If an Oklahoman who uses a prepaid debit credit card gets pulled over, he now runs the risk that police take all of the money he’s loaded onto the card without having to arrest him or get a warrant.
The state’s Department of Public Safety recently bought and installed 16 portable devices that police can carry in their cars and that allow them to scan prepaid debit cards and gift cards and seize any funds, as well as freeze the funds. The scanners can also obtain and keep some account information — including the name on the card, card number, issuer, and expiration date — from other kinds of cards, such as regular debit cards an credit cards.
Highway patrollers are supposed to use the devices when they suspect someone of having money obtained through drug trafficking. The department says they are targeting the increasing use of prepaid cards by drug dealers.
We’re gonna look for different factors in the way that you’re acting
But the criteria for how police determine whether someone’s funds should be seized are a bit fuzzy. A trooper can simply suspect someone has money on a card tied to some kind of crime to justify the seizure.
“We’re gonna look for different factors in the way that you’re acting,” Oklahoma Highway Patrol Lt. John Vincent told News 9. “We’re gonna look for if there’s a difference in your story. If there’s someway that we can prove that you’re falsifying information to us about your business.”
“If we have reasonable suspicion to believe there’s a crime being committed, we’re going to investigate that. If someone has 300 cards taped up and hidden inside the dash of a vehicle, we’re going to check that,” Vincent told Oklahoma Watch. “But if the person has proof that it belongs to him for legitimate reasons, there’s nothing going to happen. We won’t seize it.”
This builds on the vagueness of the state’s civil asset forfeiture laws in general. Oklahoma law only requires the department to prove that seized property is connected to a crime by a preponderance of evidence.
Vincent argues that if someone believes their funds were wrongly seized, they can get them back. “If you can prove that you have a legitimate reason to have that money it will be given back to you. And we’ve done that in the past,” he said. But under state law, anyone who wants to try and get their assets back bears the burden of proving that they had nothing to do with illegal use of their property.
Both Vincent and T. Jack Williams, president of ERAD Group, the company that makes and sells the card readers, argue that seizure is not the primary goal of the readers, and instead that is “tertiary,” as Williams put it; catching identity theft is. “This isn’t solely about asset forfeiture. This isn’t about money. We’re not in the business of making money. We’re in the business of solving crimes,” Vincent said.http://archive.thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/11/11/3591031/in-asset-seizure-programs-officials-advise-cops-if-in-doubt-take-it/But asset forfeiture pads law enforcement budgets. Oklahoma law allows enforcement agencies to keep 100 percent of what they take. Between 2000 and 2014, the state got nearly $99 million from seizing cash or selling off seized property. Seventy percent of the money the state gets from civil asset forfeiture goes to pay for law enforcement salaries. Plus, the state is already grappling with a $1.3 billion budget shortfall that has led lawmakers to slash spending on a number of agencies.
The devices also serve to send profits to Williams’s company. According to the contract the state signed with ERAD Group, obtained by Oklahoma Watch, the company will get 7.7 percent of all money that’s seized through the readers as a “processing fee,” plus a one-time $5,000 fee for implementing the devices and $1,500 for training officers to use them.
We’re not in the business of making money. We’re in the business of solving crimes
Oklahoma is not the only state using ERAD card readers. Although Williams would not give Oklahoma Watch an exact number of law enforcement agencies he works with, he said it’s “in the hundreds.”
ERAD Group also insists that the use of its product to seize funds doesn’t violate the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. In a slide presentation obtained by Oklahoma Watch, the company argues, “Interrogating the magnetic stripe of a confiscated credit, debit or prepaid card does not violate an individual’s fourth amendment rights” and that “Individuals do not have privacy rights with magnetic strip cards.” Williams also told the publication, “Prepaid cards are cash, they are not bank accounts.”
But others disagree. Brady Henderson, legal director for ACLU Oklahoma, said that usually seizing or freezing money in a bank account requires the involvement of the courts beforehand. “All of that would be eliminated in this situation,” he told Oklahoma Watch. “It’s a situation where you have an instant freeze with zero due process.”http://archive.thinkprogress.org/economy/2016/05/12/3777607/darden-restaurants-payroll-cards/Prepaid debit cards are far from a smoking gun that proves criminal activity. Americans loaded $65 billion onto prepaid cards in 2012, more than double what they put on them in 2009, while 12 million people use them at least once a month.
But most card users make less than $25,000 a year. Low-wage employers often use them to pay workers instead of giving them paychecks. The cards fall into a bit of a regulatory blind spot and are not overseen the way many traditional bank products are.
Some Oklahoma lawmakers are already concerned about the new card readers. State Sen. Kyle Loveless (R) argues that police are already abusing asset forfeiture. “We’ve seen single mom’s stuff be taken, a cancer survivor his drugs taken, we saw a Christian band being taken,” he told News 9. “We’ve seen innocent people’s stuff being taken. We’ve seen where the money goes and how it’s been misspent.”
Loveless introduced legislation in the last session to reform the state’s civil asset forfeiture laws, but it died in committee. He plans to try again next session and add a requirement that police would have to make a conviction before seizing assets.
Some states have taken action to curb or ban civil asset forfeiture. New Mexico banned the practice in 2014 unless someone is arrested or convicted for a crime, becoming the second state to do so alongside North Carolina, which requires a conviction.
But its use is rising quickly elsewhere. In 2012, the last year with the most consistent data, 26 states and Washington, DC obtained more than $254 million through asset forfeiture. In 14 states, forfeiture revenue grew 136 percent between 2002 and 2013. Most of these places allow assets to be seized without a warrant, arrest, or conviction. Meanwhile, all but seven states and DC allow law enforcement agencies to use the proceeds for their budgets, in many cases letting them keep 100 percent of the value.