The federal government wants to keep $726,340 that was found in a 2016 Toyota Tacoma in July.
The Benton Police Department noticed the truck with a broken rear tail light on Interstate 30 about 9:30 p.m. on July 9, according to the civil forfeiture complaint filed last week in U.S. District Court in Little Rock.
The police officer stopped the Toyota with three people in it and quizzed them about where they were headed. Their stories didn’t match up, according to the lawsuit filed by Assistant U.S. Attorney Cameron McCree.
The officer then asked to look around the vehicle, and they agreed. On the backseat was a black duffel bag with 29 vacuum-and heat-sealed bundles of cash that totaled nearly a three-quarters of a million dollars, the filing said.
Rocko, the police department’s drug-sniffing hound, indicated the money was connected to drugs, the filing said. All three people in the truck claimed it wasn’t their money. (Fans of TV police dramas will recognize the SODDI defense: “Some other dude did it.”)
If the judge rules that the federal government can keep the cash that no one else has claimed, that would be good news for the Benton Police Department. Agencies that seize money usually end up getting to keep a portion of it.
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