Editor's note: For nearly a decade, the IRS didn't need to prove you committed a crime to take your money. It just needed your bank deposits to look suspicious. Under a little-known federal practice called "structuring" enforcement, the agency seized cash and shut down bank accounts belonging to jewelry store owners, dairy farmers, and convenience store operators, not because they were laundering money or dodging taxes, but because they made a series of cash deposits under $10,000. No criminal charges. No convictions. Just the money, gone, and the burden placed squarely on the citizen to prove their own innocence to get it back. It took a federal inspector general's audit, a
New York Times exposé, and years of litigation by civil liberties lawyers to force the agency to admit what its own data had shown all along: the vast majority of the people it targeted had done nothing wrong.
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Seized Without a Crime: How the IRS Turned a Reporting Rule Into a Cash Machine
For nearly a decade, the Internal Revenue Service ran a program that let it walk into a small business owner's bank, freeze the account, and keep the money, without ever charging that person with a crime. The agency didn't need to prove drug trafficking. It didn't need to prove money laundering. It didn't even need a conviction. All it needed was a pattern of cash deposits that looked, on paper, like someone trying to stay under a $10,000 reporting threshold. That was enough to trigger a seizure, and once the money was gone, the burden fell on the citizen to prove their own innocence to get it back.
