In video obtained by
KLAS-TV this week, Humboldt County Sheriffs Deputy Lee Dove, who just pulled over a driver for going 3 miles over the speed limit, can be seen searching a vehicle without probable cause.
Well, Im gonna search that vehicle first, ok? Dove says to the driver, Tan Nguyen.
As Dove opens the vehicles doors and hatchback, Nguyen, who has not given the deputy permission, demands to know why his vehicle is being searched. Without a legitimate explanation, Dove refuses to answer.
Because Im talking to you
well, no, I dont have to explain that to you, Dove says as he discovers $50,000 in cash and $10,000 in cashiers checks. Im not going to explain that to you, but I am gonna put my drug dog on that. If my dog alerts, Im seizing the money. You can try to get it back but youre not.
Despite Nguyen explaining how he won the cash in Las Vegas, Dove continues the confiscation with no proof that the money was obtained illegally.
Good luck proving it. Good luck proving it. Youll burn it up in attorney fees before we give it back to you, Dove says.
Although police departments are allowed in some states to seize and spend cash linked to criminal activity under
heavily abused forfeiture laws, Dove instead decides to outright extort Nguyen, telling him that his vehicle will be towed if he does not give up the $50,000.
Its your call. If you want to walk away, you can take the cashiers checks, the car and everything and you can bolt and youre on your way, Dove says. But youre gonna be walking away from this money and abandoning it.
Unsurprisingly, according to local blogger Dee Holzel, the sheriffs department and District Attorney have claimed that no illegal activity has ever taken place in regards to officers seizing cash.
What they said initially was, well, these are civil forfeiture programs. These kinds of things happen everywhere. Theres nothing unusual about Humboldt County. But that turned out to not be true, Holzel explained. When you have people by the side of the road and youre having them abandon their money so theyll be allowed to get in their car and drive away, they dont do that everywhere.
Nguyens lawyer, John Ohlson, also blasted the actions of the officer, calling the scenario a blatant highway robbery.
An armed person stops a traveler and demands the travelers money and tells the traveler that unless he gets in his car and moves on down the road and forgets all about it, hes going to take his car too, Ohlson said. I would say thats pretty close to what youre describing as highway robbery.
Luckily, Nguyen was not only given his cash back, but granted an extra $10,000 for attorney fees from the department as well. Other victims such as Matt Lee, who had $2,400 taken by Dove, was forced to sign a confidentiality agreement with Humboldt County in order to get his.
Theyre buying their silence with their own money, said Ohlson, who also represented Lee.
Following a massive uproar from local residents, Humboldt County Sheriff Ed Kilgore now claims his officers will no longer ask for peoples money during traffic stops unless a crime is suspected, even though Dove has seized cash before by claiming to smell non-existent marijuana.
We want to do the right thing. I am a strong proponent of fighting the war on drugs, and I want to make sure everything we do here is on the up-and-up, Kilgore said.
Unfortunately, Nevada is only one of many states experiencing similar corruption. Earlier this year, a
Tennessee cop struggled to answer questions from a local news group after seizing $22,000 from an innocent driver. Despite telling the officer he was using the cash to buy a new car, the officer was found to have left the drivers explanation out of the police report.
In 2012, a Wisconsin family attempting to bail their son out of jail had
$7,500 seized after police claimed a drug dog alerted to narcotics on the cash. It was soon learned that the officers had forced the family to bring cash instead of a check, likely knowing that
90 percent of cash is tainted with cocaine residue.
Ironically, while corrupt law enforcement officers use the war on drugs to shake down innocent Americans, large banks such as
HSBC continue to launder billions for
DEA-backed Mexican drug cartels.
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