Inspector General criticizes the IRS for seizing money from innocent people

So now you can take my money if I keep it in cash and travel with it, or if I deposit it to a bank in under $10k increments, and if it&#x27;s more than that, that&#x27;s also suspicious. I guess just having money is suspicious these days... we&#x27;re all supposed to spend it on fancy phones.<p>Overall, it just feels like the IRS felt jealous of the civil forfeitures.

The previous president appointed Loretta Lynch as AG, who made a name for herself with civil asset forfeiture.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.rawstory.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;01&#x2F;loretta-lynch-civil-forfeiture-hirsch&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.rawstory.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;01&#x2F;loretta-lynch-civil-forfeitu...</a><p>If he didn&#x27;t want this sort of nonsense to be a front and center policy of the DOJ, then he would have appointed someone else.<p>What about Jeff Sessions? Policy wise, he&#x27;s also a supporter of this policy, although he doesn&#x27;t have the proven track record of using it as a tool like Lynch did. Maybe there&#x27;s a small ray of hope there, but I doubt it.

I work on software banks use to look for fraud or money laundering. Fraud always made sense, since there was a feedback loop with the end customer to confirm transactions were legit or not. We could adjust our algorithms from there.<p>I don&#x27;t think the same exists for BSA. The main incentive for banks is to avoid fines for not reporting suspicious activity and the Fed doesn&#x27;t let the bank (or us) know whether the suspicious activity submitted turned out to be legal or not. I would love to reduce the number of false positives from our system, but have no way to build a proper training set. Sounds like the IRS doesn&#x27;t know what it should really be targeting either.

TL;DR Do not try this at home: &quot;The IRS’s own internal watchdog found that the IRS had a practice of seizing entire bank accounts based on nothing more than a pattern of under-$10,000 cash deposits.&quot;

There&#x27;s this recent story which makes it seem likely the practices of asset forfeiture won&#x27;t stay as they are for too much longer: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theatlantic.com&#x2F;politics&#x2F;archive&#x2F;2017&#x2F;04&#x2F;clarence-thomas-civil-forfeiture&#x2F;521583&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theatlantic.com&#x2F;politics&#x2F;archive&#x2F;2017&#x2F;04&#x2F;clarenc...</a>

Stories like this make it hard to maintain the illusion that government employees are public servants, except in the sense that cowboys are servants to cattle.

91% of 278 randomly-sampled cases were wrongfully seized. Jesus.<p>&gt; More troubling, the report found that the pattern of seizures — targeting businesses that had obtained their money legally — was deliberate.<p>That part is not surprising to me, given how many cases were wrongful, that it was deliberate. There is no oversight, except for occasional investigations like this one.<p>This will not result in rolling back this power, though. They&#x27;ll just put &quot;stronger oversight&quot; in place, to make sure the wolves guarding the hen house are on their best behavior.

The problem isn&#x27;t their policy, the problem is the law that allows this. These asset grabs are clearly unconstitutional violations of the 4th amendment - that doesn&#x27;t change just because of a law. They&#x27;re taking assets without a warrant or even probably cause. If you want to take the drug money after you&#x27;ve proven and convicted someone of a drug offense then maybe (that&#x27;s a different debate). But this is simply authorized theft. The justification really isn&#x27;t there (excuses are there).

What gets me is the audacity of making a suspicious activity that may be an indication of a crime, the crime itself. It&#x27;s as if they outlawed having a suspiciously high power bill, or looking over your shoulder a lot while you browse items in a store.

It seems to me that data processing capacity must have increased to the point where they could just reduce the reporting level to zero (ie every transaction is reported) and so remove the entire need for rules against &quot;structuring&quot;.

I wonder if you would just be better off refusing these kinds of actions as a private citizen. I&#x27;m pretty sure you could make enough noise about it that it wouldn&#x27;t be worth their while. Same with those videos of police officers trying to cease cash from people after pulling them over. I would just refuse to give it to them. Are they going to shoot me for money on the side of the road?

I can see how these transactions can trigger an alert but why don&#x27;t they give people a chance to clarify the situation first before taking action? This seems extremely unproductive and a big burden for someone who can&#x27;t afford a lawyer easily.

I think we&#x27;re all guilty of this one - that is anyone with a job that pays less than 10K per pay-check.

IRS algorithm is screwed :)

You should see what law enforcement does.