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by arwineap 2917 days ago
OH and CA both have laws on the books against creating (hidden compartment) or operating a vehicle with a hidden compartment if it's intended for something illegal. Drugs and guns is the common justification, but I wonder what would happen if you had say 15k in cash in a compartment.
1 comments

Dont. Excessive free cash is very typically seized.
I don’t think we have enough data to say it’s ‘very typically seized’ - certainly it is at times, and in egregious and outrageous fashion, but I don’t think ‘very typically’ is accurate.

I personally have on many occasions had well in excess of 10,000 on my person and have never had it seized.

And you were pulled over, and it was discovered?

I mean, even if you were, that constitutes X data points, which is hardly representative.

You're asking him to prove a negative. The onus should be on you.
Not at all - one can very reasonably assume that 'very frequently' means after it has been discovered during a traffic stop, in which case it is valid to ask how often djrogers has been in that situation.
A mostly unrelated and offtopic comment: It's been a misconception that the $20 and $100 U.S. Dollar bills contain some RFID-like passive tracking capability embedded within the "ribbon" security feature. If you want to have an expensive and uneventful couple minutes, put a $20 in a microwave for a few seconds to "disable" the chip, but be sure to have a cup of water around. The foil-beanie wearing crowd claims that the result of the microwaving, which burns Jackson's face, is proof. Nevermind the actual fact that a majority of the ink on the front of the bill is on Jackson's face, and that the ink contains metal used for pigmenting and other proprietary security measures which is likely the reason it smolders or catches fire first.

Anyways, the reason I bring this up is to highlight the paranoia of some that think that long-range RFID scanners can actually locate large stacks of highly valuable "untraceable" currency, which might be used by the highway patrol to identify potential targets to pull over for civil asset forfeiture reasons.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/cache-point/

His main point was we don't have enough data for the 'very typically' label. To prove this, you need some sort of data.

Instead lostcolony was asking for evidence that this is not the case, implying that we should accept 'very typically' with no evidence, and expect proof of absence to change our minds.

@lostcolony didn’t ask anyone to prove anything. I just read his comment; he merely asked for clarification.
Without a conclusive study, the only proven conclusion is that "large amounts of cash are sometimes seized, sometimes not". However, a study could reveal that this happens very typically, or not very typically (for some definition of typical). In either case, that is not proving a negative.
That's exactly my point. Stating that seizure is 'very typical' as fact, and if someone says you have no evidence, the retort shouldn't be "Prove it isn't."
Did police ever search you, find that cash, and not take it? Congratulations on your privilege. Lots of other people, including those without bank accounts or other means of moving their wealth around, have lost money this way.
More than $10k in cash is considered "evidence of criminal activity" in many jurisdictions.

It's one thing to have a few bank envelopes with $10k in cash and a withdrawal receipt in a zip lock bag or something that's pretty obviously non-criminal. It's another thing to get pulled over in a $90/day rental with $15k hidden under a blanket in the trunk. The latter will almost always end up getting seized.