Life savings gone for no fault of the student.
By Raif Karerat
WASHINGTON, DC: A 24-year-old college student named Charles Clarke was about to board a flight to Florida last year when police officers searched his bag and seized his life savings of $11,000.
Despite never being charged with any sort of crime, it’s been over a year and the DEA still has his money, with no inclination of returning it.
Clarke was approached by police in February 2014 after airport staff reported he smelled like marijuana. The bag had a lot of cash in it, he says, because he was visiting family in Cincinnati while he and his mom were in the process of moving, and he didn’t want to lose the money, according to Business Insider.
While Clarke was a recreational marijuana smoker at the time and admitted as much, police found no drugs or drug paraphernalia in his bags, but still seized the cash they found there.
Per Forbes, the officers seized Charles’s money claiming they had “probable cause” that his cash consisted of the “proceeds of drug trafficking or was intended to be used in a drug transaction.” Yet the government did not indict Charles with any drug crime whatsoever.
He is currently working in conjunction with the Institute for Justice to fight for his money back in federal court, but it would be impossible to estimate the amount of red tape he’ll be made to go through before even the slight slimmer of hope presents itself.
Clarke, who attends the University of Central Florida, says he saved for years, working in various jobs, and accumulating educational benefits due to his mother’s status as a disabled veteran, but all that saving has been for naught.
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Police are the #1 organized crime syndicate.