Be careful about flying with large amounts of cash. Civil forfeiture, while not as prevalent as it once was on a federal level, is still happening in some states.

Arizona is one of them.

Civil forfeiture is a nasty law which allows governments to seize cash or property from you, claim that you have to prove your innocence to get it back, and they are never required to charge you with a crime. This most commonly occurs when out-of-state cars are targeted on the road, which are believed to be carrying a lot of cash, such as popular highways to/from casinos.

This also occurs at airports sometimes, which is why you need to be careful about flying with a lot of cash, even though it's not illegal to fly domestically with large amounts of cash.

Jerry Johnson runs a small trucking business in North Carolina. He scraped together $39,500 to buy equipment in Phoenix. He brought that much cash with him, and it was seen in his luggage. He was then detained, and threatened with arrest unless he signed a "waiver", which made it easier to seize his cash without the ability to contest it.

Even had he not signed the waiver, they could have seized the cash.

Based upon this and other cases, Arizona is trying to pass a bill seriously reducing civil forfeiture, but it is now getting roadblocked in the state house.

https://ij.org/press-release/innocen...ms-are-gutted/


Really ugly story.

Also, you should be aware that a lot of small jurisdictions are once again using federal help to circumvent state law against civil forfeiture. This was made illegal in 2014, but became legal again in 2017.

Watch where you are driving when you have a lot of cash, and watch where you fly.


Only 14 of the 50 states have decent laws regarding civil forfeiture, with a seizure standard of "clear and convincing evidence" of a crime having been committed. Those "good" states are: Colorado, Minnesota, Nevada, Ohio, Utah, Vermont, California, Wisconsin, Connecticut, North Carolina, Montana, Nebraska, and New Mexico.

However, as I said, this doesn't mean a whole lot in smaller jurisdictions which use the federal government's help to circumvent state protections! However, these states are less likely to seize your cash at major airports.

Iowa is one of the more notorious civil forfeiture states, where cops are known to target out-of-state vehicles traveling to/from casinos. This also happened a lot in northern Nevada.