If you’ve ever wondered whether just carrying a large sum of cash could land you in legal hot water—or what steps you can take if it happens to you—this episode is a must-listen.

Host Steve Palmer is joined by Troy Hendrickson, a law student, to tackle the not-so-theoretical question: What really happens if the police take your cash during a routine traffic stop?

Steve and Troy unravel the complexities behind asset forfeiture, sharing real-life cases where drivers have had tens of thousands of dollars seized by law enforcement—sometimes with little explanation or due process. Together, discuss the legal procedures that should protect your property rights, what “due process” really means in these situations, and how a legal team actually fights to recover seized money.

They also dig into the difference between criminal charges and civil asset forfeiture, dispel myths about what cash in your car “proves,” and highlight the burdens of proof on both sides. Plus, they candidly share the frustrations and realities of navigating police departments, public records, and the sometimes slow-moving wheels of justice.

Moments

00:00 "Due Process and Contraband Notices"

03:57 Criminal Indictment and Asset Forfeiture

07:01 "Seeking Legal Help"

09:48 "Money Laundering Charges Negotiation"

13:58 Drug Mule Traffic Stop Explained

17:13 Money Possession Isn't Criminal

22:54 Roadside Bribe in Costa Rica

Here are 3 key takeaways you should know:

• Due Process Should Prevail (But Doesn’t Always): The system is supposed to require official notice and a chance to fight for your seized property. But real-world cases often leave people in limbo, unable to get a straight answer or their assets back without taking legal action.
• Just Having Cash Is Not a Crime: Simply possessing large sums of money—even if it sets off police suspicions—is not illegal. The government needs something more than "it looks fishy" or "a dog sniffed it" to justify permanent seizure.
• Challenging Seizure Is Complicated and Costly: To recover seized money, you often have to initiate a civil lawsuit, shouldering the burden to prove it's your property and that the government is holding it. This process can be lengthy, expensive, and stacked against innocent owners.

Submit your questions to www.lawyertalkpodcast.com.

Recorded at Channel 511.

Stephen E. Palmer, Esq. has been practicing criminal defense almost exclusively since 1995. He has represented people in federal, state, and local courts in Ohio and elsewhere.

Though he focuses on all areas of criminal defense, he particularly enjoys complex cases in state and federal courts.

He has unique experience handling and assembling top defense teams of attorneys and experts in cases involving allegations of child abuse (false sexual allegations, false physical abuse allegations), complex scientific cases involving allegations of DUI and vehicular homicide cases with blood alcohol tests, and any other criminal cases that demand jury trial experience.

Steve has unique experience handling numerous high publicity cases that have garnered national attention.

For more information about Steve and his law firm, visit Palmer Legal Defense.

Copyright 2025 Stephen E. Palmer - Attorney At Law

Mentioned in this episode:

Circle 270 Media Podcast Consultants

Circle 270 Media® is a podcast consulting firm based in Columbus, Ohio, specializing in helping businesses develop, launch, and optimize podcasts as part of their marketing strategy. The firm emphasizes the importance of storytelling through podcasting to differentiate businesses and engage with their audiences effectively. www.circle270media.com

All right, here we are. Lawyer Talk, Off The Record, on the air. They Don't Teach You That In Law School. They don't even teach me this in the real practice. What we just had to go through, what we're going to talk about today is asset forfeiture or really this issue. What happens when you're driving down the road, the cop pulls some police officer in a local police department precinct, pulls you over for speeding and decides that they're going to search your car and they find $100,000 in cash and they.

Just take it sounds like a terrible day.

It sounds like you're having a bad day. So, I mean, look, this actually happens, folks. This happens probably more than you might think. And we're working on a case like this where somebody's driving down the road, they get pulled over for a traffic violation. Lo and behold, they've got, Our client has $100,000 cash sitting in the trunk of a car. And the police say, you know what? That's awful fishy. We're just gonna take that money for us.

Yeah.

What do you do about it?

So I imagine the first thing you would do is you would just ask for the money back. That would be the nicest thing to do. I mean, I, I don't know if you even need an attorney for that, really, but you can just talk to the police department. But I imagine they're going to give you a pretty straightforward answer of no, right?

They give you a very succinct answer. No, we're not giving your money back. Well, let's play this out. How this worked out and how it will work out and how generally it should work, how it sometimes works and how the system is a little bit wonky. What should happen is if the police are going to seize your, whether it's money, whether it's a firearm, whether it's something that's not patently contraband. And by patently contraband, I mean it's not drugs and it's not stolen something or other a stolen widget. It is something that you're perfectly permitted to have. If the police do that, there are rules in place.

And in Ohio we have something called the Ohio Revised Code. In federal court, we have the United States Code. In other states, they have their own version of it. And what they're supposed to do is file notices to put people on or file paperwork to put people on notice. Hey, look, we are alleging that this is contraband for some reason in the situation of money, that means it's ill gotten gains in Other words, they're trying to say, well, look, this guy has this 100 grand only because he's a dope dealer or because he has stolen something and sold it, or he's laundering money, whatever the argument would be. And they file a document, put you on notice, and then you get to respond to the document. In our country, we call that due process. It's amazing.

There's actually two forms of due process. We have procedural due process and substantive due process. But this really is procedural due process. It's sort of the same due process that takes effect when the government might tow your car.

Yeah.

Or give you a traffic ticket or something like that. Or give you a zoning violation. Or take something like. They have to give you notice and an opportunity to be heard and fight the thing. Then you go to, generally speaking, in typical. Those other scenarios, you go to what I will call Mickey Mouse court, where it's. Forgive me for those, but administrative courts, where they're just hearing officers, a lot of times not even lawyers. And you present your case and whatever it is, but you're supposed to get notice of some sort of forfeiture.

And then you have an opportunity to be heard. You get to go into court or administrative court and say, look, this is my money. I want it back. But that's not what always happens.

No, no. They also have, like, another route, though. At the end of the day, if they do think it's Ill Guy and Gaines, I mean, they could probably take that to a grand jury and they could probably get an indictment and they could charge you.

You're exactly right. So there's two ways this. Well, three ways this goes. The first way is they do nothing, and then you're in the ether trying to get your money back. That's what we're going to talk about in a second. The second way is they do it correctly. They file an asset forfeiture notice following whatever procedure your state or federal government would permit. And then you fight it.

And then the third way is they indict you on a crime. And this might happen if you get pulled over. You've got $100,000 and a couple bricks of cocaine. Well, you're gonna get indicted on the cocaine. And as part of the indictment, you will have a separate count, a forfeiture specification or a forfeiture count, where the government says, we're seeking forfeiture of this money or whatever the contraband would be, including the drugs, too. And then if you negotiate a plea agreement, almost always that involves losing the money. Now you can fight it, and I've fought those before in the context of a criminal case. And you would say, when would that ever be? Well, look, if, say, the police raid my house and I live there with some roommates, or I live there with my wife or somebody else, and unrelated to the purpose of the police coming into my house, we have in our safe some guns and we have, or in our safe some cash, and there's still the criminal activity that.

Whatever that would be. But the money is completely separate. So you would sometimes be able to argue, look, it's not my money, it's her money or his money. Now, the same lawyer can't do that. They would have their own lawyers. Or you would say, look, this gun, this money, this whatever, had nothing to do with the reason for the initial search of my house. It's completely separate. And you would try to separate those things.

But generally speaking, in our scenario where you're pulled over on the side of the road and the police find a couple bricks and 100 grand in cash, yeah, you're probably going to lose that money. Now if you could say, look, I just sold my house for 100,000 and I'm going to fight that. Well, guess what? They have this, they have a couple that. They being the government, will argue a few. They have another argument they're going to make. It's called a substitute asset, meaning you converted, say you made money on your drug trade, bought a house, sold the house. Now the cash is a converted asset or it's still contraband because it's money laundering.

It's tough. He was just trying to move out. Forgot about those bricks of cocaine in the crawl space.

Just trying to get ahead. But what about the scenario we're sort of tinkering with now? You've got a guy pulled over on the side of the road who's doing nothing wrong other than this traffic violation. The police think, well, that's a little funky.

Yeah.

Do you mind if we search a car? Sure. Look around and let's just assume that there's consent to search. Let's leave that Fourth amendment problem out of the equation just for purposes of analysis. And you just think, yeah, search my car. I'm not doing anything wrong. Search my car. And lo and behold, in the back in the duffel bag is $100,000 cash. And you think, well, look, copper, this is my money.

I just took it out of the bank. I'm a car dealer or whatever I do for a living. I have cash. And the police say, yeah, okay, we're just going to take it anyway. And they take it into the property room and they give you a little slip that says, we took your property. They didn't even count it. We took your property. And you're thinking, well, this doesn't add up.

This is crazy. What do I do? And so you call up a competent lawyer, maybe us, and you say, what do I do about it? We're like, well, look, we'll have to look into it. And that's what we do. So we end up making a formal request. By that, I mean, I actually went to the police department and said, hey, Sergeant, just checking in. I was casually dressed, just checking in on behalf of John Doe, my client. I understand that you guys have about $110,000 of his money. And he hold on, we're going to have to talk to somebody else.

So they bring somebody else out and he says, hi, sir, can I help you? I was like, yeah, I'm here on behalf of John Doe. I understand you have about $110,000 of his money. Hold on one second, sir. Next thing I know, I got the chief of police coming out and he's like. He said, can I help you, sir? Yeah, I'm here on behalf of John Doe. I understand you have about $110,000 money. I'd just like to get it, take it back today. And they looked at me like I was crazy.

And they said, well, we can't do that. Why not? Well, it's under investigation. For what? Yeah, we can't tell you that because it's under investigation. I was like, well, that's interesting. Are you working with anybody in the prosecutor's office? No, not yet. Well, I mean, who do I talk about? The investigation? We'll let you know. So I get crickets. I go back to my office, I send a formal letter.

Please be advised, I represent John Doe. I am hereby formally and officially and competently requesting that you return his $110,000. Well, first of all, now it's $98,000. So it's not even $110,000. So somehow my client thinks there was $110,000. They say there's only $98,000 logged in. Who am I to suggest that $12,000 went missing, but somehow somebody's got the count wrong? Leave that aside. I sent a letter and I don't get a response.

Well, there's a way to figure out how $12,000 went missing. You just public record request all the cameras.

Oh, sure.

And the chain of custody and everything like that to ensure where did this money go?

Yeah, I mean, let's just at least document the process. Well, we don't hear anything back. We don't hear anything back. And then, lo and behold, I happen to be driving down i75 here in. Yeah, I was driving down i75 here in Ohio, and I get a call on my cell phone. Ring a ling. A ling. It's a county prosecutor.

And the county prosecutor says, hey, I understand you're representing John Doe. And I said, oh, yeah, I sure am. I haven't heard anything from you guys in quite some time. Well, I've got the file now, and we wonder if you would just agree to give us the money. I said, well, why would I do that? It's $110,000. Well, we show $98,000. I said, yeah, but I thought, well, leave that aside for a second. But why would I give you.

Why would we just agree to give you $98,000? Well, if you agree to give us $98,000, we won't charge your client with any crimes. Okay, well, pray tell, what crime would you possibly charge? Money laundering. Money laundering. Okay. What was the criminal activity for which my client was laundering money? Well, it's under investigation, but, you know, we believe that there's money laundering going on. Said, well, look, I can't agree to that. I'll certainly run it by my client and see what he says, but I can't agree to that. And by the way, please, if you would send me whatever investigative information you have to show that my client was laundering money and that's why he had $98,000 cash.

You can guess what happened.

Nothing.

Nothing. So now we've got a police officer who says it's under investigation. Can't help me out. We got his supervisor. His supervisor, chief of police, now a county prosecutor. And so far, my client doesn't have his $98,000 back. What do we do? Well, we dig into it, and now we're essentially suing the jurisdiction involved. By that, we're filing a petition, a civil lawsuit, saying, give us our damn money back.

Yeah, you can't just take our money because you don't like that my client had $98,000 in his car driving down the freeway in the state of Ohio. Now, as good lawyers do, we did a little bit of research, and we come up with a plan. And actually, you did the research, because they didn't teach me this in law school. So this is what happens when you work for a lawyer. You get to hire a guy like Troy, and Troy Says, I'll figure it out for you. And you got me a research memo, so I'll let you describe the process.

So the process is almost nine times out of ten, is the state is going to do one of the two routes, either the asset forfeiture or. Or indict you. It's never supposed to go this route, but our revised code in Ohio, and I imagine other states have the same deal, is what if the state doesn't do their obligation of giving someone due process on their property is you're allowed to petition the court and be like, hey, this is my money. Like, I want it back. And the burden is on us. However, the burden's a lot lower than the government's.

Well, let's talk about burden for a second, because what Troy's talking about are things called burdens of proof and burdens to make initial showings. What do we have to establish? What do we have to do to make a valid claim? And what we have to do is put in a petition. A petition is a piece of paper that outlines all the facts and circumstances, and we're making allegations in a petition. And really, all we have to show, all we have to allege is that it's our money, it's my client's money, not the government's money. And we can prove that because the facts prove it. Even the police would admit that my client had the money. Yeah.

The police give him a property receipt. They take it from his car. It's not like the money just magically fell in there. There was no one else claiming the money. It's just obviously his money. And then the other factor that we have to. Or prong. I guess the second one is we have to prove the government has the money.

Okay. Also, so we have to show one, it was our money, and two, the government has our money.

Yes.

Right. So it's sort of simple. So we put together a petition and we file it as a civil action. It's like suing the government, essentially. And we allege you have our money or you have money and it's ours. Yeah. Now, once we file that, now the government has to answer.

Yep.

And what do they have to show? They have to show if they want to keep it.

If they want to keep it, they have to prove either they don't have it or that we. It's not our money. I don't imagine they're even going to attempt that. I imagine what they're going to attempt is going to be kind of like the asset forfeiture. They're going to go to that they're going to show that this is ill gotten gains or that this is illegal money somehow that is their only way. They're going to turn this into an asset forfeiture. It's just unfortunate because we're the ones that had to initiate it.

We had to initiate it. Which is just how does this ever come to be? Here's how this comes to be. And there's probably lots and lots and lots of this stuff going on across the country. So take for instance a drug dealer who hires a drug mule, meaning somebody whose job it is on behalf of the drug dealer to drive money and or drugs across the country. And that person is in say Arkansas somewhere, Little Rock, Arkansas, cruising down the freeway and gets pulled over for following too closely. And you would say, well what does that mean? Well it means you were too close to the car in front of you and lo and behold the police officer pulled you over. Also had a dog, a canine unit ready to go in his car and he runs. The canine finds the drugs and as a part of that finds the money or let's just say finds money, no drugs whatsoever.

And it's say 100,000. I've had lots of these cases where it's, you know, lots of money, truckloads full of money in fact before. And they can't really. And let's go with the scenario that it's only money and it's not so clear that it's drug money. But everybody knows what the heck is going on. This is really drug money. This is clearly a drug mule because this person is about 22 years old and she's got a rental car from California and she's driving a little. You get it? I mean everybody knows it's a drug situation or she's hauling drug money and she gets arrested.

Maybe, maybe not. They just let her go. They try to flip her and turn her into a snitch. But maybe she doesn't talk and now there's just money sitting in some locker in the police property room. And you go, maybe our hero, our young lady calls drug dealer and says, hey drug dealer, got a problem, got picked up in Little Rock, Arkansas. They got your dough, they got your money. And drug dealers like well I don't want to pick that scab because we all know it's drug money. I'm not going to go make a claim.

They have no idea who I am. Why would I possibly make a claim for that money? So it just disappears. And what the government does with it, eventually they'll do something with it and it'll end up in the government coffers. So a lot of times these go unchallenged, but every now and then, you know, the dragnet strikes a little too, or is cast a little bit too broad and they catch money that they shouldn't and they just take it. And now we have a scenario like this. So I think probably what's going on here is the government in our case was just hoping and praying that we didn't do anything about it.

Yeah. And I mean, that makes sense. I totally understand how these could just go completely unchallenged just because cost doing business. Yeah.

If you're a trafficker, right.

Yeah. It's as terrible as that, you know. Yeah. But there is people out there who like, you know, as crazy as might be, don't believe in banks. You know, they actually just.

Well, that's right. Yeah.

And so if we just. If every time we're just like, well, if there's a large sum of money, we need to seize it. What about that guy? That's not drug money. That's actually his life savings, you know, and it's like the government's like, well, you know, better safe than sorry. Like, no, you just took all this guy's life savings.

Right.

I understand that might sound crazy, but that is a thing.

This brings up the research, and I did tell you this, is that the possession of money alone is not sufficient evidence that there's criminal activity afoot. Let me say that again. The possession of money alone is not sufficient evidence that there's criminal activity afoot. Meaning just having 100 grand in and of itself and is not a crime. And the government can't say, well, the amount of money here is so high that it must be contraband or it must be related to some sort of illegal activity. Or as you said, it must be the product of ill gotten gain. It's not good enough. We are allowed still in this country to have legal tender.

It says so on the money. Currency, cash, whatever. And there's a lot of people that like cash. I get calls all the time from clients. Do you mind if I pay in cash? I'm like, yeah, guess what I'm gonna do with it? Take it right to the bank. But yeah, you can pay me in cash. I can care less. That brings up some other questions, like if it still has fresh red dye on it or it still smells like weed or there's white powder on it, that might cause another problem that I can't take it.

But generally Speaking. There's people that just deal in cash. I know lots. I have friends of mine who every paycheck they stick a little something, something in the safe because it's, you know, rainy day type money.

I was, when you mentioned it smells like weed, the one case I was looking at was a dog sniffs the money and then the dog gets triggered by it. So like, okay, well this is drug money. And then the case law is like.

No, because you have no idea where it came from.

Yeah. This money, statistically, this money. Yeah. Probably has been exposed to drugs.

Yes.

Just by the market. Just naturally being what you're.

Yeah. What you're saying is, look it, money is passed around and it'd be interesting, really interesting to just. If you could put a little sensor on a hundred dollar bill and see all the places it's been, that would.

Be a cool study.

It would be sort of neat. But lots of money is touch dope. Believe me. Lots of money is touch dope. So that's not good enough. You can't just. The possession of cash alone, even cash that smells to a dog like weed or coke or whatever, it's not good enough. You have to have something more.

And what's the something more? Well, I don't know. It's not my job to come up with something more so the government can keep my client's money. My job is to advocate on behalf of the client and get the money back. There's one more thing I want to talk about because you brought it up. You brought up public records request. There's a reason why, and I'm going to link this up, there's a reason why our burden is so low in our petition. Again, all we have to allege to get this money back or to start the cause of action is, hey, look, it's mine and you have it. That's it.

And we don't have to prove that it's innocent money. We don't have to prove anything beyond that. Anything beyond how it was seized. We don't have to allege a fourth amendment violation, though there may be one. We don't have to allege any of it because we don't have discovery yet. I happen to know the police department that took the money. So I went there and I sort of laughed and I told it tongue in cheek because I knew that they weren't gonna give me my client's money back. But I was just curious what they would say if I asked for it.

We don't know anything. You sent up a public records Request to the police department and asked for what?

I asked for body cam, dash cams, logs the ticket inventory. Like anything involving this money. I just want it pretty much. I want to know what happened from the money the minute it was taken, to the minute it was counted, to the minute it was stored. And just to. In my head, you know, is this, is this money even real? It's as crazy as that sounds like. I mean, like what is going on here? And they don't give up anything because it's the same thing that the cops told you was it's an active investigation. We can't give you anything.

We can't give you anything. It's an active. So look, all we wanted to know was how they took the money. I mean, look, this is body worn camera footage and we don't even know if the police up there had body worn cameras. But we always ask for it.

They didn't have dash cameras at the time, which I thought was very interesting.

They did not.

Yeah, they were like, they're like, we didn't have dash cameras.

And did they, did they acknowledge they had body worn cameras? Yes, they had body worn cameras. Okay.

I just thought now modern day cops would all have dash cams.

You would think they would have dash cams before body worn camera. But anyway, it doesn't matter. And we just wanted to see what happened. Look, it's all public record. You know, you guys are an official business. Let's just take a peek. And they don't give us that same answer that I got when I went and talked to him. Right.

Sorry. It's under investigation. We can't tell you anything that we did, why we have the money, how we counted it, where it is, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, forcing us, of course, to file a petition. Now here's the travesty of all of it is that one, our client's out of the money while all this is going on. Two, our client had to pay us to get it back. Now we're going to try to recoup those costs or do something. Yeah, to, to get our client reimbursed. But you know, those are significant expenses.

Yeah. And it's fair. It is not. The system is hardly fair, but at least here there's anything good. There is, there is at least a procedure that we can employ to redress the problem. And there are lots of places in the world where there is not. So those of you out there saying our justice system sucks, you know, you may be right. And as I, as I coined the phrase, even yesterday in a show, it's like, the system's not.

It's not perfect. It's only the best, right? So look, it's not perfect, but it is the best way, compared to other systems, to deal with this.

There's other countries where if you have like that much money taken, you're not getting that much.

I was pulled over one time in Costa Rica and you know, talk about a grift on the side of the road. It was, well, you know, you'd have to take your passport and I can't duplicate the accent, but we have to take your passport and we're on the way to the airport. Of course you have to take your passport and you have to come back for a court appearance. It's a very serious offense in Costa Rica. Or we can agree to resolve it right now, perhaps $100. And so I pull out $100 bill, give it to a cop on the side of the road, a federale, or they are, and off I go. So it was an extra hundred bucks to get back to the rental car place. That's not going on here, at least not ubiquitously a lot.

I'm not saying there's not grift going on, but at least here we have some process that is due and on the books that our client can redress it. So look, this was an interesting topic. If you have any comments about it, I'd be curious to hear it. If you know somebody that they've lost their money and not know what to do. Curious to hear how you handled it or how they handled it. If you've got a question you want us to cover right here on Lawyer Talk, you got a topic you want us to cover? Shoot us a comment. Go to lawyertalkpodcast. Com.

And we are off the record, on the air till now.