United States v. ,200.00 in U.S. Currency

• Decision Date: 22 June 2010
• Docket Number: No. 1:09–cv–00029–JAJ–TJS.,1:09–cv–00029–JAJ–TJS.
• Citation: 805 F.Supp.2d 682
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff, v. $61,200.00 IN U.S. CURRENCY, MORE OR LESS, Defendant.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of Iowa

805 F.Supp.2d 682

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff,

v.$61,200.00 IN U.S. CURRENCY, MORE OR LESS, Defendant.

No. 1:09–cv–00029–JAJ–TJS.

United States District Court, S.D. Iowa, Western Division.

June 22, 2010.

Maureen McGuire, U.S. Attorney's Office, Des Moines, IA, for Plaintiff.

ORDER

JOHN A. JARVEY, District Judge.

This matter comes before the Court pursuant to Plaintiff United States of America's May 17, 2010, motion for summary judgment. [Dkt. No. 17.] The claimant, Brian Szymczak, responded to the government's motion for summary judgment on June 1, 2010 [Dkt. Nos. 18 & 19] and the government replied on June 8, 2010. [Dkt. No. 20.] The government filed a Verified Complaint for Forfeiture in Rem on August 31, 2009 and the claimant responded by filing a Verified Claim and Answer. [Dkt. Nos. 1, 5, & 6.] The claimant asserts that he is the rightful owner of the defendant money and that it is unrelated to any drug activity. The Court denies the motion for summary judgment.

I. Background

On February 25, 2009, Iowa State Patrol Officer Jerod Clyde made a routine traffic stop of a white van traveling west on Interstate 80 in Pottawattamie County, Iowa.¹ The van was a 2006 GMC Savana 2500 with California license plate # 7V65106. The lone occupant and driver of the vehicle was Brian Lee Szymczak, 61 years old, of Sebastopol, California. Szymczak was also the registered owner of the vehicle. When questioned as to the purpose of his travel, Szymczak told Officer Clyde that he had been in Michigan. He was traveling back to California after visiting friends and relatives. While in Michigan, he had been spending money to winterize his residence, a pole barn.

Officer Clyde smelled marijuana emitting from the vehicle. Officer Clyde questioned Szymczak if he had any marijuana in the vehicle, but Szymczak denied it. Szymczak then admitted that he had several joints but that he had a valid California prescription for marijuana. The marijuana prescription had expired one month earlier, in January 2009. Officer Clyde asked Szymczak whether he had large amounts of cash in the car, but Szymczak denied it. After reconsidering Officer Clyde's question, Szymczak stated that he had approximately $60,000 in the vehicle. To explain the large sum of money, Szymczak told Officer Clyde that he had been planning to install a safe at the pole barn in Michigan and had brought his life savings from California in anticipation of his move. However, because the ground was frozen he decided to return to California until the ground thawed. He also said he had rented a vehicle in Michigan from February 9 through February 23, 2009. He put 3240 miles on the rental vehicle to drive around and visit relatives.

Szymczak then gave Officer Clyde consent to search the vehicle, both for the marijuana and the money. Officer Clyde found a total of $61,200 in U.S. Currency and it was located

... in three separate areas of the van. The first area was a tool bag with some wiring and just miscellaneous small tools inside there, and that was just loose, laying on the inside on the bottom of the bag.

And there was two other packages of money, United States currency located—one of them was hidden inside of a Shredded Wheats box, in the bottom of a Shredded Wheats box. It was heat sealed. The bag was heat sealed, in the bottom, and there was Shredded Wheats placed on top of that, and the box was closed. That was located amongst the tools in the back of the van on the driver's side. The third bag was vacuum sealed and located on the left side on the floor of the van.

In Officer Clyde's experience, the only time he came across heat- or vacuum-sealed money was when the individual was involved in narcotics trafficking. Szymczak stated that he routinely heat-sealed multiple things in the same manner as the heat-sealed currency. The money was in the following denominations: 95–$100 bills; 144–$50 bills; 2133–$20 bills; 164–$10 bills; and 40–$5 bills. The police later took the money to an Iowa State Patrol post and a trained narcotics detection dog alerted to the odor of narcotics where the police placed the hidden money.

Szymczak explained to Officer Clyde that the $61,200 comprised his life savings. He said that did not trust banks and had buried the money at an undisclosed location on Bureau of Land Management property in California. Szymczak claimed that he had accumulated this money over the past approximately twenty-five years while working as a cable splicer in the telephone line repair business. He worked for fourteen years at one company, and then found periodic employment thereafter from browsing through a trade journal. In 2001, he worked for two companies, making between $40 and $50 per hour. Szymczak said he saved approximately $200,000 from his employment through 2001. From 2002 through 2005, Szymczak did not work, but lived off his savings. After four months of working in 2006, he reported gross receipts of $45,850, with an adjusted gross income of $4,063 on his tax return. Szymczak then worked again in 2008 from May through August. He earned $30,855 in gross receipts for these four months and reported an adjusted gross income of $9,817 on his tax return. From September 2008 to February 2009, he spent approximately $46,380. Szymczak stated that as of February 2009, the remainder of his life savings was approximately $61,000. In February 2009, Szymczak had three bank accounts in California, Wisconsin, and Michigan. All of these accounts contained amounts between $200 and $3000, and are not included within the $61,200 in dispute here.

The police subsequently found marijuana in a full search of the vehicle. Marijuana was found in multiple places including where the money had been located on the top shelf, left side of the van; in the driver's compartment, between the seats; in plastic bags; in heat-sealed bags; and in pill bottles. There was also a various assortment of drug paraphernalia found in the van, including rolling papers, lighters, and medicine bottles that contained hashish. Szymczak admitted that some of the marijuana was in bags heat-sealed in the same manner as the money. Based on the vehicle search, Szymczak pled guilty in November 2009 to possession of a controlled substance in the Iowa District Court for Pottawattamie County.²

Szymczak also told police that he had a rental storage unit in Michigan because he intended to move back to Michigan. When the Michigan State Police executed a search warrant on the storage unit, they found, inter alia, three hand guns; two digital scales; drug paraphernalia; and packaging materials that had marijuana residue on them. Szymczak admitted that these items, among others, were his property.

II. Arguments

The government asserts that there are no genuine issues of material fact and it is entitled to summary judgment because it meets the preponderance of the evidence standard that the defendant currency is proceeds of a drug offense or had been used to facilitate a drug offense in violation of 21 U.S.C. §§ 841 or 846. The government argues that the totality of circumstances test supports a finding that the defendant currency is subject to forfeiture. In support, the government cites to the amount of U.S. currency involved, the alert to currency by a trained drug detection dog, the manner in which the defendant currency was being transported, the travel between locations involved in drug trafficking, the claimant's lack of a legitimate income, the presence of drugs and drug paraphernalia found with the money, and the claimant's inadequate explanations as to how he had earned the money and why he had buried it in California.

The claimant to the defendant currency asserts that the totality of circumstances test does not support summary judgment in this case because there are several genuine issues of material fact that remain unresolved. Claimant asserts that he has sufficient sources of legitimate income to explain his possession of the defendant currency. Furthermore, he had legitimate personal reasons for traveling between Michigan and California. Finally, the denominations of the defendant currency are not indicative of drug activity. The claimant urges the Court to find that his explanations and evidence create genuine issues of material fact, and that the Court should deny the government's motion.

In its reply, the government argues summary judgment is warranted because there are no outstanding factual disputes. According to the government, claimant's self-serving affidavit does not obviate the “obvious and substantial disparity between the claimant's income and his expenditures.” As such, the government urges the Court to find there are no genuine issues of material fact and to find by a preponderance of the evidence that the defendant currency is subject to forfeiture.

III. Summary Judgment Standard

A motion for summary judgment may be granted only if, after examining all of the evidence in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party, the court finds that no genuine issues of material fact exist as to the forfeitability of the property and that the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Reynolds v. RehabCare Group E., Inc., 591 F.3d 1030, 1032 (8th Cir.2010) (citing Myers v. Lutsen Mtns. Corp., 587 F.3d 891, 893 (8th Cir.2009)); see also Kountze ex rel. Hitchcock Found. v. Gaines, 536 F.3d 813, 817 (8th Cir.2008) (“[S]ummary judgment is appropriate where the pleadings, discovery materials, and any affidavits show that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the movant is entitled to summary judgment as a matter of law.”); United States v. Premises Known as 318 S. Third St., 988 F.2d 822, 825 (8th Cir.1993). “[A]n issue of material fact is genuine if the evidence is sufficient to allow a reasonable jury verdict for the nonmoving party.” Great Plains Real Estate Dev., L.L.C. v. Union Cent. Life Ins. et al., 536 F.3d 939, 944 (8th Cir.2008) (quot...