Federal prosecutors in Cleveland want to keep $140,000 seized from the trunk of a car parked at Beachwood Place Mall, according to court records.
CLEVELAND, Ohio— Federal prosecutors want to keep more than $140,000 found inside a trunk parked at Beachwood Place Mall earlier this year, according to court records.
Prosecutors say Beachwood police found the cash, along with guns and fentanyl inside a 2017 Jaguar. Officers arrested two men, but federal, state and city prosecutors have not filed any criminal charges in the case.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Henry DeBaggis filed a civil action in federal court in Cleveland asking a judge to find that the money came from illegal drug trafficking and that it stay with the prosecutors office. The case was assigned to U.S. District Judge Dan Polster.
Tyresha Brown-O’Neal and Clarissa Smith, the attorneys representing one of the men, declined to comment, citing the on-going litigation.
Civil forfeitures have come under scrutiny in recent years. The law allows for the government to seize property from people without securing a criminal conviction. When someone is convicted of a crime, a judge can order that person pay restitution, a fine and allow the government to keep ill-gotten gains from illegal activity.
Civil forfeitures allow prosecutors to sidestep a criminal conviction— which requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt— and ask a judge to allow them to keep the cash or property by proving by a preponderance of the evidence, a much lower burden of proof.
The Southern Poverty Law Center in 2017 called civil forfeitures “unfair, un-Democratic, and un-American.”
In 2021, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Northern District collected $4 million in civil forfeitures, down from $11.4 million in 2020.
The cash seizure at Beachwood Place Mall happened on Jan. 26. A Beachwood police officer spotted a 2017 Jaguar with heavily tinted windows and waited until the two men inside went into the mall.
The officer walked up to the car and spotted a gun inside. He called for a drug-sniffing dog that alerted officers to the possibility of drugs inside.
About 90 minutes later, the two men returned the car and were detained by officers. Police seized a satchel from one of the men that contained a gun.
The other man had $1,512 in cash, a pill bottle with fentanyl inside and plastic baggy with cocaine inside, according to court records.
Police searched the car and seized the gun inside the car, five more bullets, and two large clear plastic baggies with cocaine and fentanyl inside. The officers found $140,550 in cash in a blue duffle bag in the trunk, court records say.
One of the men was previously convicted of drug trafficking and sentenced to five years on probation in 2018. The other man pleaded guilty in 2020 to two counts of drug possession and was sentenced to 18 months in prison.
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