An armored car company used by licensed marijuana dispensaries in Missouri and other states is suing the federal government, claiming law enforcement agents have illegally seized dispensary cash the company was transporting.
The federal lawsuit, filed in California last week by Empyreal Logistics, comes after a sheriff’s deputy in Dickinson County, Kansas, stopped one of Empyreal’s vehicles last year on Interstate 70 for an unspecified traffic violation and seized nearly $166,000 in cash it was transporting from marijuana dispensaries in Kansas City, Missouri, to a credit union in Colorado.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Kansas subsequently filed a civil forfeiture action against Empyreal, arguing the seized cash was traceable to sales that violated the federal Controlled Substances Act. (Cannabis is classified as a Schedule I drug under the act.) That case is pending.
In October, KCUR sought records related to the stop from the Dickinson County Sheriff’s Office under the Kansas Open Records Act. Doug Thompson, the Dickinson County counselor, responded by saying that the records were in the hands of the Drug Enforcement Administration.
KCUR then sought the records from the DEA in November under the federal Freedom of Information Act. The DEA has yet to respond to KCUR’s request.
Empyreal’s lawsuit, however, alleges that Dickinson County Sheriff’s Deputy Kalen Robinson pulled over Empyreal’s vehicle, a Ford Transit van, as it was heading east on I-70 because the Colorado license plate tag was slightly covered by the license plate holder. Robinson stopped the vehicle a second time the next day as it was heading west toward Colorado and seized the cash.
Empyreal’s lawsuit accuses Robinson as well as sheriff’s deputies in California of acting in concert with the DEA to conduct “pretextual stops” of Empyreal’s vehicles, “searching them, and seizing the cash contents — covering up their surveillance cameras and sometimes damaging Empyreal’s vehicles to access the cash in their secured vaults — and are then turning the seized cash over to federal law-enforcement for forfeiture proceedings under the federal equitable sharing program.”
Under the federal equitable sharing program, the federal government shares assets seized in civil forfeitures with state and local law enforcement agencies.
Empyreal says that not a single traffic citation was issued to an Empyreal driver during any of the five traffic stops mentioned in its complaint.
It says federal and state law enforcement agencies are targeting its armored cars “because it is very profitable for those law enforcement agencies to seize the cash proceeds that Empyreal is transporting and keep that money using civil forfeiture.”
Dan Alban, an attorney with the Institute of Justice, which represents Empyreal, said Empyreal had initially viewed the Dickinson County stop as a one-off event. But since then, its vehicles have been stopped four more times in California, three of them in the last two months alone. The vehicles were transporting cash from state-licensed cannabis businesses in California.
“I think they began to become very concerned that this was an ongoing pattern of activity and that they were being targeted. And so they wanted not just to have to defend against these forfeiture actions after the fact” but to seek legal relief preventing future seizures, Alban said.
In addition to alleging violations of the Fourth Amendment and due process, the lawsuit seeks to block future stops, searches and seizures of Empyreal’s vehicles “based solely on the actual or suspected presence of cash earned by state-legal cannabis dispensaries without reasonable suspicion or probable cause.”
“Empyreal could see the writing on the wall,” Alban said. “They could tell they were being targeted — all of these stops and searches — five in total so far. And so in order to continue operating their armored car business, they needed not to be targeted by the feds or local sheriffs for these continued stops, searches and seizures.”
Empyreal is still seeking to recover the money that was seized in Kansas in the pending civil forfeiture proceeding. The U.S. Attorney’s Office has declined to comment on the case.
