leading to abuses, and law enforcement has profited from a system that treats citizens as guilty until they can prove their innocence.
Ms. Lynch will get her nomination hearing in a few weeks. Someone should ask when she thinks the Hirsches deserve theirs?
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