Originally Posted by
VegasCableGuy
Exactly. Even if he makes it past the airport, he can easily have the money taken by police on the drive home via Civil Asset Forfeiture laws. Police say they only need reasonable suspicion that the property is proceeds of criminal activity -- and they can easily say that carrying $45k in cash is enough justification to "suspect" it's either money laundering or drug proceeds. Wa-la, the money is gone. Google "texas highway robbery" or "policing for profit" for an idea on how police are operating in this manner.
Last week a buddy of mine moved from Vegas to Atlanta driving his car full of housewares and a couple of dogs across the country. He mentioned to me that he closed out his local credit union account and was going to taking the cash - approx $10k - with him. I warned him that he had a high probability of having the money stolen by cops and convinced him to draw up a bank check instead. Fortunately, he did. As predicted, he was pulled over without cause by troopers parked at a state line looking for vehicles with out-of-state plates. Long story short: They searched him, placed him in the back of their car and conducted a interview to determine if he was carrying cash or drugs. Most of the questions were bizarre and random simply to gauge his reactions -- basically BDO play. They cut him free after 15 minutes realizing he wasn't a big catch. If he had his cash with him it would be gone now.
He's lucky. I was moving from the NM to MI with a big rental truck full of my stuff and got the treatment at a truck inspection station in IA. In IA, the cops either can't read DOT documents or can't read at all. After an hour of arguing that the Rental company had insurance on the truck, and my declining the *renters* insurance had no bearing on it, he finally figured it out. After his boss told him.
Then he wanted to search the truck. Fortunately, I locked and sealed it before I left ABQ and the keys were in my car which by then was 100 miles down the road. He was quite petulant about it too and told me I had to cut off the lock if I couldn't open it. At that point I told him the tools were inside the truck and put out my hand and asked to see a copy of his search warrant. One more call to his boss put that matter to rest and after almost 3 hours I was free to go, without opening the truck.
The next time I drove that route, I figured Kansas and Indiana were nicer states than IA anyway.