This article is the story of a friend of mine.

Is civil asset forfeiture being abused by law enforcement in the United States?

I had what I thought was a good friend. We’d been friends for several years. We shared hangar, and spent hours a day chatting.

He is an airline pilot, and — or so I thought — ran a flight school. (Turned out flight school is entirely owned an operated in his wife’s name, but that’s a whole other story).

He would occasionally fly charter jobs and such, and once went on one such trip using a customer of mine’s airplane, a twin-engined 8-seat airplane.

Roughly a week later I saw him… he drove across the ramp to the hangar and called me. “Chris, get in, I gotta talk to you.”

I got into the passenger seat, and he hands me an empty evidence bag. WTF.

Begins telling me his story when his wife walks up, and he stashes the bag under the seat. After they make their smalltalk, we drive off, and the bag comes back out.

I right away away assume incorrectly and say to him “Drugs! Are you crazy!” And he replies, “No, it was full of money.” He then proceeded to tell me how he’d flown to Mexico, and brought in an undocumented group, and was caught when he landed – Texas or Arizona, I don’t recall. Told me he spent 12 hours in handcuffs in a cell with not-so-nice people, fearing for his life, and frequent attempted interrogations, to which he apparently only replied “lawyer”.

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