Dismiss “US v $35,651.11” and give Terry Dehko and his daughter Sandy Thomas back their government seized bank account.

What is “US v $35,651.11”? Terry Dehko & his daughter Sandy Thomas run a grocery store in Fraser, Michigan. Fairly often, someone takes cash from the till & puts it in the bank across the street. Deposits are nearly always less than $10,000, because the insurance covers theft of cash only up to that sum. In January, without warning, the government seized under “civil forfeiture” all the money in the shop account: more than $35,000. The charge was that the Dehkos violated federal money-laundering rules, which forbid people to “structure” bank deposits so as to avoid the $10,000 threshold that triggers banks to report a transaction to the IRS. Prosecutors offered no evidence the Dehkos were laundering money or dodging tax. Indeed, the IRS gave their business a clean bill of health last year.