CBP Agrees To Hand Back Almost All Of The $58,000 It Stole From A 64-Year-Old Man At A Cleveland Airport

CBP Agrees To Hand Back Almost All Of The $58,000 It Stole From A 64-Year-Old Man At A Cleveland Airport

5 years ago
Anonymous $roN-uuAfLt

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180608/17575039997/cbp-agrees-to-hand-back-almost-all-58000-it-stole-64-year-old-man-cleveland-airport.shtml

A 64-year-old man, an Albanian with legal US citizenship, was stripped of more than $58,000 in cash by Customs and Border Protection at Cleveland's Hopkins Airport last year. Rustem Kazazi was headed to Albania with the cash to fix up his family's old home and possibly buy property there. The CBP claims... well, it really claims nothing, other than its right to Kazazi's life savings.

CBP agents thought it was suspicious Kazazi would have so much cash on hand, despite Kazazi also carrying with him documentation of the cash's origin. That didn't slow the CBP's cash-hauling efforts at all. Asset forfeiture allowed the CBP to take Kazazi's money, say something ominous about violating federal law by not reporting the funds, and never bother charging Kazazi for all the violations the CBP claimed it spotted.