Meth Dealer Faces Loss of His Comic Book Collection

cultiv8 writes "According to an article from The Smoking Gun: 'A large-scale methamphetamine dealer who allegedly laundered drug profits by purchasing valuable comic books is in danger of forfeiting his 18,753-volume collection to Uncle Sam, according to a new court filing. Federal prosecutors yesterday filed a US District Court complaint seeking ownership of the comic book holdings of Aaron Castro, 30, who is facing a May trial in Colorado on narcotics distribution and weapons charges. The comics are valued in excess of $500,000.'"

Comments

He even looks like Comic Book Store guy

[Anonymous Coward]

Do not bang your head against the display case, please! There is a very valuable Mary Worth inside, in which she has advised a friend to commit suicide. Thank you!

Why is this here?

[Jiro]

I can't for the life of me figure out why this merits a Slashdot story. Even if you conclude "Slashdot readers are geeks, geeks have comic book collections" it's pretty unlikely that many Slashdot readers use their collections to launder drug money.

Re:Why is this here?

[Anonymous Coward]

It means a comic book collection worth $500,000 will be going on sale at auction at bargain basement prices.

Re:Why is this here?

[spiffmastercow]

Post something derogatory about ObamaCare or that the extraordinary claims of the global warming alarmists aren't backed up by extraordinary proof and see where you get modded.

For the record, it's not the fact that you're against the health care law that makes us write you off as a right-wing nutjob. It's the fact that you feel the need to use thead hominem portmanteau "ObamaCare", which indicates that you were merely handed your view from Glenn Beck. There's a lot of things wrong with our health care system, but the solution is NOT to simply be against health care in general. We spend twice as much of our GDP on health care as any other country, and we spend a greater amount on Medicare (divided evenly among the population, not just those who benefit from it) than Canada does on universal health care.

As for "Global Warming", it's the same problem. It has been long established that "global warming" was a misleading term, and we switched to "climate change" somewhere in the mid 90s. But yeah, tell you what.. Go get a PhD in Climate Science. If you still think it's a hoax, then we'll discuss it. Until then, I'm going to listen to the scientists who have actually studied the subject.

Re:Why is this here?

[Schadrach]

All that would take is an expansion of civil forfeiture, not even a huge one.

Civil forfeiture is a bad, bad thing, even in concept. It's kind of hard to argue that the government should be able to confiscate arbitrary sections of your personal wealth and then sue the property (not you but the property itself which being neither a citizen nor a person has less rights than you do) and claim ownership of such if they can demonstrate that it's more likely that this property was the proceeds of some crime than that it wasn't.

So yeah, they sue your possessions (which lack civil rights) and have a lower burden of proof since it's a civil case. Basically so that they can claim any wealth belonging to anyone accused of drug violations, and likely do so even if they are found innocent.

Re:Why is this here?

[Seumas]

Seriously? How about the fact that the government is seeking ownership of half a million dollars in posessions that belong to a man who has not yet been convicted? Should you lose your comic or game collection or your car or even your home for merely being *accused* and tried for a crime? If the government has any business taking your property at ANY time, shouldn't it at least be AFTER you are CONVICTED? You know, when you've been found to actually be GUILTY?

Re:Why is this here?

[DavidTC]

Geeks have a predilection toward the libertarian view.

I think you're confusing correlation with causality.

Poorly-socialized people, who think they're smarter than everyone else and that if other people weren't stopping them they'd basically rule the world...have a predilection towards the libertarian view. (Unless they're poor, then they usually become criminals, instead.)

Read what you will about 'geeks' from that. ;)

I can say that, I used to be a libertarian. (And am a geek.) Then I realized I pretty lucky in life and not as smart as I thought. I'm intelligent, but I can't out-clever the world. No one has enough knowledge to never be conned. No one can be smart enough or aware enough to keep all unscrupulous people from harming them. No one can see the future to always predict every disaster, and even if they could, they often couldn't deal with it even if they knew in advance.

Once you get into the actual world and start interacting with society, you realize just how vapid libertarian thought is, or at least how those people understand libertarian thought, which is basically 'Smart people don't need protection or safety nets, and I'm a smart people! I should get to choose what I'm protected from, and never have to spend any money on taxes to cover me in case something bad happens!'.

There are, indeed, non-vapid libertarians, actual libertarians, out there, and the test is currently 'Do you care more about a) the government forcing you to be insured, or b) the fact the military is forcing an unconvicted Bradley Manning to sleep in the nude?'. If you said B, this post is not about you, even if you intend, at some point, to get around to dealing with A.

But almost every libertarian I've met in real life, including me when I was one, and about half the 'libertarian writers' online, are incredibly vapid and shallow and whose entire idea of freedom is 'People should be able to sell things that are dangerous, and not pay taxes to cover them if they happen to buy things that are dangerous', instead of, you know,actual freedoms, like a right to a trial. They are as I described in the first paragraph of this post.

War on drugs

[damicatz]

The war on drugs is nothing more than a war on the American people by a bunch of holier-than-thou moral imperialists. It has squandered trillions of dollars in taxpayer money and claimed tens if not hundreds of thousands of lives over the years. It doesn't stop drug use and merely floods our prisons with people whose only "crime" is simple possession. Prohibition didn't work for alcohol and it certainly isn't working for drugs.

Re:War on drugs

[Kosi]

I totally agree with that. The war should not be "on drugs", but on the reasons why people chose taking them.

Re:It's A Bird, It's A Plane ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, I don't think the guy reads comics.

Secondly, I think this is a clever way of laundering money. A bunch of small purchases that (should have) gone unnoticed, and then, one big sale of these on ebay while paying the income tax and paper trailing everything. Pretty smart, except for the fact that he got caught.

Re:It's Big Pharna

[PopeRatzo]

When people say meth they mean something that's cooked up by somebody without any quality controls and it's really not the same thing as the chemical equivalent produced by pharmaceutical corporations.

So let me get this straight: the difference between somebody cooking meth to sell in the Wal-mart parking lot and somebody cooking meth to sell in the Wal-mart pharmacy is quality control?

What if some illicit meth dealer did everything by the ISO standards and industry best practices?

So then what's the difference between somebody selling high-quality Blueberry Yum Yum with the little purple hairs and buds as big and juicy as cucumbers and Big Pharma selling some pills that deliver THC without the "making you feel good" part and charging $45 per pill to cancer patients who can't eat because of the chemo and their insurance company won't cover anyway?

If your point is that pharmaceutical companies are a very ugly part of the corporate tyranny that's working to keep people from having options or power, then I absolutely agree. If your point is that "illicit" drugs are a scourge because they don't come with a page of contraindications and possible side effects in 3-point type that's usually full of contradictory and misleading information anyway, then I'm not sure we're on the same page.

Re:TRWTF is YRO

[Seumas]

Yeah, what does the government seeking ownership of your property before you're even found guilty of a crime have to do with your rights?

Nobody Seems to Grasp The Government Abuse, Here.

[Seumas]

I've read enough comments here that seem to completely miss what is going on here and are completely ignorant on the abuse by our government in violating the Fourth Amendment. The assumption by everyone seems to be one of two things. Either the police are seizing property as evidence of a crime committed (in which case, you would presume it will be returned if he's found innocent) or that he has been found guilty and they're taking his ill-gotten gains.

That is not the case.

What they're doing is taking possession of someone's property. Someone who has not been convicted of a crime through a fair trial, yet. Then they're going to sell it and keep the profit. Does that sound right to you? Shouldn't you receive a trial and be found guilty of a crime, before paying for that crime?

In fact, not only do you not have to be found guilty through trial of an actual crime in this country for the government to steal your property and sell it for themselves, but you don't have to even be charged with a crime, in many cases. I went looking for something to explain it to those who care to be enlightened (by what I thought was common knowledge, but by the reactions on Slashdot to this article, seems to be foreign to 80% of us). I actually found a well composed video that from the Institute for Justice

(video 2m30s) - Policing for Profit - The Abuse of Civil Asset Forfeiture

Essentially, what has been happening for about thirty years, is that instead of charging YOU with a crime, the government charges your PROPERTY with a crime. Your property can't defend itself, so it is assumed "guilty". They take the property, sell it at auction, and then split it up among various government departments. All without YOU being convicted. Or even tried in a court of law. Or even being charged with a crime. It is currently a billion-dollar scam in this country.

So save your "durr durr meth dealer bad!" bullshit. You aren't a hard-ass for saying "throw away the key!" or "execute this guy!" or "he deserves it!". You just look ignorant for not considering the due process we have in this country that protects people like you and me from being railroaded without evidence. Maybe the guy IS guilty. That's fine. If he's guilty, throw the book at him. The mere fact that someone has charged him with a crime doesn't mean he deserves punishment nor that he deserves to have his property stolen from him, auctioned off, and then split amongst his local government agencies.

Re:Illegal fines

[dreampod]

They could freeze or seize assets until after the trial finds someone guilty or innocent if they wanted - but they don't. Instead they sue the items themselves under a rediculous legal theory so as to bypass the owners 5th amendment rights and get the lower burden of proof required under civil law. If the accussed drug dealer is found not guilty there is no return of assets, replacement, or money received from the sale given to them. Regardless of the outcome of the criminal trial the assets are permanently and irrevocably gone and typically the money from the sale goes into the police coffers. This creates a perverse incentive to lay insufficiently founded drug charges against people with easily disposed of assets to fundraise for chronically underfunded police departments. Worse yet, in some jurisdictions, the sales go primarily to police and their friends at dramatically below market value who then turn around and sell them a second time at more reasonable rates and pocket the profit. Even in the cases where the charges are laid in good faith, the disposal of assets prior to conviction and failure to compensate is profoundly contrary to the way the legal system is intended to operate.

In this particular case, the charges are probably legitimately laid against someone who there is reasonable evidence of commiting the crime. The farce is that even if he can prove that he didn't, he is still out $500,000 without legal recourse.