Re: Hmmm....
Actually, in the US, if you drive around with a lot of cash, it can be confiscated at a highway traffic stop, if the Police Officer has "reason to believe that it either was obtained illegally, or that it will somehow likely be used for an illegal purpose". How the police officer backs up that "belief", I don't know. But under US civil forfeiture laws, no crime has to be committed, no crime has to be proven, just your money is guilty.
I don't understand how the money can be guilty. I used to go and buy a used car with cash, way back when you could buy a decent used car for $2,500. But now it's more comlpicated.
These days, the safest way to do that seems to require several steps:
1) I go to the bank.
2) I call the police.
3) I ask the police officer to first ask the bank official if the money in my account appears to have any traces "of being guilty", and if the bank official declares my money to be innocent, then I ask the police to witness my withdrawal of e.g. $4,500 from my bank account.
5) I then ask the police officer to seal the wad of cash with an "official not guilty by US police seal", which expires within an hour, as they can't be sure what I might do with it..
6) I ask for a police escort to the used car dealer, so the police can witness the transaction.
7) I then pay the police their customary "witnessing fee", because, hey, it's a "user fee" and
I am wasting their time, and they could have gone after actual criminals in the meantime.
The above are the steps to buy a used car with cash in the USA, without running the risk of having
your cash taken away by police, with no trial, no crime, no problem. It's all very civil.
If any of this seems weird to you, then please research "US civil forfeiture laws", "US money laundering laws" and prove me wrong (except for the "witnessing fee" or "user fee", which could be mistaken for a bribe, and we don't want to get in trouble with the law.) If "civil forfeiture" works like that, I don't really want to encounter "US 'criminal forfeiture' laws".
I hereby pledge allegiance to humor, satire, wit, exaggeration, insanity, comedy, hilarity, silliness, goofinity, and to the astonishing laws that still stand and prompted me write this in the first place. I also plead not guilty to anything, because the spirits of Jonathan Swift and Mark Twain have entered my body against my will, and have declared themselves captains of my soul. I am trying to fight them off, but they won't let go. You could say, more or less, that I am writing this under "undue influence". So I am totally safe.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
