You can send packages across the country, but they may never arrive. In Indianapolis, where FedEx operates its second-largest transit hub, packages are regularly stopped and opened by police.
When local authorities find cash, they hold it permanently. This is a civil forfeiture process that allows the government to claim property without a criminal conviction. Southern California jewelry wholesalers Henry and Minh Cheng fell victim to this scheme in April 2024.
The couple runs a reputable business near Los Angeles. Since 1994, they have been importing jewelry from Italy and Hong Kong and selling it to retailers across the United States.
Most jewelry stores pay by wire transfer or check. But when the Chengs sent $42,825 worth of gold chains to a Falls Church, Virginia, store, the retailer was slow to respond with payment and eventually offered to pay in cash. The Chengs agreed to an exception and accepted cash, so the outstanding bill was paid promptly.
The Chengs sent the retailer a FedEx label indicating the package was going from Virginia to California, and the retailer used the label to send the payment. But the package was intercepted in Indianapolis.
An officer at the FedEx transit center recognized the package as suspicious, in part because it was headed to California, a “state of origin.” The officer activated his sniffer dog, received a positive report on the package, obtained an electronic search warrant, and opened the package.
He found no drugs or other contraband, but he did seize exactly $42,825, allowing the Marion County District Attorney’s Office to initiate civil forfeiture proceedings.
This is how the system has worked for years. Since 2022, Indiana has been trying to collect more than $2.5 million for packages that simply transit through the state at the FedEx hub. The state has already collected about $1 million from these cases. Other cases are still open.
When the trial ends, the Indiana authorities involved get to keep 93 percent of the proceeds for themselves. But none of these seizures have any real connection to Indiana. Even if some of the money is dirty, it has no connection to crimes within Indiana’s borders.
At best, Indiana profits from crimes in other states. At worst, Indiana arbitrarily sues innocent people like the Chengs to take their money.
Rather than accept the violation of their constitutional rights, the Chengs are fighting back in court, and our public interest law firm, the Institute for Justice, is representing them. They want not only to get their money back, but also to shut down the entire money-making enterprise.
Police and prosecutors often use the war on drugs as a pretext for seizing property. But authorities in Indiana don’t even notify property owners of suspected crimes. Instead, prosecutors file a standard complaint simply alleging that the money is related to “a violation of a criminal law.”
In fact, the Indiana Supreme Court expressed concern that even after the trial, prosecutors “neither specifically identified any applicable criminal law that was violated nor established any substantial connection between that crime and the money.” For many property owners, this is a black box—the opposite of the due process guaranteed by state and federal law.
Instead of serving the public, the agencies involved serve themselves by taking advantage of their location at the crossroads of the United States to make money. They make no arrests at the FedEx hub. They simply collect the money and call it a day.
This is another blemish in a state that is already a prime example of the abuse of civil forfeitures.
After police seized a Land Rover owned by Indiana resident Tyson Timbs, our firm helped him obtain a ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court that held that civil asset forfeitures are subject to the Constitution’s excessive fines clause.
We also filed a class action lawsuit in 2021 to put an end to a shady aspect of civil asset forfeiture that is unique to Indiana: private, for-profit prosecutors. And we represented a party in a case before the Indiana Supreme Court, establishing that the right to a jury trial applies to civil asset forfeiture proceedings as well.
Now the Chengs have filed their own lawsuit on behalf of their company and all other victims of this kind. Police work should be about public safety, not profit. Either way, a package of cash being transported through Indiana is not a crime in Indiana.
Marie Miller is an attorney and Daryl James is a writer at the Institute for Justice in Arlington, Virginia.
