How Can the Government Take Your Cash or Property Without Charging You With a Crime?

Yes, the government can sometimes seize—and ultimately keep—cash, cars, and other property without ever charging the owner with a crime. The legal mechanism is called civil asset forfeiture.

The reason sounds almost absurd until you understand the legal structure: in a civil forfeiture case, the government is not necessarily prosecuting you. It is proceeding against the property itself.

That is why American courts have produced cases with names resembling United States v. $50,000 in U.S. Currency, United States v. One 2019 Mercedes-Benz, or United States v. [a particular parcel of real estate].

Under federal law, a civil judicial forfeiture is an in rem proceeding—literally, an action “against the thing.” Unlike criminal forfeiture, it does not require the property owner to be convicted of a crime. The Justice Department itself describes civil forfeiture this way: the government is the plaintiff, the property is treated as the defendant, and people claiming ownership become “claimants.”

That does not mean police may simply see money they like and legally take it forever. There still must be statutory authority, a lawful basis for the initial seizure, notice, and a forfeiture process. But the protections are different from those in a criminal prosecution—and those differences explain both why civil forfeiture exists and why it has become one of the most controversial powers in American law enforcement.

The shortest accurate answer: Civil asset forfeiture allows the government to argue that property was proceeds of crime, was involved in crime, or facilitated certain crimes. Because the legal action can be against the property rather than against its owner, a criminal charge or conviction of the owner is not necessarily required.

First, “seizure” and “forfeiture” are not the same thing

This distinction is crucial.

A seizure is the government taking custody or control of property. A forfeiture is the legal process by which ownership of that property is permanently transferred to the government.

Someone may therefore have $20,000 seized today without the government having finally established that it gets to keep the $20,000.

At the federal level, the major categories look like this:

The third category is especially important. DOJ’s current Asset Forfeiture Policy Manual explains that certain property can be forfeited administratively, without judicial intervention, if the seizure meets the applicable legal standard, interested parties are properly notified, and nobody files a timely valid claim. A valid claim terminates the administrative process and sends the dispute toward judicial forfeiture.

So when people hear that the government “took someone’s money without even charging them,” that description can be substantially correct—but it can conceal several very different procedures.

Why is the property itself treated like the defendant?

This is not a loophole invented during the modern war on drugs. It comes from a very old legal doctrine.

For centuries, Anglo-American law recognized in rem proceedings involving ships, contraband, customs violations, and other property. The theory was that legal consequences could attach to the thing involved in the offense independently from criminal punishment of its owner.

The U.S. Supreme Court stated the principle explicitly in The Palmyra in 1827. The Court explained that in statutory forfeiture proceedings, the offense could attach to the property and that the in-rem action could stand independently of a criminal prosecution against a person. No criminal conviction of the owner was necessarily required.

That historical idea eventually became known as the “guilty property” fiction.

The Supreme Court has repeatedly acknowledged how strange that fiction sounds. In Austin v. United States in 1993, the Court reviewed the long history of treating property as the offending object while also recognizing that many forfeitures have punitive characteristics.

Modern law does not literally believe a stack of hundred-dollar bills has criminal intent. The doctrine is a legal mechanism for asking a different question:

Is this property legally connected closely enough to specified criminal activity that a forfeiture statute permits the government to take it?

That is not the same question as:

Can the government prove beyond a reasonable doubt that this particular owner committed a crime?

That distinction is the foundation of civil asset forfeiture.

How a federal civil forfeiture can actually happen

Imagine police seize $30,000 in cash during an investigation.

The money’s existence alone does not establish forfeiture. Under federal law, the government ordinarily needs legal authority to seize forfeitable property. Section 981 generally provides for seizure through a warrant obtained in the manner of a search warrant, although warrantless seizure is permitted in specified circumstances—for example, when there is probable cause that property is forfeitable and the seizure occurs through a lawful arrest or search, or another Fourth Amendment warrant exception applies. Property lawfully seized by state or local authorities can also sometimes be transferred into the federal system.

If the government begins a nonjudicial federal civil-forfeiture process governed by the general rules in 18 U.S.C. § 983, written notice normally must be sent as soon as practicable and generally no later than 60 days after the federal seizure. When state or local authorities seize property and transfer it for federal forfeiture, the statutory default is generally 90 days from the original state or local seizure, although extensions and exceptions exist.

The owner then reaches an extremely important fork in the road.

A person can file a claim contesting the forfeiture. Under § 983, the notice cannot ordinarily set the claim deadline earlier than 35 days after the notice is mailed. The claim identifies the property, states the claimant’s interest in it, and is made under oath. No cost bond is required merely to file that federal claim.

Filing a valid claim matters enormously because it prevents an eligible administrative forfeiture from simply becoming final without a judicial dispute. DOJ policy expressly states that when a timely valid claim is filed, the administrative forfeiture process terminates and the matter is referred toward judicial forfeiture.

A petition for remission or mitigation is different. That asks the government to exercise its administrative discretion to return some or all of the property. It is not a substitute for properly contesting forfeiture through a claim when the owner wants a court to adjudicate the government’s legal right to the property. DEA’s forfeiture guidance expressly distinguishes the petition process from filing a claim that changes an administrative matter into judicial forfeiture.

Once a qualifying federal claim has been filed, the government generally has 90 days to file a civil forfeiture complaint, return the property pending further action, or obtain a criminal indictment containing an appropriate forfeiture allegation and take the necessary steps to preserve custody. If it misses the statutory requirements without an extension, § 983 can require release of the property and bar further civil forfeiture based on the same underlying offense.

If the dispute moves to federal court, the property owner must then satisfy additional procedural rules. Supplemental Rule G requires the claimant to file a verified claim and ordinarily an answer or Rule 12 motion within 21 days after filing the judicial claim. These deadlines are not cosmetic. Missing forfeiture deadlines can have severe consequences.

The government does not use the criminal “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard

This is another major reason civil forfeiture can succeed without a criminal conviction.

In a federal judicial civil-forfeiture action covered by § 983, the government bears the burden of proving that the property is forfeitable by a preponderance of the evidence.

In ordinary language, that means the government must persuade the court that its position is more likely true than not. It does not have to meet the much higher criminal standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

And if the theory is that the property was used to commit, facilitate, or was involved in an offense, federal law requires the government to establish a substantial connection between the property and that offense.

This produces a situation that can sound contradictory but is legally possible:

The evidence might be insufficient to convict a person beyond a reasonable doubt—or prosecutors might never charge that person at all—while the government nevertheless argues that it can establish the property’s forfeitable connection to criminal conduct under the civil standard.

That does not automatically mean the government is correct. It means the two proceedings answer different legal questions under different standards.

Can an innocent person fight the forfeiture?

Under the general federal civil-forfeiture statute, yes.

Congress created an explicit innocent-owner defense. Section 983 states that an innocent owner’s interest may not be forfeited under the covered federal civil-forfeiture statutes.

For someone who owned the property when the illegal conduct occurred, the owner can generally establish innocence by showing that they did not know of the conduct, or that after learning about it they did what reasonably could be expected under the circumstances to stop the illegal use.

But notice where part of the burden falls: although the government carries the burden of proving the property forfeitable, the claimant carries the burden of establishing innocent-owner status by a preponderance of the evidence.

That federal protection is important because the Constitution itself has not historically guaranteed a universal innocent-owner defense in every forfeiture system.

In Bennis v. Michigan in 1996, the Supreme Court upheld a Michigan forfeiture despite the co-owner’s assertion that she did not know how her husband had misused their jointly owned car. The Court held that the absence of an innocent-owner defense in the state scheme did not, by itself, violate the federal Constitution.

Federal statutory protections are now considerably stronger than the old common-law rule, and many states have enacted their own protections. But state forfeiture laws vary dramatically, which is why a statement about “asset forfeiture law in America” can be dangerously overbroad.

Do you have a right to a lawyer?

Not in the same way a criminal defendant does.

Because an ordinary civil-forfeiture case is civil rather than criminal, there is generally no automatic constitutional right to a government-paid attorney merely because the government is trying to take your property.

Federal law contains narrower exceptions. For example, when an indigent claimant already has appointed counsel in a related federal criminal case, a court may authorize that attorney to represent the person in the forfeiture proceeding. Federal law also provides special representation protection for certain financially eligible claimants when the forfeiture involves their primary residence.

This matters because civil-forfeiture litigation can involve standing rules, verified claims, short deadlines, discovery, evidentiary disputes, affirmative defenses, and constitutional arguments—all while the property itself may already be in government custody.

The economic problem can become obvious when relatively small amounts of money are involved. A 2026 analysis by the Institute for Justice, an organization that advocates against civil forfeiture, examined government forfeiture data and reported that across 24 states, half of currency forfeitures in its dataset were below $1,678, while it estimated roughly $3,300 as the cost of retaining an attorney for a straightforward state forfeiture case. The same report found that 71% of DOJ forfeitures in the dataset were administrative rather than resolved after a contested hearing. Those figures should be understood as the analysis of a forfeiture-reform advocacy organization, but they illustrate the practical problem reformers have focused on: sometimes fighting over the property can cost more than the property itself.

Can the government hold the property for months before you get it back?

Sometimes, yes.

In Culley v. Marshall in 2024, the Supreme Court considered cars seized under Alabama civil-forfeiture law. The Court held that due process requires a timely forfeiture hearing, but the Constitution does not categorically require a second, separate preliminary hearing to decide whether police may keep personal property while the forfeiture case is pending.

Whether a forfeiture hearing is constitutionally timely depends on factors including the length and reason for the delay, whether the owner asserted the right to a hearing, and prejudice caused by the delay.

Federal law does contain a procedure allowing some claimants to seek temporary release of property when continued government possession would create substantial hardship—for example, by preventing a person from working, shutting down a business, or leaving someone homeless.

But that remedy has important exclusions. Ordinary currency and monetary instruments generally do not qualify for the hardship-release provision unless they constitute assets of a legitimate business that has been seized.

So losing access to a vehicle and losing access to a stack of cash can produce very different procedural options.

Houses receive stronger protection

Real property is treated differently from easily movable personal property such as cash or cars.

In United States v. James Daniel Good Real Property, the Supreme Court held that, absent exigent circumstances, the federal government cannot physically seize real property for civil forfeiture without first giving the owner notice and a meaningful opportunity to be heard. A house cannot disappear into someone’s pocket or drive across the state line, so the government’s justification for immediate seizure is much weaker.

Congress subsequently built strong protections into 18 U.S.C. § 985. Federal civil forfeitures of real property must proceed judicially, and, subject to specified exceptions, the property cannot actually be seized before a forfeiture order. Owners and occupants generally cannot simply be evicted from or deprived of using the property while the forfeiture case is pending.

That is very different from the roadside seizure of currency or a vehicle.

The Eighth Amendment also limits excessive forfeiture

Civil does not necessarily mean constitutionally consequence-free.

In Austin v. United States, the Supreme Court recognized that at least some civil in-rem forfeitures operate partly as punishment and are therefore subject to the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on excessive fines.

Then, in Timbs v. Indiana in 2019, the Court held that the Excessive Fines Clause applies to state and local governments as well as the federal government.

That case involved a Land Rover worth approximately $42,000 that Indiana sought to forfeit after its owner was convicted of a drug offense for which the maximum monetary fine was $10,000. The Supreme Court did not itself decide the final proportionality question at that stage, but it made clear that states are bound by the constitutional protection against excessive fines.

Federal law also expressly allows a claimant to challenge a forfeiture as constitutionally excessive. The court must compare the forfeiture with the gravity of the offense, and a grossly disproportionate forfeiture must be reduced or eliminated.

Why does civil forfeiture exist at all?

There are legitimate law-enforcement scenarios in which requiring a conventional criminal conviction before touching property would create serious problems.

A drug cartel may hold proceeds through shell companies. A fraudster may flee the country. Criminal proceeds may be stored in accounts nominally controlled by intermediaries. The true criminal may be dead, outside U.S. jurisdiction, unidentified, or otherwise impossible to prosecute. Property may itself represent proceeds traceable to victims.

DOJ says forfeiture serves four principal purposes: depriving criminals of property connected to illegal activity, improving cooperation among law-enforcement agencies, recovering assets that may compensate victims, and administering the program lawfully and professionally.

Civil forfeiture can therefore be a powerful tool against organized crime, money laundering, fraud, terrorism financing, and other schemes in which separating criminal organizations from their assets matters even when prosecution of every person controlling those assets is impractical. DOJ specifically points to fugitives and overseas offenders as examples of situations in which civil forfeiture can reach property that criminal forfeiture cannot.

That is the strongest case for the system.

The controversy is not primarily over whether governments should be able to confiscate proven criminal proceeds.

It is over how much process should be required before the government can convert suspicion about property into permanent ownership of it—particularly when nobody has been convicted, or even charged.

The abuse problem is not hypothetical

Criticism of civil forfeiture is not based solely on anecdotes from advocacy organizations. Federal inspectors general have documented serious problems themselves.

In 2017, the Justice Department’s own Office of Inspector General reviewed federal cash seizures. It reported that DOJ Asset Forfeiture Program participants had forfeited more than $28 billion over the preceding decade. DEA alone had made more than $4 billion in cash seizures between fiscal years 2007 and 2016, and the OIG said the vast majority were subsequently forfeited without a criminal proceeding.

The OIG examined 100 DEA cash seizures selected because they presented heightened civil-liberties concerns. DEA could verify that only 44% had advanced or been related to criminal investigations. Many had originated in transportation facilities based on observations and officers’ immediate judgments rather than preexisting intelligence concerning a particular drug crime.

The inspector general did not conclude that all of those seizures were illegal. Its point was more fundamental: DOJ lacked the data necessary to systematically determine whether certain seizure practices were advancing criminal investigations or creating unnecessary civil-liberties risks.

The IRS produced another documented example.

A 2017 Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration investigation examined IRS Criminal Investigation’s use of forfeiture in “structuring” cases—situations involving deposits arranged to avoid bank currency-reporting requirements.

TIGTA found that among 278 investigations in its sample where the source of the money could be determined, 91% involved funds obtained legally. The affected businesses included restaurants, jewelry stores, gas stations, and scrap-metal dealers. TIGTA concluded that the rights of some individuals and businesses had been compromised.

The IRS had already changed its policy in 2014 so that legal-source structuring cases would generally not be pursued except in exceptional circumstances, and later began notifying roughly 1,800 affected property owners that they could petition for return of previously forfeited funds.

More recently, a 2024 DOJ inspector-general investigation raised new concerns about DEA encounters with travelers at airports and other transportation facilities.

Among the findings: DEA had not consistently documented encounters as required by its own policy; mandatory transportation-interdiction training had been suspended since 2023; and an airline employee acting as a confidential source had been paid a percentage of forfeited cash resulting from information supplied to DEA, receiving tens of thousands of dollars over several years.

The OIG concluded that deficient controls created substantial risks of improper encounters, violations of innocent travelers’ rights, damage to the integrity of the forfeiture program, and wasted law-enforcement resources.

After receiving the draft findings, the Deputy Attorney General in November 2024 directed DEA to suspend consensual encounters at mass-transportation facilities unless they were connected to an ongoing predicated investigation or specially approved because of exigent circumstances.

That is a concrete example of documented abuse risk leading to an actual policy restriction.

What about the argument that police profit from forfeitures?

This criticism requires some precision.

At the federal level, forfeiture proceeds flow through systems such as the Justice Assets Forfeiture Fund rather than simply going into an officer’s pocket. Funds can be used for authorized program purposes and victim compensation.

But the federal Equitable Sharing Program also permits cooperating state, local, and tribal law-enforcement agencies to receive portions of federally forfeited assets in appropriate cases. DOJ openly describes these payments as an ancillary benefit intended to provide additional resources to participating agencies, while stating that the money should supplement rather than replace normal appropriated funding.

Critics argue that allowing law-enforcement organizations involved in seizures to financially benefit from forfeiture creates a structural incentive that would not exist if all proceeds went directly into a neutral general fund.

That does not prove that any particular officer or department made a seizure for money. It is an incentive-design argument: if the institution deciding whether to pursue property can eventually benefit from the property’s forfeiture, critics argue that financial self-interest and neutral law enforcement are not completely separated.

The federal equitable-sharing system remains active. DOJ’s current policies page lists the 2024 Equitable Sharing Guide and notes that Executive Order 14074, which had imposed certain policing policies during the previous administration, was revoked as of January 20, 2025.

Congress already reformed the federal system once

Many protections that exist today were created by the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act of 2000, commonly called CAFRA.

CAFRA substantially changed federal civil-forfeiture procedure. Among other things, the modern system generally places the ultimate judicial burden of proving forfeiture on the government, creates the federal innocent-owner defense, establishes notice and claim rules, provides limited hardship-release procedures, and permits proportionality challenges.

So the modern federal system is not identical to the much harsher forfeiture regime that generated many of the controversies of the 1980s and 1990s.

But CAFRA did not abolish civil forfeiture.

The fundamental structure remained: property can still be the defendant, and its forfeiture does not inherently depend on convicting its owner.

Some states have gone much further

States do not all use the federal model.

A 2026 nationwide review by the Institute for Justice reports that Maine, Montana, and New Mexico now rely on criminal forfeiture rather than civil forfeiture, while North Carolina generally uses criminal forfeiture with a racketeering exception. Other states have adopted intermediate reforms such as higher proof standards or conviction requirements for some forfeitures.

Maine’s current law, for example, links forfeiture to criminal proceedings and expressly provides for a prompt post-seizure hearing. Its statute allows return of property where, among other things, no criminal charge has been filed within the applicable period or the seizure was invalid.

New Mexico’s landmark 2015 reform was expressly designed to require forfeiture to follow a criminal conviction, require forfeiture proceedings to follow the related criminal case, place proceeds into the state’s general fund, and ensure that only criminal forfeiture operates under the state’s Forfeiture Act.

Those laws demonstrate that civil forfeiture is not constitutionally inevitable. Legislatures can decide to require substantially stronger protections than the federal constitutional minimum.

So can the government simply take your money because you are carrying cash?

No—not legally merely because the money exists.

The government needs a statutory forfeiture theory and a legally sufficient connection between the property and conduct that makes the property forfeitable. In a federal judicial civil-forfeiture case governed by § 983, the government ultimately bears the preponderance burden and, when relying on a facilitation or involvement theory, must establish the required substantial connection.

But the practical problem is that the seizure happens before the final forfeiture decision.

That means an owner can lose possession first and be required to navigate the system afterward.

And if the owner never files the required claim, misses a deadline, cannot afford to litigate, chooses a settlement, or otherwise fails to successfully contest the proceeding, certain property can ultimately be forfeited without the government ever having to convict that owner—or, in an administrative forfeiture, without a judge adjudicating a contested forfeiture claim at all.

That is the part of civil forfeiture that many people find most disturbing.

If your property is actually seized

Civil-forfeiture deadlines can be short, and state and federal procedures differ. The most important practical point is not to treat a seizure notice like an ordinary ticket or bureaucratic letter.

• Preserve every seizure receipt, inventory, notice, and envelope; note exactly when each document was received. Determine whether the matter is state, federal, administrative, civil judicial, or connected to a criminal proceeding. Pay particular attention to the deadline for filing a claim, because a petition for remission is not necessarily the same thing as formally contesting the forfeiture. Preserve legitimate source-of-funds documentation such as withdrawal records, invoices, tax records, sales documents, or bank statements. Do not make false statements about the property or sign an abandonment, waiver, settlement, or ownership disclaimer without understanding its consequences. Where significant money or property is involved—especially if there is any potential criminal exposure—consult an attorney who actually handles forfeiture law as quickly as possible.

This is general information, not individualized legal advice. A person’s rights can change dramatically depending on the jurisdiction, the forfeiture statute involved, the type of property, and how the seizure occurred.

The bottom line

The government can take cash or property without charging its owner with a crime because American law recognizes civil forfeiture proceedings against property itself.

That sounds like wordplay, but legally it changes almost everything.

A criminal prosecution asks whether the government can prove that a person committed a crime and punish that person.

A civil-forfeiture proceeding asks whether particular property is legally forfeitable because of its relationship to criminal conduct.

The second question can be litigated without ever answering the first.

Modern federal law does provide substantial protections: notice requirements, a government burden of proof in contested judicial cases, an innocent-owner defense, a right to challenge excessive forfeitures, limited hardship remedies, and judicial review when a valid claim moves an eligible administrative case into court. Supreme Court decisions also impose constitutional constraints involving due process and excessive fines.

But the criticism of civil asset forfeiture is not simply that “the government steals people’s stuff,” just as the defense of it cannot fairly be reduced to “only criminals lose property.”

The harder question is whether a system designed to separate criminal organizations from their assets has adequate safeguards when it is used against ordinary people who have not been convicted—or even charged—with anything.

Federal inspectors general have documented enough failures to establish that the danger is real. Congress, courts, federal agencies, and multiple states have consequently imposed significant reforms. Yet the core power remains.

In much of the United States, the government does not necessarily have to prove that you are a criminal before it can try to prove that your property is connected to crime.

And that is how civil asset forfeiture works.

References and Further Reading

• Federal statutes and rules: 18 U.S.C. § 981 — Civil Forfeiture, which sets out major categories of federally forfeitable property and federal seizure authority; 18 U.S.C. § 983 — General Rules for Civil Forfeiture Proceedings, containing federal notice, claim, burden-of-proof, innocent-owner, hardship-release, and proportionality protections; 18 U.S.C. § 985 — Civil Forfeiture of Real Property, establishing special protections for homes and other real estate; Supplemental Rule G — Forfeiture Actions in Rem, governing federal judicial forfeiture complaints, notices, claims, answers, and related procedure; and Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act of 2000, Public Law 106-185, the major federal reform legislation that created much of today’s procedural framework.
• Official federal forfeiture guidance: U.S. Department of Justice — Types of Federal Forfeiture, DOJ’s concise distinction between criminal, civil judicial, and administrative forfeiture; DOJ Asset Forfeiture Policy Manual, the Department’s detailed operational guidance on federal administrative and judicial forfeiture; DOJ Equitable Sharing Program, explaining the federal program through which cooperating state, local, and tribal agencies may receive forfeiture proceeds; and DEA Asset Forfeiture, including the distinction between petitions for return and claims that move eligible administrative forfeitures toward judicial proceedings.
• Foundational Supreme Court decisions: The Palmyra (1827), an early Supreme Court explanation of independent in-rem forfeiture; Austin v. United States (1993), recognizing the punitive character of certain civil forfeitures and application of the Excessive Fines Clause; United States v. James Daniel Good Real Property (1993), establishing important pre-seizure due-process protection for real property; Bennis v. Michigan (1996), addressing forfeiture of an innocent co-owner’s property interest; Timbs v. Indiana (2019), holding that the Excessive Fines Clause applies to the states; and Culley v. Marshall (2024), holding that due process requires a timely forfeiture hearing for seized personal property but not a separate preliminary retention hearing as a categorical constitutional requirement.
• Federal oversight and documented problems: DOJ Office of Inspector General — Review of the Department’s Oversight of Cash Seizure and Forfeiture Activities, documenting concerns about DEA cash seizures, limited connections to criminal investigations, and inadequate DOJ oversight; Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration — Criminal Investigation Enforced Structuring Laws Primarily Against Legal Source Funds and Compromised the Rights of Some Individuals and Businesses, examining IRS structuring forfeitures and the prevalence of legal-source funds; and DOJ OIG — Concerns Identified in DEA Transportation Interdiction Activities, documenting the 2024 findings that led DOJ to suspend most DEA consensual encounters at mass-transportation facilities.
• State reform examples and independent research: Maine Revised Statutes, Title 15 § 5826 — Criminal Forfeiture and § 5828 — Post-Seizure Proceedings, showing Maine’s criminal-forfeiture structure and prompt-hearing protections; New Mexico HB 560 — 2015 Forfeiture Reform, the legislation establishing New Mexico’s conviction-based forfeiture model and directing proceeds to the general fund; and the Institute for Justice’s Policing for Profit 4, a 2026 nationwide analysis of forfeiture statutes and government data. IJ is a public-interest law organization that litigates against civil forfeiture, so its policy conclusions should be understood in that context; its underlying data and state-by-state comparisons are nevertheless useful for examining how systems differ.

Editorial note: Civil-forfeiture law differs substantially by jurisdiction and changes frequently through legislation, court decisions, and agency policy. The federal procedures described here reflect authorities reviewed through August 2026. Anyone dealing with an actual seizure should verify the current law and deadlines governing that specific case.