SHERIFF'S AGENCY MAY GET $1.1 MILLION FOUND IN SUV

Driver Stopped in Tennessee Accused of Smuggling Cash

CLEVELAND, Tenn. - When officers patrolling Interstate 75 in southeast
Tennessee stopped a Lincoln Navigator for speeding and tailgating, they hit
the jackpot.

A search turned up vacuum-sealed plastic bags of cash, about $1.1million
stuffed in compartments, behind door panels and in suitcases - money the
driver described as the proceeds of a marijuana sale, the officers said.
Unless someone claims the cash - and that's unlikely - the Bradley County
Sheriff's Department will get it. Not a bad haul for a department with a
budget of less than $5million.

"It's just a lucky stop," said Lt. Brian Quinn.

Officers say they got permission to search the SUV during the Jan. 12 stop
when they noticed driver Ezequial Guzman, a 23-year-old illegal immigrant
with a California address, acting nervous and being evasive.

Guzman, now in custody awaiting an April 20 trial on cash-smuggling
charges, told the officers he was taking the money from New York to Mexico.
No drugs were found in the car.

Joe Bartlett, managing attorney for asset forfeiture at the Tennessee
Department of Safety, said that if the money is forfeited, the $1.1million
would be the largest amount of cash forfeited to a local law enforcement
agency in his 18 years with the state program.

"It's getting ready to be forfeited because nobody filed a claim to it,"
Bartlett said. "If someone filed a claim to it, we would be setting it for
trial."

A passenger in the car with Guzman was questioned but was not detained.
Neither of them claimed the money.

Records indicate that in fiscal 2003 the U.S. Justice Department shared
about $445million from its asset forfeiture program. The U.S. Treasury
Department's equitable sharing payments totaled about $42million.

Forfeited vehicles and other property are released to the arresting
agencies and sold by auction, and "they don't send us an accounting,"
Bartlett said.

"We have seized entire car lots before and planes. ... We've seized just
about anything and everything," Bartlett said. "We forfeit about $12million
a year. That's cash assets ... and another 8,000 to 10,000 vehicles."

Bartlett said asset forfeitures in criminal cases are intended to "take the
ill-gotten gains of criminals and put the money back into the community
from where the action occurred."

In about a third of cases, people file for a hearing to get their money
back, he said.

Bradley County Mayor D. Gary Davis said the sheriff's department has an
annual budget of about $4.7million. Davis declined to comment about the
$1.1million, saying he wanted to wait until after the claim deadline. He
said the money would be used for drug enforcement.

Sheriff Daniel R. Gilley did not return telephone messages seeking comment
about the $1.1million.

In a similar case in neighboring McMinn County, a state trooper stopped a
Hummer H2 for speeding on Dec. 9 and discovered $139,000 hidden in the
air-conditioning vents.

A federal prosecutor told a judge that calls to a cell phone seized along
with the money indicated Ecstasy trafficking. Both the driver and a
passenger have since pleaded guilty to money smuggling.

State Trooper Kevin Hoppe, who made the arrest, said Daniel Viet Lam, 24,
of Lafayette, La., was driving 90 mph on I-75 when Hoppe stopped the vehicle.

A grand jury indicted Lam and Ahmath T. Radin, 31, of Los Angeles, on
charges of knowingly concealing more than $10,000 and attempting to
transport it "to a place outside the United States" without reporting it to
the government.

Lam and Radin have agreed to forfeit the money, and no one else has claimed
it, said F.M. Hamilton III, an assistant U.S. attorney in Knoxville. A
decision on those forfeited assets was pending.

U.S. Attorney Harry Mattice Jr. said law enforcement agencies should
benefit from making arrests.

"I believe in making sure the people who do the hard work of law
enforcement every day" are assisted by the seized assets, Mattice said.
"It's not like they go back and have a party with the money."

Hamilton said state and local law enforcement agencies typically get a
share of forfeited assets when there is federal involvement in an arrest.
Some of the assets go to the forfeiture fund to pay related costs.