"Asset Forfeiture" Is Theft
Our government's practice of Civil Asset Forfeiture is theft. They take money and property from people without any due process of law, without ever charging the owners of said property with a crime, and the owners frequently have no recourse, as the burden of proof is shifted to the rightful owners of the property. If the government takes your property through Civil Asset Forfeiture, the only way to get your property back is to go to court and prove you did not receive the property through illegal means. Being asked to prove a negative makes returning property very rare and nearly impossible for most whose property is taken.
Luckily, in California, Governor Jerry Brown recently signed a law banning the practice unless the person is convicted of a crime related to said assets, but elsewhere in the nation, Americans are being stolen from with such regularity that the federal government has begun a "sharing" program.
And, as you likely could've predicted, abuse is rampant.
Read all about it here:
http://reason.com/blog/2017/09/07/tennessee-spent-100k-in-asset-forfeiture
Tennessee spent over $100,000 in Asset Forfeiture money to pay for catering and event tickets. And that’s not the worst example in there. Please give it a read.