in him He recently appeared on “The Joe Rogan Experience.” Legendary investor Marc Andreessen has claimed that the Biden administration has secretly “debanked” technology founders, cryptocurrency founders, and “political opponents in general,” or closed their bank accounts.
“We can't live in a world where someone can set up a completely legal company and then literally be sanctioned,” Andreessen said.
If this is news to you, I have a pretty interesting story to tell you. Billionaire-backed tech founders aren't the only ones facing challenges over the trivial issue of keeping their money. We will introduce you to the practice of “.civil forfeitureThis allows law enforcement to seize your assets without or without conviction. charging. Yes, the government can take away all your things based on mere doubt Your assets are tied to criminal activity. And once the government takes your money, the burden is on you you To prove my innocence.
Due process will prevent me from going to jail unless a jury of my peers finds me guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. So why can my money be stolen without similar protection?
In fact, over the past two decades, both state and federal governments have That's all $68.8 billion From Americans. Why haven't you heard of it? Both anecdotes and statistics demonstrate that civil forfeiture is unfairly applied. people of colorlow-income Americans, and immigration. The revenue is now funding law enforcement agencies;providing further incentive to seize even more.
I can talk about this with i've lived it. Back in the summer of the first pandemic, I woke up one morning to the sound of banging on the glass of my house. I walked to the front door with the youngest of my four daughters in a diaper and on my hip. The unwelcome visitors wore FBI raid jackets. “Open the door!” they shouted. “Warrant!” But four agents with guns walking through my house wasn't my main concern. Two weeks ago, federal prosecutors obtained a different type of warrant, leaving us penniless and helpless to protect ourselves from the looming legal nightmare.
In 2020, Amazon Web Services charged my husband with a federal crime we had never heard of. It was said that he had “robbed his property” from the company.honest service” During and after seven years of work at the tech giant. Based on Amazon's complaint, the government granted civil forfeiture and seized the bank accounts of our family and business. This included my income as CEO of my startup company, Riveter, and savings from my 10 years as a lawyer.
Fast forward 4 years. My husband was not charged with any crime and was a federal judge in a related civil case. my husband decided that The Justice Department closed its investigation because Amazon had complied with the “express terms” of its employment contract. The government returned 85%. The money taken from us was fully refunded as long as we promised not to sue.
Somehow this sequence of events is legal in America.
but The seizure changed our lives forever. We sold our house, sold our car, and emptied my husband's retirement account just to pay the lawyer. For over a year, our family of six moved between my sister's basement, my stepfather's condo, and my parents' townhouse, while our daughters attended six schools and childcare centers in four different states. . When we tried to rent a house for our family, the owner found out about the repossession online and asked us to pay one year's rent in advance. The publicity of this incident obviously hurt my husband's career, but it also hurt my career.
For most of American history, civil forfeiture was a little-known practice. At the time of the country's founding, authorities primarily used the system to confiscate ships and cargo that violated customs duties. Today, civil forfeiture is widespread among law enforcement agencies. The reason is that, similar to debanking, the government can seize assets without proving wrongdoing.
Prosecutors gain tremendous influence by seizing assets. Today, federal prosecutors 97% of convictions through a guilty plea rather than a trial. Civil forfeiture amplifies this power because defendants can no longer afford lawyers to fight back in court or even provide for their families. Despite facing such pressure, Many defendants withdraw and accept plea bargains.regardless of their innocence. Many legal scholars have documented high rates of guilty pleas among innocent defendants. This dynamic also played out in the Justice Department's investigation of her husband, with prosecutors ultimately reversing several guilty pleas of his alleged co-conspirators, saying they were not in the interests of justice. If not for the threat of forfeiture, would these innocent people have pleaded guilty in the first place?
Bipartisan support for civil forfeiture reform keep growing. Due process, the only right guaranteed twice in the Constitution, guarantees that I will not be imprisoned unless a jury of my peers finds me guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. So why could my money be stolen without similar protections? Government officials take confidential claims by private companies to court without giving me a chance to review or challenge them? How does due process exist when filing with the public?
My family's story puts a new spin on America's devastating use of civil forfeiture. Former FBI and Justice Department employee now working for Amazon They used their previous friendly relationships with federal agencies to lobby the government to pursue criminal charges and civil forfeiture actions. In fact, the government's top prosecutor Amazon's lawyer says so. After Amazon requested a criminal investigation, she said she specifically “selected” two of the “best and brightest prosecutors” for “our client's important issues.”
We need reforms to protect not just tech founders and political opponents, but people like me who have been victims of the injustice of civil forfeiture. I don't know what will happen to my family. Although the government investigation has concluded, Prosecutors are now fighting The hundreds of thousands of dollars taken years ago have not been returned because important documents related to the seizure have been permanently sealed. But I know that if our Constitution is to have any meaning today, we must end civil forfeiture.
