U.S. v. $321,470.00, U.S. Currency, 87-3622

• Citation: 874 F.2d 298
• Decision Date: 05 June 1989
• Docket Number: No. 87-3622,87-3622
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. $321,470.00, UNITED STATES CURRENCY, Defendant. Appeal of Michael CAMBELETTA, Movant-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

Page 298

874 F.2d 298

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. $321,470.00, UNITED STATES CURRENCY, Defendant.

Appeal of Michael CAMBELETTA, Movant-Appellant.

No. 87-3622.

United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.

June 5, 1989.

Richard C. Guerriero, Jr., John Di Giulio, Baton Rouge, La., for movant-appellant.

Richard B. Launey, Asst., U.S. Atty., Baton Rouge, La., for plaintiff-appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana.

Before WISDOM, REAVLEY, and POLITZ, Circuit Judges:

WISDOM, Circuit Judge:

In this case the owner of $321,470 in cash turned his back on what must have been pin money to him compared with the value of preserving his anonymity.

The United States brings this in rem civil forfeiture action against $321,470 under 21 U.S.C. Sec. 881(a)(6). Section 881(a)(6) authorizes forfeiture of goods, money, and real property which the United States has probable cause to believe may be substantially connected with illegal drug transactions. ¹

Late in January 1986, Michael Cambeletta left his home in Miami, Florida, and traveled by bus to Jackson, Tennessee, in response to a telephone call from someone whom he could not or would not identify. There, at a place he could not or would not identify, except that he thought it was a construction site, a man, whom he could not or would not identify, turned over to him bundles of currency in small denominations, amounting to over $320,000. The man instructed him to carry the money to Miami. The man also lent him a brand new 1985 Ford pick-up truck and directed him to buy a camper. The man told him to take the money to the Marriott Hotel near the airport in Miami, Florida, where someone, whom he could not or would not identify, would give him further instructions. For this he received the modest sum of $1,000 and was to be reimbursed for his expenses.

On February 1, 1986, a Louisiana State Trooper stopped Cambeletta, searched the truck, and found the bundles of currency he was carrying. United States authorities seized the vehicle and its contents and started forfeiture proceedings. No one has claimed ownership of the money or the vehicle. According to Cambeletta, no one has communicated with him in regard to the money. Dead silence still shields the anonymity of the owner of the cash hoard and no one has come forward with evidence that Cambeletta had a lawful possessory interest in the hoard.

In April 1986 the United States filed a complaint against the $321,470 of currency. The district court issued an order for a warrant of arrest of the property and for notice to be published giving persons in interest ten days within which to file claims and 20 days within which to file an answer. Cambeletta filed an "Intervention Petition" as "possessor and claimant" of the currency, and then filed an answer praying that the currency "not be forfeited, but that it be delivered to intervenor". Meanwhile, the Drug Enforcement Administration (D.E.A.) had been investigating Cambeletta. The United States Attorney addressed 48 interrogatories to Cambeletta and made 28 requests for admissions of fact. He received no direct answers from Cambeletta to any question of importance. To most interrogatories Cambeletta responded by saying "not applicable" or he refused to answer "on my Fifth Amendment Right". Except for answers relying on his Fifth Amendment rights, he denied all requests for admissions of fact.

Attorneys for the United States and for Cambeletta took depositions. In February 1987 Cambeletta filed a motion to suppress and to request the court to hold an evidentiary hearing on the motion. He followed this with a motion for a summary judgment based on his contention that the United States had failed to prove a substantial connection between the money seized and illegal drug trafficking. The United States filed a motion for a summary judgment, "because [Cambeletta] has failed to demonstrate an ownership or possessory interest in the property". The district court held an evidentiary hearing on the motion to suppress and heard oral argument on all the motions.

The district court rendered a written decision on June 17, 1987, denying the intervenor's motion for summary judgment, for lack of standing to contest the forfeiture, and granting the government's motion for a summary judgment. The court rejected the argument that the government must demonstrate probable cause for forfeiture before a claimant is required to prove standing. The court also held that the intervenor's lack of standing mooted the motion to suppress. Cambeletta appeals this decision of June 17, 1987. ² We agree with the decision and with the opinion except that portion of it which might be construed as limiting standing to contest a forfeiture only to those persons having "the requisite ownership interest" in the seized property. A lawful possessory interest in the seized property will confer standing to attack a forfeiture proceeding. Cambeletta failed to show that he had such an interest. After due notice, the Clerk of Court entered an order of default.

I.

On February 1, 1986, shortly after dusk on a highway in Livingston Parish, west of Baton Rouge, State Trooper David Robinson stopped Cambeletta. As the lights of Robinson's patrol car had flashed across the truck he had noticed that its bumper carried no license tag. When the truck stopped, Robertson turned on his spotlights and observed a temporary Tennessee plate behind the "curtains" in the camper. It was, he said later, "not visible unless you've got light on it"; it "was hard to see because it blended into the curtain". The windows in the camper were covered with what turned out to be towels kept in place by duct tape. There is no doubt, therefore, that the trooper had a reasonable basis for stopping the vehicle. It was not a "profile" stop.

At this point, following standard procedures, Robertson's intention was to check the driver's license and make sure that the temporary tag was current and referred to the vehicle. Cambeletta stepped out of the truck and gave the trooper an Iowa driver's license. It was "a little odd that [in Louisiana the driver] had an Iowa license and a temporary Tennessee plate". When Robertson asked for the motor vehicle registration card, which must be carried at all times in a motor vehicle under Louisiana law, Cambeletta "went into an explanation" saying that a friend of his had bought the truck a couple of days before and had lent it to him. He said he was going from Tennessee to Georgia or from Georgia to Tennessee (the record is confusing on this point). His friend had "loaned it to him to drive around the country". He did not have a registration certificate, but he produced a "bill of sale of some sort" for the vehicle in the name of Jerry Freeman showing that it had been bought in Memphis on January 29, 1986.

Robertson became suspicious that the truck might have been stolen. Cambeletta had produced an Iowa driver's license and had said that was he was driving to Tennessee (perhaps to Georgia) only two days after the truck had been bought by someone else in Tennessee. Cambeletta had taken a circuitous route in that he was in the Baton Rouge area of Louisiana, an out-of-the-way place considering that his immediate destination was Tennessee or Georgia; later, he said that his final destination was Miami, Florida. When Robertson asked him to explain his presence in Louisiana, Cambeletta thought for a few minutes and said that he had family all over the country and that he was going to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. That was February 1; in 1986 Mardi Gras fell on February 11, but in New Orleans some Carnival festivities precede Mardi Gras Day. Still, the natural way to go to Georgia or Tennessee, and eventually to Miami, Florida, is not by way of Louisiana. The natural way to go to New Orleans from Baton Rouge is not by going what Robertson called "way out" in Livingston Parish, west of Baton Rouge; he was heading east for Mississippi when there was a short, direct highway south from Baton Rouge to New Orleans.

According to Robertson, Cambeletta was "nervous and stuttering"; when asked a question "he would pause, and he would say a couple of words and pause"; he "seemed to be making things up to suit him as he went along". Robertson did not know "for sure if he was telling ... the truth", but the trooper was "suspicious of the circumstances and the answers [Cambelleta] gave". He was "nervous" and "making [Robertson] nervous". Robertson, thinking of his own safety, telephoned Sergeant Morris King to proceed to the stop. "All [Cambeletta] had was a bill of sale for the truck in someone else's name." "Putting together those things is what caused [Robertson] to investigate further". "I just knew something wasn't right." "But it's funny, I never found anything to show that he was in possession [of the vehicle] legitimately." The trooper asked Cambeletta "if he would mind if I had a look into the truck", and would he sit in the back of the patrol car; the absence of door handles on the inside prevented one from leaving the car from its rear. They were alone and some distance from Baton Rouge; Robertson was concerned for his "own safety more than anything else". Cambeletta said, "Not at all", and sat in the patrol car. He volunteered the information that the keys to the camper were in the ashtray of the truck. Robertson then took out a Consent to Search form and read it to Cambeletta who signed it. The trooper does not appear to have exerted any coercion on Cambeletta, although it might be argued that sitting in the back of a car without handles on the doors constituted forced detention. Cambeletta, however, made no objection to getting into the police car.

Robertson found most of the money in a boot-box heavily taped with duct tape. He then called Sergeant King to "come up here now". When King arrived both searched and found more currency in a T-shirt...