Father and adult daughter sue feds over confiscated life savings

By Theresa Braine

Rebecca Brown wants the government to give back her father's $82,373. (Institute for Justice)

Retired railroad worker Terry Rolin and his parents, scarred by their experiences during the Great Depression, used to squirrel earnings and pension withdrawals in the basement of their Pennsylvania home.

But his decision to hand the money to daughter Rebecca Brown for deposit in a bank account after he moved out of his family home into an apartment realized his worst fears. The government has confiscated the 79-year-old’s $82,373 life savings, and does not plan to give it back, according to a lawsuit.

Federal officials call it a necessary tool to combat crime. But to Rolin and his daughter, Rebecca Brown, it’s outright robbery.

As Brown traveled from Pittsburgh to her Massachusetts home last summer, carrying the money that her father had entrusted to her, she was stopped by agents from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the Transportation Security Administration. Even though she was carrying the money domestically, which is perfectly legal, they challenged her over the amount, then took it away.

To date, Rolin has yet to retrieve the money. On Wednesday they sued both agencies both on their behalf and seeking class action status for the legions of people in their position.

Brown had been carrying her father’s money to deposit in a joint account, she said in a statement from the Institute for Justice, a nonprofit with a libertarian bent that works to safeguard people’s constitutional rights.

She stuffed it into a plastic container and stowed it in her carry-on luggage, having checked online to determine that carrying that amount of cash domestically was legal.

The DEA agent who met Brown at the gate wanted her to corroborate her story by calling her father, she told The Washington Post. But Rolin has started to decline mentally, so he could not verify everything the agent thought he should.

“He just handed me the phone and said, ‘Your stories don’t match,’ ” Brown told The Washington Post. “ ‘We’re seizing the cash.’ ”

They searched her bags, finding no contraband. Neither has a criminal record.

That was last summer. A few months later, the Institute for Justice said in a statement, both received notice that the money would be permanently confiscated under civil forfeiture, which allows law enforcement to take money even in the absence of a criminal conviction. In their case, they haven’t even been charged.

“You don’t forfeit your constitutional rights when you try to board an airplane,” justice institute senior attorney Dan Alban said in a statement. “It is time for TSA and federal law enforcement to stop seizing cash from travelers simply because the government considers certain amounts of cash ‘suspicious.’ ”

Neither agency would comment, according to The Washington Post, with DEA spokeswoman Katherine Pfaff saying, “We can’t comment on ongoing litigation,” and a TSA spokeswoman, Jenny L. Burke, telling the newspaper by email that “as a matter of policy, TSA does not comment on pending litigation.”

The 52-page suit, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court for Pennsylvania’s Western District, seeks return of the money, as well as “compensatory damages,” and to “put these systematic unlawful and unconstitutional policies and practices to an end.”

“Terry’s and Rebecca’s story is not unique,” the lawsuit alleges. “What happened to them illustrates the systematic policies or practices of TSA and DEA: seizing cash from air travelers based solely on the presence of what these agencies believe to be ‘large’ or ‘suspicious’ amounts of cash.”

“We did nothing wrong and haven’t been charged with any crime, yet the DEA is trying to take my father’s life savings,” Brown told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “His savings should be returned right away, and the government should stop taking money from Americans who are doing something completely legal."

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Father and adult daughter sue feds over confiscated life savings