FBI seized $40k from Linda Martin without charging her with a crime

https://reason.com/2025/07/28/the-fbi-took-her-40000-without-explaining-why-she-fought-back-and-lost/

by fortran77 • 12 months ago

219 109 12 months ago

reason.com

tobyhinloopen2• 12 months ago

USA, the land of the free!

vincheezel• 12 months ago

whoever told you that is your enemy

zeroonetwothree• 12 months ago

As bad as CAF is I wouldn’t say it’s directly impinging on “freedom”. In fact it may be preferable to arresting a person in some cases so that could be said to be an argument in favor.

b1123• 12 months ago

Taking your stuff is indeed infringing upon freedom, and money is indeed "stuff". And money is how you pay for food, and housing, so doubly infringing.

watwut2• 12 months ago

Wut, it is very directly impinging on freedom.

chillingeffect• 12 months ago

Congratulatulions, you're in the running for Apology of the Year.

Jtsummers3• 12 months ago

It may be preferable to lose your property in exchange for not getting arrested, but that's like saying I'd rather get pickpocketed than beaten and robbed. Most people would rather their legal property remain their legal property.

tobyhinloopen2• 12 months ago

As long as it doesn’t happen to you, am I right? Surely theft by government without trial only happens to those that deserve it

esbranson10• 12 months ago

It's a holdover from Europe, which means most countries in the world have a form of it. Mexico, that socialist, gun-control utopia, is probably the best example. If another country besides the US ever gets something like PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records) from the 1980s, they would have a clue.

Ignorance is bliss, but the US is probably still better.

marcosdumay3• 12 months ago

Are you trying to say that most countries have something similar to civil asset forfeiture?

If so, that's absolutely wrong.

JohnMakin2• 12 months ago

The title is a bit misleading and seems to imply she didn't get her savings back - she did, but the suit she filed saying it violated her rights lost.

Edit: title seems to have been edited since.

Etheryte2• 12 months ago

The title doesn't say nor imply anything about her getting it back though? It says her assets were seized which is correct.

peeters• 12 months ago

The article itself has the title:

The FBI Seized Her $40,000 Without Explaining Why. She Fought Back Against That Practice—and Lost

I think it's decent, but still a bit ambiguous. Less ambiguous than if it just said "She Fought Back and Lost". My initial assumption formed by the title was still that she didn't get her money back.

indigodaddy• 12 months ago

She was very lucky to get it back. Probably the only reason was they hoped she would drop the suit.

bandyaboot• 12 months ago

And to add, the lawsuit didn’t lose on its merits, but on lack of jurisdiction.

Incipient• 12 months ago

I feel like for lack of jurisdiction, the courts should refuse to hear the case, rather than have it count as a "lost" case?

IncreasePosts3• 12 months ago

Not really. Dismissed isn't the same thing as losing. The suit couldn't go forward because they returned the money, so she has no damages to sue over. I wonder if you can sue for lawyer fees...they took her money and made her hire a lawyer to get it back "willingly", something she wouldn't have had to do if they didn't take the money in the first place.

colechristensen• 12 months ago

The next person to try might try to get standing by claiming the loss of $40k lost the opportunity to gain interest or something along those lines.

qingcharles3• 12 months ago

It depends what her suit asked for in "relief." Sometimes you can get punitive damages, even if the money was returned. Or I've sometimes got the money I wanted but continued the part of the suit for declaratory judgment (e.g. to force the government to declare they violated my rights).

superkuh2• 12 months ago

Not unexpected. The FBI has generally been a gang filled with thieves for at least 20 years. I'm not old enough to know if it was always like this.

It takes a lot of guts, and some real resources, to fight back when the FBI violates you like this. I never even considered it after some FBI stole all my computers(*1) and then, when 10 years later they gave them back, all my bitcoin was missing (the files and OS and everything there; the wallet was just wiped and replaced w/blank one with no transactions).

ref 1. My apartment was raided and burgled by the FBI as part of a 50+ person cross-country fishing expedition warrant looking for wikileaks members to squash political dissent in 2011. I was never charged with a crime or even indicted.

b1123• 12 months ago

If you have your public address, you should be able to see if the coin is thieved away.

If so, there are many a lawyer that would pro bono that I presume, especially with the price of bitcoin today.

superkuh2• 12 months ago

They replaced the entire wallet. The new wallet has no transactions at all while mine should've had many many dozens. So there were no addresses to check. I certainly didn't memorize them back then.

As for stirring trouble again with a lawsuit: I definitely don't want saurons eye back upon me. I just can't handle that kind of stress. Even if I'm in the right and it'd be a life changing amount of money. Even posting about it here on HN makes my anxiety spike and me start sweating. Just typing this kind of thing in public is risky.

It takes a strong person to stand up to the FBI. I wish Linda Martin all the luck and support. Hopefully they don't use her fighting back as a reason to target her for more harassment.

lostmsu• 12 months ago

Sorry, but I can't simply believe an account like this. Did you sue them to recover the damages?

masfuerte• 12 months ago

Your privilege is showing.

esbranson10• 12 months ago

I can never tell if it's far left or far right, they use the same hyperbole. They even hate the same people.

IncreasePosts3• 12 months ago

Why would the FBI "take" your wallet without the password?

Just to be petty? Why would someone assume you didn't have a backup?

I'd guess some bug in your wallet app zeroed it out, if this even happened.

Why'd the FBI take your computers?

g-b-r• 12 months ago

Did you notice the wikileaks mention?

bell-cot• 12 months ago

Yeah. In theory, the Constitution very clearly says that that kinda stuff is utterly verboten.

In practice, the Courts (supposedly sworn to uphold that Constitution) will happily accept 'most any hare-brained theory, so long is the bottom line is that the gov't and its chums are free to do as they wish unto the weak and expendable.

And this situation is nothing like unique to the past 2-3 decades. Nor to the Federal gov't. Nor to the US of A. I'd bet it was SOP in most places, back when the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Hammurabi was first being written down.

Simulacra• 12 months ago

Civil forfeiture is just one of those things that needs to die. Entire police department, prosecutors office, are exclusively funded by those funds. They have a gross incentive to violate peoples rights and take their money.

wahnfrieden3• 12 months ago

Police in the states steal more than all thieves combined. (The only other category which also steals more than burglars are employers through wage theft.) And that is just based off very incomplete data as we lack transparency into most civil forfeiture at the local municipality level.

The money also does not go back into public service use. It's often funneled into items such as F-350 trucks for personal use, commemorative Super Bowl badges, or premium salmon-jerky dogfood (actual recent examples from Georgia).

ljf4• 12 months ago

Anyone down voting, can you provide proof that proves the opposite?

I know wage theft is massive (world over).

FuriouslyAdrift• 12 months ago

It's a nasty little tool that became huge during the 1980's cut-all-budgets-but-war-on-drugs era.

The public LOVED it because it was used to nail all those drug kingpins... (remember all the ferraris and speedboats the undercover cops had on Miami Vice. It wasn't fiction)

joshuaheard• 12 months ago

Exactly. Now that the War on Drugs is thankfully over, this tool is being used on everyday Americans who are not criminals. It should be outlawed.

croes• 12 months ago

People love it when laws don’t matter unless they are affected.

BizarroLand• 12 months ago

And it is a violation of the 4th Amendment for it to even exist in the first place.

The fourth Amendment: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

They're being sneaky and skirting around it by charging objects with crimes, but everyone knows that is such bullshit that it's the kind of stupid fuckery that would have been pulled in the Spanish Inquisition.

thijson• 12 months ago

They can also destroy your home in pursuit of a suspect without having to then repair the damage made.

https://www.9news.com/article/news/local/greenwood-village-h...

tehwebguy• 12 months ago

Another case taken on by the same group, Institute for Justice!

seanw4442• 12 months ago

And qualified immunity. It's not an excuse for plebs to be ignorant of the law, but if it's not spelled out word for word to the police, they get to claim that obviously heinous violations of rights were not "clearly established boundaries" and get off completely scot-free. Rules for thee but not for me.

xyst• 12 months ago

People have been crying foul about civil asset forfeiture for decades.

However nothing has been done yet because it’s yet another tool used to control the population. The current powers in government and their billionaire owners do not want civil asset forfeiture to disappear.

Thus part of the reason we are stuck in this endless "culture war" when we should be aiming our frustration at the billionaire class.

watwut2• 12 months ago

It has nothing to do with billionaire owners. It was "law and order" agenda that has literally zero to do with them.

iachimoe• 12 months ago

“Why me?”, she may well have asked…

jmyeet• 12 months ago

The real lesson here is you can use mental gymnastics to interpret the constitution any way you want. As such, judges are inherently political actors.

Civil asset forfeiture should be a direct and obvious breach of the Fourth Amendment, specificially "unreasonable search and seizure" but no, the law has contorted civil asset forfeiture to be OK because money is property and property has no constitutional rights.

The police exist to protect the wealthy and their property. The police as an institution began as slave catchers (ie returning slaves, being "property", to their owners). Even the FBI has its origin in the Mann Act [1], also known as the White Slave Traffic Act. Basically, it was anti-misagenation.

More generally, if you look at any important course case, mainly Supreme Court precedents, just look at a decision with the lens of how the wealthy will benefit and you'll be able to prodict the outcome with at least a 90% accuracy.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mann_Act

lagniappe• 12 months ago

The police exist to protect the wealthy and their property.

As a thought experiment, what would happen if they existed to protect the inverse segment and their property?

I-M-S• 12 months ago

The inverse would be to use the monopoly on violence to punish those who wish to use property for their self-interest at the expense of the common good.

Basically imagine police throwing in jail people who declare a plot of land as belonging to them, or someone who has seized the means of production and is now pocketing all the profits.

potato37328423• 12 months ago

The police are muscle that applies violence to advance the interests of the state. They only protect the wealthy insofar as that serves the interest of the state. The interests of the wealthy are generally fairly aligned with the state for various reasons. There is a subtle but important distinction between that and "serving the rich".

krapp• 12 months ago

They only protect the wealthy insofar as that serves the interest of the state.

In a capitalist society, that's tautological. The interests of the wealthy are the interests of the state.

mfer• 12 months ago

That died last week, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia dismissed the suit for lack of jurisdiction.

If the issue is one of jurisdiction, did they file the case in the wrong court?

Following local news, I've seen the case where a case is closed because it was filed in the wrong court. A different court had jurisdiction in the matter. I wonder if that's what happened in this case.

CGMthrowaway• 12 months ago

There are different types of jurisdiction. Subject-matter, personal, venue, procedural, etc.

In this case, reading the opinion w/dismissal, there were two factors involved:

1) The court determined her individual claim was moot because the FBI had already discontinued the forfeiture proceedings & returned her seized property, with interest, before the appeal

2) Her class claim was also dismissed because no class had been certified before her individual claim became moot

0xfffafaCrash• 12 months ago

If you read the judgement it basically says that because the FBI eventually returned the money, she no longer has a live interest as an individual.

They also denied that she’s part of some well defined class for a class action. It’s not like they are saying there’s some other court she can go to.

US courts are generally infamous for denying justice whenever they see fit using technicalities like “standing” and other procedural grounds.

Environmental law violations, illegal surveillance programs, civil asset forfeiture like here, and constitutional violations are quite often practically impossible to get courts to address, especially if parts of the US government are the defendant.

potato37328423• 12 months ago

If you read the judgement it basically says that because the FBI eventually returned the money, she no longer has a live interest as an individual.

This is how NYC dodged a Bruen type ruling for so long.

qingcharles3• 12 months ago

Jurisdiction is a complicated word. What most people think of as jurisdiction is talking about law enforcement -- "you're out of your jurisdiction" -- to mean they are operating outside their geographical area.

That same term in law suits is called "venue", when you've filed in the wrong county, for instance.

alphazard• 12 months ago

I know there is an anti-cryptocurrency sentiment on this site. But this is one of the many "political" problems, that is being transformed into a mere technical problem.

plorg• 12 months ago

How is that true? The FBI can, has, and does seize crypto assets with no more or less proof than in this case.

seanw4442• 12 months ago

It can be easier to hide or obfuscate your crypto assets if you do it correctly, than physical cash. Key word being correctly.

yieldcrv• 12 months ago

It gives the option of better self custody for that attack vector.

There are court filings where they included seized Monero wallets, and had no idea of the balance, no idea of the how to access the wallet due to lack of password, and most importantly, no proof that the balance they THINK they seized is still there

since you can retain access in multiple ways and can move funds from that wallet, that means the FBI seized a copy of a lock where funds were ostensibly behind. But no key, and not the only lock.

You can also use Monero as an intermediary mixer to fund anonymous wallets in other currencies. Since program and smart contract platforms have so many other assets to hold, like stablecoins. The governemnt won't seize those, while the government will seize your exchange accounts and the transparent wallets you transferred to from the exchange accounts. You want to unlink your assets.

This has worked for 10 years consecutively, and Monero has increased its security and continues to as computation performance improves.

It is likely that more blockchains go opaque with opt-in transparency, as computation continues to improve.

jdietrich• 12 months ago

Government agencies can - and frequently do - seize crypto. The US government now holds around 1% of all BTC, solely as a result of asset seizures.

duped• 12 months ago

I mean in this specific case, just depositing it in a bank normally would have also prevented the problem. Storing $40k in cash anywhere is a bad idea.

It's not an illegal idea though, the government had no right to take it. But also what if the bank burns down, gets robbed, etc etc etc. Most security boxes aren't insured so you're screwed. And if you're paying to insure your cash, why not put it into a savings account and make the bank pay you for it.

jimt12342• 12 months ago

Seems I have to periodically re-post this old comment because civil forfeiture is still a thing, and it still sucks. Re-reading it gets my blood boiling. My ex's brother was a good guy; his life was destroyed because the Modesto Police Department (and the sheriffs) were crooked AF.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17395675#17398314

ljf4• 12 months ago

That is wild - I'm not a 'defund the police' person, but at times like this, reading this story, that I fully understand the intent. It isn't about being unpoliced or lawless, it's about rejecting the system as it exists today and building something better and new.

If you have experience of behaviour like this, I understand that leaning.

OldfieldFund• 12 months ago

I understand that too.

But no matter what we do this is an unsolvable problem of policing/judicial system. There will always be people who are falsely accused/falsely convicted. Let's say less than 1%, as a hypothetical. Do we accept that due to that we might be reducing crime by a lot? That's a question society has to answer.

I think the best solution here is not focusing on policing/courts, but making sure that everyone in the society is content, so that they don't commit crimes. Happy people with resources a typical human wants probably don't commit many crimes.

esbranson10• 12 months ago

Given that Modesto is a Democratic Party stronghold since the 1990s, wouldn't defunding the Democrats be less destructive? If the government and their police are corrupt, are they going to stop terrorizing the community if there are no police at all? That's an absurdly ignorant position. Has CHAZ and Mexico taught us nothing?

Hilift• 12 months ago

There are 3,144 counties in the US. Some of them in remote areas have a history of getting away with shakedowns. Places like Rawlins, Wyoming have probably had thousands of shakedowns since I-80 was built in 1956. Really a good idea to avoid those places at night.

ljf4• 12 months ago

It really is wild for me to think that I'd be at risk from the police like this, in any of the UK - but then again I'm a dull white guy.

I don't think the police have powers here to shake down anyone in this way (imprison maybe, but not shakedown like this).

Land of the free?

sitzkrieg• 12 months ago

what on earth did you have in mind to pick rawlins? cheyenne, evanston, etc have made industry out of plucking out of state plates probably

LocalH• 12 months ago

Nothing but legalized thuggery.

ACAB, because non-bastard cops don't last long in the field. Cops that break the "thin blue line" and push back against this type of thing get ostracized.

kurthr• 12 months ago

That one bad apple done spoiled the barrel.

moralestapia• 12 months ago

Crazy story. I believe you, the judicial system can be extremely vile. I once had to deal with an unfounded accusation, and it took me a while to clear my name.

I can see how people with little or no money could get dragged into it, their lives likely destroyed. No one really cares, which makes it even worse.

qingcharles3• 12 months ago

I've spent hundreds of hours in civil forfeiture court watching cases. It can be a real shitshow. The first thing to remember is that a lot of civil forfeiture starts before a court case is even filed.

In Illinois the district attorney will send you a notice saying they have seized your property and you have 14 days to dispute it in writing by filing a specific (confusing) type of form (which they tell you they will neither provide to you or assist you in any way to complete it). If you fail to notice the form, or if you can't figure it out, or file it late, then your stuff is gone. Dead. The form just means they now have to file a suit and serve you, and now the process starts a second, more complicated road where you have to go to court, file an appearance, potentially pay a lawyer, file motions and maybe go to trial.

99% of time once it goes to court the gov will sit down and have an informal negotiation with you to pay you not to go to trial on the case. The gov attorneys I knew all had an 80% figure. They would always start by saying "Look, we'll give you half your money back right now. I'll write you a check, this matter is over, you never need to come to court again." I would tip off everyone I could that the gov would go to 80% without a fight.

I've seen some funny ones. A dope dealer. They'd taken $150K in dope money. It was definitely dope money. But here they are telling him "Look, we'll give you $90K of it back right now, straight into your bank if you drop this. We'll also try to get you a year off your sentence too."

jimt12342• 12 months ago

My ex's brother's situation was in the early-90s, when civil forfeiture was - well, I don't think the legal concept was new, but the cops sure acted like it was. They kept telling his attorney that there was no process to challenge the forfeiture, and the attorney seemed to confirm that. He spent countless hours just trying to figure out how to proceed in court.

I think at one point his attorney got a court to basically order the cops to return his assets, but the cops flat-out refused. I think that's when the cops came with the offer of about 10% of the value of the seized assets (around $50K). His attorney, a close family friend, advised him to take it.

My ex's brother was absolutely innocent. And the whole process broke him. He had to move him and his family back into his parents' house while the situation unfolded. And that's why he took his family to live in Mexico. It's such a shame, too, because last I heard he was doing really well in Mexico; he opened a bunch of automated car washes. So, it sucks that a hard-working, entrepreneurial dude like him took his talents to another country because the corrupt-ass local cops wanted free shit.

darksaints• 12 months ago

We have been suffering from this problem for nearly 50 years now, due to ineffective supreme court checks and balances in the face of psychotically expansive executive interpretation of the law in the era of the war on drugs.

Americans will only do the right thing after they have exhausted all other options. Slavery, women's suffrage, jim crow laws, police brutality, civil forfeiture, reproductive rights, health care...we always seem to be among the last nations on the planet to figure out how to do things correctly. It's almost like our constitution is fatally flawed and designed for oppression rather than freedom.

jofla_net• 12 months ago

and there are too many individualists. Its great for settling a new land, but once established they refuse too look around and see community.

c222• 12 months ago

Just browsing through [0] it seems the US began abolishing slavery before it was even a country.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_abolition_of_slave...

SapporoChris• 12 months ago

What does that matter? The country still engaged in slavery for eight nine years, but had actually started in Colonial America in Virginia in 1619. So, in Virginia slavery was legal from 1619 to 1863. Yes, a petition was filed in Pennsylvania in 1688. How is this relevant?

SilverElfin• 12 months ago

This is just straight up theft. Obviously people are getting something for themselves out of it. It needs to be banned and investigated retroactively, with fines and jail times for all.

insane_dreamer• 12 months ago

Civil forfeiture is one of those things that makes my blood boil every time I read about it. It is so unconstitutional, if not literally then in spirit, that I simply cannot understand how we as a society have continued to put up with it.

djrj477dhsnv2• 12 months ago

Because the victims are often enough "bad people", so it's politically easy to sell to the masses.

FBI seized $40k from Linda Martin without charging her with a crime

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