Practice Overview

Federal Forfeiture

Attorneys at Nathans & Biddle have represented private individuals, homeowners, realtors, businesses, automobile leasing companies, home health agencies, and many others in their efforts to retain property that is rightfully theirs. Robert Biddle has lectured nationally regarding federal forfeiture practice and procedure, and has spoken to numerous groups of attorneys regarding forfeiture procedure. He is the former co-chair of the ABA White Collar Crime Committee's Forfeiture Subcommittee. Recently, he recovered more than $10,000,000.00 from the Government on behalf of a foreign corporation, and nearly $300,000 for an individual client whose funds had been wrongfully seized by federal law enforcement agents.

Following is a brief description of potential forfeiture proceedings that may assist clients in identifying when to seek legal counsel.

Under federal criminal law, asset forfeiture functions as a tax or penalty upon persons whose property becomes involved with alleged criminal activity. The government is legally entitled to seize such property under a mere suspicion of a connection to misconduct. Qualified counsel can assist by significantly improving the probability of recovering some or all of the value of the property seized.

There are numerous narcotics and non-narcotics federal criminal violations that permit asset forfeiture. Narcotics and money laundering charges are the most common bases to seize and forfeit assets. However, there are other statutes that permit forfeiture. Mail and wire fraud that affects a financial institution, various environmental/hazardous waste violations, certain motor vehicle violations such as altering or removing a vehicle identification number, motor fuel excise tax violations, and many others are all federal predicates for civil and criminal forfeiture proceedings.

The federal government may bring two types of asset forfeiture proceedings - civil or criminal. There are also administrative forfeiture actions.

Federal civil forfeiture proceedings are actions brought directly against particular types of properties, such a parcels of real estate, boats, airplanes, stores, factories, inventory or any type of real or personal property. In general, to prevail in such an action, the government must show probable cause that the property facilitated, or was purchased with the proceeds of, specified unlawful activity. To prevail against the government, the owner of the property, or a claimant, must contest the government's showing of probable cause.

Administrative forfeiture proceedings are a type of civil forfeiture initiated and conducted by law enforcement agencies. Until an administrative forfeiture is contested, and sent to a U.S. Attorney for prosecution, the law enforcement agencies have great autonomy in handling administrative forfeitures

In criminal forfeiture proceedings, forfeiture is sought as part of a criminal proceeding against a particular person. Thus, unlike a federal civil forfeiture action, the criminal forfeiture proceeding is directly connected to a pending criminal prosecution. Under civil or criminal law, a claimant must prove that either he or she is an "innocent owner" or that the property was not involved in criminal activity. Generally, a claimant holding a financial interest in property sought to be seized must show that he or she did not know of any criminal activity relating to the property or that if the claimant had such knowledge, that he or she took all reasonable steps to stop such illegal activity.

If the government is considering forfeiture of any of your assets or property, sound legal advice is important to protecting your rights.