Amicus Brief: Filutowski v. Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department
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Florida resident Sebastian Filutowski sold his car in Florida for cryptocurrency and then converted that crypto into about $57,000 and deposited it in his bank. He became very confused when his bank account was frozen and the money seized. After some effort, he was told to contact a detective in the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. This was confusing because Mr. Filutowski hadn't been to Nevada since at least 2006.
After difficult wrangling, he discovered that the cryptocurrency had been tied to a robbery/ransom crime in Las Vegas, a crime he had never heard of until his money was seized. A detective in the department had somehow determined that there was a connection between the crime and Mr. Filutowski and then reached across the country to seize his money. Plus, Mr. Filutowski's bank doesn't even do business west of the Mississippi. He entered into a long legal nightmare, and, despite providing a bill of sale and other documents to the police, no one in Nevada would provide Mr. Filutowski with a copy of the legal document that supposedly authorized the seizure.
Mr. Filutowski eventually got his money back after 199 days and over $100,000 in legal fees. Now he's asking the Supreme Court of Nevada to declare that the process used to seize his money was constitutionally deficient. The Manhattan Institute has filed a brief in support of his case, joined by the Cato Institute and the Goldwater Institute. Although the U.S. Supreme Court has not ruled civil forfeiture to be unconstitutional, it has stated in no uncertain terms that it implicates important due process and property-rights protections. Under the system used against Mr. Filutowski, no one in the country is safe from having accounts and funds seized on the say-so of a single police officer in Nevada. The U.S. Constitution demands more.
Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow and director of Constitutional Studies at the Manhattan Institute. Follow him on Twitter here.
Trevor Burrus is a legal policy fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
With thanks to associate Sam Foer
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