Detroit Metro among airports DEA targets for cash grabs from travelers

[James48]

Two years ago, Christelle Tillerson bought a one-way ticket to fly from Detroit Metro Airport to Los Angeles where she planned to purchase a semi-tractor truck using cash withdrawn from her boyfriend’s retirement savings.

When the Detroit woman arrived at the airport in Romulus on March 12, 2014, she was met by federal Drug Enforcement Administration agents who asked if they could search her bags. She explained she had “about $20,000” in her checked luggage and gave them permission to search it.

Tillerson didn’t know it, but she had targeted by the DEA after the agency “received information” that she was headed to Los Angeles on a one-way ticket.

Like hundreds of other travelers profiled and stopped by DEA agents at airports and train stations each year, Tillerson was about to have her money taken away from her by the government under the suspicion it was tied to drug trafficking.

Even though she was never criminally charged, Tillerson would have to sue the government if she wanted the $25,000 back that the agents found in her luggage.


more:
http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2016/08/12/detroit-metro-among-airports-dea-targets-cash-grabs-travelers/88560606/

[louis-t]

1. Anyone who gets on a plane with that much cash

ought to have their head examined.

[msongs]

2. mostly because the federal government employees will steal it from us - at gun point nt

[scscholar]

3. Why?

We've had a couple of bank checks bounce at work, so I'd be afraid to take a bank check if I was selling a used car.

[Eleanors38]

4. This is STANDARD WOD procedure. Been going on for years.

Furthermore, if they wreck your property with a "mistaken" search, you have to go through the same bureaus. At your expense.

[CurtEastPoint]

6. WOD?

[JHB]

7. War On Drugs

[Eleanors38]

10. War On Drugs.

[FLPanhandle]

5. No need to carry cash in a modern economy

Unless you don't want any record of the transaction.

A simple wire transfer of funds or third party transfer.

Carrying large sums of cash is interesting at best.

[Warren DeMontague]

9. And the idea that the government should just be shaking down people at random is interesting too.

As is the idea that the government should have the right to send a SWAT team into your living room to haul you off to prison for smoking a joint.

[Warren DeMontague]

8. yay drug war

[AgadorSparticus]

11. Not surprising. If you pull out $10,000 from your OWN account

You have to tell the bank what you are going to do with it. I thought how crazy that you have to explain to a bank how you are going to use your OWN money. It is a requirement or law or something. Makes me wonder sometimes about our civil liberties.