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Sometimes a situation presents itself that screams for action.

Spanish cops caught this guy with half a kilo of cocaine stashed under his toupee. They haven’t got a hair on their ass…https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/crime/colombian-man-arrested-in-spain-trying-to-smuggle-cocaine-under-toupee/ar-AAEoW7i

Crooks expect to get busted. They accept the fact that prison is a possibility. Tell them they are looking at ten years and they shrug. Tell them that you are gonna seize their shit (money, car, toys) and the bitching begins. Stuff is how they keep score, a measure of success. Taking it away…that’s just not fair!

There are two routes to seizing property. One is that the item to be seized is contraband because it was used in the offense and is a criminal instrument. The second route is that the item was purchased, maintained or represents the proceeds from criminal activity.

Sometimes the criminal charge goes unchallenged. Occasionally the trial controversy revolves around the forfeiture or seizure action.

This was before my time. However, the duck maintained a place of honor at the office. The task force executed a search warrant and found three ounces of cocaine stuffed in the ass of a rattan duck. They seized the dope, the duck, a wide variety of electronics, cash and jewelry and the husband and wife dope dealers.

Negotiations got to the point that prison time and forfeiture would go unchallenged, provided the defendants got the duck back. The task force drew a line in the sand, no duck. A trial ensued. We kept the duck, they went to jail.

We had dealings with a speed freak we named “Freaky Freddie.” Freaky Freddie liked to video himself having sex. We had hundreds of sex tapes and 30 to 40 K of his stuff. Freddie offered to walk away and plead guilty, if only we would give him his sex tapes back.

You may have spotted a trend. The guy in the photo, yeah we would seize his toupee. Bragging rights.

We investigated a speed freak. We seized about a half million dollars in cash and toys from him. We discovered that he had purchased, for several girlfriends, high end boob jobs. We found the bills and associated paperwork for the latest boob job. He had no legitimate income. The boobs were purchased with illegitimately obtained funds. We drew up seizure paperwork for the girl friend’s boobs.

Contrary of Mueller, Comey and company, there are some things a United States Attorney won’t do. We didn’t get the boobs. We still got the bragging rights for the attempt.