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.