House Gov Ops Hearings A Success: Rep. Conyers Pledges "Readjustment To This Plight Will Start In This Committee Room!" - by Brenda Grantland, -- F.E.A.R. Chronicles, Vol 1. No. 5, (November, 1992) The long awaited hearings were not a disappointment! Two or three hundred people packed the House Government Operations committee hearing room on September 30, 1992, to hear from forfeiture victims -- for the first time. Video coverage included: CNN, ABC, and Financial Privacy Report (which videotaped the entire hearings and our press conference that followed). Print media included Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Pittsburgh Press/Scripps Howard News Service, Orlando Sentinel, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Baltimore Sun, Voice of America, States' News Service, National Law Journal, Low Profile, Columbus Alive, and many others that we were not able to identify. The hearing, which was expected to last from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., including scheduled testimony by a number of law enforcement and other government agents, didn't end until 3:30. The only government witness who had time to testify was Cary Copeland, head of the Justice Department's asset forfeiture unit. The major focus of the hearings was the heart-wrenching testimony of four victims: Willie Jones, Carl & Mary Shelden, and Harlan Vander Zee, who told three very different stories illustrating abuses of the forfeiture laws. Willie Jones is a shrubbery salesman from Tennessee whose story was featured on Sixty Minutes. He testified that, on February 27, 1991, he was buying a plane ticket from Nashville to Houston to buy shrubbery, carrying $9600 in cash, when he was stopped by DEA interdiction teams because he fit a profile: he bought his plane ticket with cash, he had a short turn-around time in Houston (this was a ticketing mistake, Mr. Jones says), and he was black. DEA of course will deny that his race had anything to do with the profile upon which he was stopped, but surveys by the Pittsburgh Press as well as the Orlando Sentinel show that profile stops rely heavily upon racially discriminatory factors. He never got his money back because he could not afford to post the cost bond. He asked DEA to waive the bond, claiming he was indigent, but they refused. Now his lawyer, Bo Edwards, has filed a civil suit challenging the profile seizure on racially discriminatory grounds. Carl and Mary Shelden (new members of FEAR) told how they have spent almost 10 years trying to get the government to make them whole for the losses they suffered when a house on which they held a $190,000 lien was forfeited under RICO. The property had previously been their residence. In 1979, after Carl became permanently disabled, they decided to sell the house and owner finance it, in order to collect interest income as well as recouping the principal. In 1983 the buyer was indicted under RICO for involvement in prostitution, beginning the Sheldens' ten year nightmare. The government has never contended that they were not totally innocent lienholders, it merely argues it doesn't have to immediately sell forfeited property and make innocent lienholders whole, and that it is immune from damages when it fails to preserve mortgaged property, and thereby causes losses to lienholders. At the Government Operations hearings, when Mary Shelden broke down and cried, in the midst of trying to tell the Committee that "no amount of money could make up for what the government did to us" -- about the only dry eyes in the hearing room were the half-dozen or so Justice Department employees, who saw their golden goose could soon run out of eggs to lay. Harlan Vander Zee is a 62 year old former bank officer from San Antonio, Texas. In mid-March 1987, a director of his bank referred a customer, Mario Salinas, to Mr. Vander Zee. Salinas, who was described by the bank director as being a wealthy Mexican businessman, wanted to obtain a loan from the bank to buy a house and refinance an airplane. Two weeks later the same director told Vander Zee that Salinas and some business associates wanted to deposit a substantial amount of cash in their bank. Thinking this money was "flight money" leaving Mexico because of devaluation of Mexican currency (which is legal for American banks to accept), Vander Zee and his fellow officers made numerous phone calls to governmental agencies to find out whether it was advisable to accept the deposit, and what procedures they were legally required to follow to report it. After being assured the deposit would be legal so long as the CTR (Currency Transaction Report) forms were properly filled out, they accepted the deposit and turned in the CTR's. Despite his compliance with the government's instructions, in May 1990, Vander Zee was indicted for money laundering. The indictment was dismissed by a judge in May 1991. Four months later Justice obtained a second indictment. Vander Zee's trial resulted in a judgment of acquittal in February 1992. But that was not the end of the persecution for Mr. Vander Zee. The Justice Department forced the bank, as part of its settlement agreement to avoid forfeiture, to stipulate that it would never rehire Mr. Vander Zee, that it would not pay his legal expenses, and that it indemnify the government for any claims Mr. Vander Zee might make against the government. This has blacklisted Vander Zee from obtaining any further employment in the banking industry -- despite his acquittal. After hearing testimony from these forfeiture victims, Rep. Conyers stated: I pledge readjustment to this plight will start in this committee room. Since we announced these hearings my office has been flooded with letters and telephone calls saying "me too -- wait until you hear this." We are not going to stop until we hear from all of these people. That remark was met with a spirited round of applause from the audience. At that point, Cary Copeland, who sat with a group of his cronies on the front row, stood up and stormed out of the room. Rep. Conyers obviously did not miss Cary's gesture, as he commented: "we probably don't need people like that in government anyway -- they hear `oversight' and they go out the door." Retiring Representative Frank Horton (Republican from New York), read a written statement praising the forfeiture program as "the greatest single weapon," etc., but, during the testimony of Mary Shelden, he seemed to learn for the first time that these laws have gone awry and begun harming innocent people. He appeared astounded that such a thing could happen to innocent lienholders, and asked the government to look into the case. Representative Chris Shays (Republican, Connecticut) told the Committee to "be leery of examples [of the forfeiture law going awry] if they are not common examples." After the victims testified, he cross-examined them with questions that sounded like they were scripted by Cary Copeland. He suggested that Willie Jones was a drug dealer because no one but a drug dealer would carry $9000 in cash. He suggested that Mr. Vander Zee knew his customer was a drug dealer, despite all the efforts Mr. Vander Zee went through to have the government authorities check out the transaction in advance. He even tried, unsuccessfully, to make the Sheldens look bad, by suggesting that anyone who owner financed a property was assuming the risk of forfeiture. There came a time, however, when even Rep. Shays seemed to have learned something from the hearings. After Willie Jones testified that he lost his judicial remedies because he could not raise the cost bond in time, Rep. Shays asked, "Why should he have to pay anything to get his money back?" It is interesting to see how innocently someone as pivotal to the government's power to abuse the forfeiture laws as its supporting congressmen are, can be hoodwinked by the Justice Department. It is also heartening to see they may still be receptive to the truth, when it is presented to them in the flesh. The problem appears to be a lack of information as to what is really happening in this country under the guise of these forfeiture laws. Our problem is: how do we get the truth known to the rest of Capitol Hill -- especially in the face of Justice's disinformation campaign, a campaign well financed with our own tax dollars?