UNCLAIMED CASH A JACKPOT FOR SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT

Driver Says Money Was Going To Mexico

CLEVELAND, Tenn. - When officers patrolling Interstate 75 in southeast
Tennessee stopped a Lincoln Navigator for speeding and tailgating,
they had no idea they had hit the jackpot.

A search turned up vacuum-sealed plastic bags of cash, about $1.1
million 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 total budget of less than $5 million.

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

Officers say they got permission to search the car during the Jan. 12
stop when they noticed driver Ezequial Guzman, a 23-year-old illegal
immigrant with a California address, acting nervously 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, described the $1.1 million as 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 Justice Department shared
about $445 million from its asset forfeiture program, including about
$4 million doled out to Tennessee law enforcement agencies. That total
ranks behind 24 other states.

The U.S. Treasury Department's equitable sharing payments totaled
about $42 million, with agencies in Tennessee getting about $107,000.

Forfeited vehicles and other property are released to the arresting
agencies, 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 $12 million 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 $4.7 million. Davis declined to comment
about the $1.1 million, saying he wanted to wait until after the claim
deadline. He said the money would be used for drug
enforcement.

In a similar case in neighboring McMinn County, a state trooper
stopped a Hummer H2 for speeding 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. The driver and a
passenger have 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 Interstate 75 when he
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 who has managed asset forfeiture cases. A decision on those
forfeited assets was pending.