LEA
Lear Corporation
stock NYSE

If you're ever pulled over with more than $5,000 cash you're at the whim of it being seized under a federal CAF, but anyone that actually gets criminal charges during/as a result of the traffic stop and has more than $1,000 on them they're also at risk. It's all but guaranteed if you're arrested for distribution-quantities of narcotics, but even charges unrelated to drugs open up the window of opportunity for seizure.
They're heavily incentivized to just seize and ask questions later because of how the asset forfeiture programs are structured. Even the 5k+ federal seizure involves a kickback to the local LEA that initiated the traffic stop, while the feds take the majority of it.
It looks like the statistics show somewhere around 60-76% of forfeitures are default judgements where the original owner doesn't contest it, either because it's indeed drug money or because they don't have a paper trail following it.
Many jurisdictions have a <10% success rate for contested seizures, but nationwide somewhere around 80-85% of seizures are settled in a way where the original owners agree to only recieve 50% of the original sum in order to avoid extensive legal fees that would otherwise surpass the original amount seized several times over.
The forfeited 50% either goes to the local LEA, the feds, or split between the two one way or another depending on the specific case.

If you're ever pulled over with more than $5,000 cash you're at the whim of it being seized under a federal CAF, but anyone that actually gets criminal charges during/as a result of the traffic stop and has more than $1,000 on them they're also at risk. It's all but guaranteed if you're arrested for distribution-quantities of narcotics, but even charges unrelated to drugs open up the window of opportunity for seizure.
They're heavily incentivized to just seize and ask questions later because of how the asset forfeiture programs are structured. Even the 5k+ federal seizure involves a kickback to the local LEA that initiated the traffic stop, while the feds take the majority of it.
It looks like the statistics show somewhere around 60-76% of forfeitures are default judgements where the original owner doesn't contest it, either because it's indeed drug money or because they don't have a paper trail following it.
Many jurisdictions have a <10% success rate for contested seizures, but nationwide somewhere around 80-85% of seizures are settled in a way where the original owners agree to only recieve 50% of the original sum in order to avoid extensive legal fees that would otherwise surpass the original amount seized several times over.
The forfeited 50% either goes to the local LEA, the feds, or split between the two one way or another depending on the specific case.