Dennis Hastert aside, it shouldn't be a crime to take your own money out of the bank

[strategery blunder]

45. Not necessarily

There have been cases of small business owners depositing cash from the regular course of business on a regular basis getting their cash seized, because of "structuring," especially in rural areas where armored car services might not be available or are prohibitively expensive.

Say a typical day for your business generates $4500 in receipts, of which $1500 is cash, and you're open Monday through Saturday. So typically if you make a bank run once a week, you'd be depositing $9k a week. Sure, there'd be variance, but the feds could definitely look upon it as an opportunity to seize some free cash by making the "structuring" accusation and initiating civil forfeiture. It doesn't help that a lot of insurance policies won't cover cash in excess of $10K--leaving the business owner stuck between a rock and a hard place, because if the business owner waits until the reporting requirement *is* triggered to avoid suspicion, then his assets won't be insured.

The problem with these laws isn't so much the prohibition on structuring, it's the lack of due process and the difficulty of getting the funds returned when you're innocent. Technically, they're not accusing you, they're accusing the money, and the money can't defend itself. The law is written in such a way as to evade the presumption of innocence and the due process rights that attach. You don't even have to be accused or tried, let alone convicted, for a crime to get your money seized. All the government needs to do is say the money was "probably" involved in illegal activity somehow.

That is the real problem with civil asset forfeiture.