> That pattern has held true for three of the last six years, although numbers in 2014 and 2015 were skewed somewhat by big, legitimate forfeiture cases involving huge sums of cash: the Bernie Madoff scandal, for instance.
This is a pretty big freaking caveat. If you actually look at the DOJ source, about $1 billion a year comes from low-level seizures (https://www.justice.gov/d9/pages/attachments/2020/02/09/afp_...) Almost all of the rest comes from huge white-collar busts.
The white collar seizures almost work the exact same way. Toyota was never charged with a crime over their accelerator pedal issue. But the government just seized 1.2 billion from them and kept a huge chunk of it for themselves.
This is a pretty big freaking caveat. If you actually look at the DOJ source, about $1 billion a year comes from low-level seizures (https://www.justice.gov/d9/pages/attachments/2020/02/09/afp_...) Almost all of the rest comes from huge white-collar busts.
The white collar seizures almost work the exact same way. Toyota was never charged with a crime over their accelerator pedal issue. But the government just seized 1.2 billion from them and kept a huge chunk of it for themselves.