Yes, we have no bananas, we have no bananas today!--just $372k. With newslink

[Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor]

Oh dearie dear! My! My! My! They do get dumber every day.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080617/D91BGUI00.html

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica (AP) - Two men caught with $372,000 in cash near the Costa Rica-Panama border told police that they just wanted to buy some bananas.
Bananas cost about $1.65 a pound in Costa Rica.

I wonder–is it the powdery white bananas, or the kind they smoke—that these guys put on their cereal?

[ivylass]

If my math is right, that’s about 225,000 lbs of bananas.

Let’s see…banana bread, banana pudding, bananas Foster, banana splits…

My other question is…since when is it illegal to carry large amounts of cash with you? Stupid, yes. But say I wanted to buy a vacation home in Costa Rica and the seller wanted cash only. Would I be arrested merely for carrying a lot of cash?

[neutron_star]

@ivylass

My other question is…since when is it illegal to carry large amounts of cash with you? Stupid, yes. But say I wanted to buy a vacation home in Costa Rica and the seller wanted cash only. Would I be arrested merely for carrying a lot of cash?

I don’t know about Central America, but in the U.S., your cash would be confiscated:

A federal appeals court ruled yesterday that if a motorist is carrying large sums of money, it is automatically subject to confiscation. In the case entitled, “United States of America v. $124,700 in U.S. Currency,” the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit took that amount of cash away from Emiliano Gomez Gonzolez, a man with a “lack of significant criminal history” neither accused nor convicted of any crime.

Yes, this is extremely fucked up, IMHO.

[Boyo_Jim]

First you get the bananas, then you get the power, and then you get the women.

[Desert_Nomad]

It is a problem when the government starts doing this when no crime has been committed. In many ways I don’t regret having left the US… I actually feel freer living in a dictatorship in many ways.

[Sage_Rat]

@neutron star

I don’t know about Central America, but in the U.S., your cash would be confiscated:
Yes, this is extremely fucked up, IMHO.

http://www.thenewspaper.com/rlc/docs/2006/moneyseize.pdf (PDF)

Money can be confiscated if there is a preponderance of evidence that it is drug money.

[TJVM]

@Sage Rat

http://www.thenewspaper.com/rlc/docs/2006/moneyseize.pdf (PDF)

Money can be confiscated if there is a preponderance of evidence that it is drug money.

Apparently, under federal law, at least in that circuit, large sums of cash are essentially presumed to be drug money. From the linked opinion: “Possession of a large sum of cash is ‘strong evidence’ of a connection to drug activity.” That surprises me.

[Sunspace]

@TJVM

Apparently, under federal law, at least in that circuit, large sums of cash are essentially presumed to be drug money. From the linked opinion: “Possession of a large sum of cash is ‘strong evidence’ of a connection to drug activity.” That surprises me.

That is seriously screwed up.

So what if you had the receipt from the bank saying that you’d just withdrawn the money from your account, and all the transactions putting it there were legal and documented (lottery win, ten years of savings, whatever)? Could they still seize it? (Well, I know they could; might makes right in the moment, and the cops have bigger guns and all–but would they be legally allowed to?)

[pbbth]

I wonder if they had told the officers that it was ransom money/money to buy a house/etc if it would have been confiscated. I think it was, in part, their ridiculous banana story that got their money taken away from them.

[Hypno-Toad]

@Sunspace

That is seriously screwed up.

So what if you had the receipt from the bank saying that you’d just withdrawn the money from your account, and all the transactions putting it there were legal and documented (lottery win, ten years of savings, whatever)? Could they still seize it? (Well, I know they could; might makes right in the moment, and the cops have bigger guns and all–but would they be legally allowed to?)

I believe that they take it and you have to prove that it’s legit. I doubt that the cops would accept your proof right there and then. I bet they would rather have you prove it to a judge.

And yeah, it sucks.