Originally Posted by Bart
Is there anything illegal about having large amounts of cash? Not at all. However, screeners are trained to identify suspicious discoveries. And not everyone carries huge amount of cash, so yes, stacks of bills tucked inside of a carry-on bag is a suspicious discovery. The matter is usually turned over to the airport police to handle.
How is a stash of cash "suspicious" as far as air security is concerned? If anything, it should subject the person to less scrutiny - why would they blow up a plane with all of that money onboard?
The TSA's job is to keep us safe from terrorists, not drugs, money launderers, rich people or professional gamblers. Any actions outside of this are a distraction that make us less safe.
IF the passenger is flying internationally, then the passenger needs to declare any cash over $10,000. Do any of you expect a screener to actually count the cash? I would certainly hope not. I don't want my screeners put in a position where they may be accused of stealing that money. I've experienced situations when what looked like a lot of money, possibly over $10,000 turned out to be only $3,000 or $4,000 in cash. Again, hard to tell when all you see are stacks of $20 bills wrapped in rubber bands. I've seen situations when a person just finished a business deal and prefered to carry the cash on his person because he didn't trust electronic transfers. Nothing criminal about that, and nothing was done to this person. We reported it to the airport LEO, and he made the determination that there was nothing illegal about that unusual situation. Again, it's the LEO's job to determine if a crime has been committed not TSA's. All we do is report what we are trained to report to the airport LEO.
The pax may try to take money out of the country. But that's not the TSA's business. Your people shouldn't be looking for large sums of money, nor should they be turning people in for it.
This kind of stuff is a sickening breach of the 4th amendment
(Not to mention the awful drug-related seizure laws that have cost plenty of innocent, law abiding people their cash.)
We don't look for drugs, cash, illegal aliens, wanted felons, etc. We look for the things I mentioned above.
The Feds used to pay a $250 bounty to screeners who turned in people who had money or drugs on them. This was before the TSA. Do they still do that?