An American citizen filed a lawsuit against U.S. Customs and Border Protection this week after he says his life savings of more than $58,000 was seized by agents without reason seven months ago and has yet to be returned to him.
Rustem Kazazi, 64, was flying back to his home country of Albania in October when he was stopped going through security at the airport in Cleveland, he told the Washington Post in a report published Thursday.
Kazazi – who moved to the U.S. on a lottery visa in 2005 and became citizens five years later – says he was carrying $58,100 on him because he was considering buying a summer home back in Albania.
He says taking large sums of cash to Albania is common for expats, since wiring money is not as safe and contractors prefer being paid in U.S. dollars to the local currency.
After finding the money, Kazazi says he was led into a room where he was ‘strip searched’ but agents found no drugs, contraband or evidence of illegal activity.
Nonetheless, they seized the money Kazazi was traveling with. Perhaps most concerning to Kazazi was the fact that they gave him a receipt that didn’t even have the total money that they took from him.
Rustem Kazazi, 64 (left), says his life savings of more than $58,000 was seized by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents in October without reason. Now he, his wife (center) and son (right) are fighting to get it back
Kazazi called his wife after the agents took the money, and she told him not to worry about it, that it was probably some sort of misunderstanding. She urged him to continue on with his trip to Albania and said that she and their college-aged son would take care of things back at home.
But seven months later, the family still doesn’t have their money back.
It wasn’t until more than a month later that they even got a letter in the mail, confirming that the sum had been seized.
‘This is to notify you that Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) seized the property described below at Cleveland, OH on October 24, 2017: $57,330 in U.S. Currency,’ the notice stated. ‘Enforcement activity indicates that the currency was involved in a smuggling/drug trafficking/money laundering operation.’
Kazazi was flabergasted because the sum that the agency listed was $770 less than what he took with him at the time. He says the cash was all in $100 bills so it couldn’t have added up to $57,330 anyway.
‘I began to worry that they were trying to steal the money for themselves,’ he said in a court declaration.
His attorney, Wesley Hottot, says this happens in a lot of seizure cases. Victims will get notices from the government saying that a smaller sum was taken from them, and the fear is that agents are pocketing the difference.
What makes this even worse is that it’s especially complicated to get the money back.
Kazazi’s son Erals holds up a notice from CBP about the seizure. He says his father was carrying the large sum back to Albania to potentially buy a summer home for the family
Hottot says that victims have to prove that they are not criminals in order to get their money returned to them, which goes against the ‘innocent until proven guilty’ principle in other areas of the law.
‘You have to affirmatively show you’re not a criminal to get your own money back,’ Hottot said. ‘You have to effectively prove a negative.’
In a statement, the CBP said that Kazazi ‘artfully concealed’ the sum, which was suspicious since he had ‘no verifiable source of income’.
His lawyer disputes this, saying Kazazi sent the money through the scanner at the airport, in bags that were clearly labeled.
CBP also says that he failed to declare the cash, as travelers are required to do. But Kazazi said he planned to do that on his four-hour layover in Newark, since the document says it must be filed as you leave the country.
‘If he’s going to follow the law on this he’s going to have to do it in Newark on the way out of the country,’ Hottot said.
Eventually, Kazazi was given a few options about how to proceed with the case. He could abandon the cash completely or strike a compromise whereby CBP keeps a certain percentage of the cash. The other options were to challenge the seizure internally with CBP or take the case to court.
Kazazi decided to take the case to court because he no longer trusts CBP.
‘They were the ones that seized our money,’ his son said. ‘We wanted another party like the attorney’s office to deal with this case. Based on my father’s experience it didn’t seem like CBP really wanted to help us out.’
After the Kazazis filed their intent, CBP was given a deadline of 90 days to respond to the seizure notice or else return the funds in full. They missed that deadline over a month ago, but still the family has not gotten their money back.
Kazazi says he has called CBP several times but they tell him the case is now with the U.S. Attorney’s Office and that they can no longer comment on the case.
So this week, the family filed a lawsuit against CBP, demanding their money be returned to them immediately.
Kazazi’s son says that the conflict has caused his father’s health to deteriorate. Despite this, they harbor no ill will towards their adoptive country.
‘He’s not going to let the actions of some employees that made a mistake in their duties change his opinion of the country,’ his son said.