Fact Check: DEA and CBP Allegedly Seized $1.3M Without Stating Any Law Violation

Twice in seven weeks. Two different federal agencies took more than $1.3 million from the same Kentucky business.

The agencies want to keep the money, but they won't say why or even what specific law they think the business broke. This is the story of those two civil forfeitures

and the business caught in the middle. Global Coin Logistics is a wholesale currency exchange company that specializes in exotic currencies.

They're really difficult to find ones. The other component of our business is we purchase wholesale amounts of U.S. dollars, typically from Mexico.

A lot of Americans go to like Cancun Cabo places like that on vacation, and they take US dollars down there

with a thought that locals there want US dollars and not Mexican pesos. And typically they get in there and they find out that that's not really true. So they have to go to a currency exchange company there, switch out the U.S.

dollars, get Mexican pesos, and then we come in and we purchase that up from those currency exchange companies. Bring it back to the US.

Steven founded Global Coin Logistics in 2016. He and his employees would make regular trips from Mexico to the U.S., bringing repatriated U.S.

dollars back to the states after filling out all the required paperwork on both sides of the border. The company then sells these U.S.

dollars to customers, mostly domestic ATM providers who need to stock their machines. Steven and his employees are meticulous about following the law,

and they never thought the government would one day try to take their money, let alone twice. Every one of our couriers, myself included,

if were traveling with money carries a courier packet. So it's a it's a fairly large packet that includes very specifically the legal documents that give us authority to be able to move this cash.

On September 8th, 2025, one of Steven's couriers was transporting $320,000 worth of $20 bills for an ATM company to stock its machines. The money had already been processed and approved by both Mexico and U.S.

customs, and the courier was carrying all the required paperwork before boarding a flight from San Diego to the East Coast. Obviously, when when the suitcase goes

through the machine, they see that there's cash in there that triggers an inspection. We asked for a private screening of that because obviously

we don't want to say, open that up right in front of everybody to see what we're doing. We go into a separate room this day for whatever particular reason.

TSA decided to flag that up to the Port police. Our employees know the process and what to explain to the police so that they understand what it is we're doing and who we are.

I don't know the situation there, but they escalate it up to Homeland Security and DEA so, a Homeland Security officer and a DEA officer came into the room,

interviewed our courier who was with the money, went through the money. They called me on the phone. But the DEA agents refused to listen to Steven or look at his employees paperwork.

Instead, they took the currency out of sight to a separate room where they claimed a drug dog alerted to it. But drug sniffing dogs frequently alert to U.S.

currency, especially when that currency has already been widely circulated. I did talk to the DEA agent twice during the time. His mindset just felt like his agenda was to seize the money one way or another.

Weeks after the DEA seized the money, it sent Global Coin Logistics of forfeiture notice, telling the company it intended to keep the $320,000 permanently.

But the notice said nothing about what specific law Steven and his employees had supposedly broken, or what they had done wrong. We had followed everything by the book, had done nothing wrong there,

and the fact that DEA took $320,000 from us over the suspicion that a drug dog had had hit on it, that we never even saw,

is really disappointing. Then, just days after that notice arrived, it happened again.

On October 31st, 2025. Federal agents stopped another courier and seized more than $1 million. This time,

the company received a forfeiture notice from Customs and Border Protection. But just like the DEA notice, it said nothing about what specific law Steven and his employees had supposedly broken or what they had done wrong.

Even worse, CBP forfeiture notice appears to violate the agency's own rules, which were amended 50 years ago to require the agency to provide property owners with detailed forfeiture notices.

The seizure has had a substantial impact to our business. We went from importing US dollars basically every single day in fairly significant amounts to once or twice a week at like a third of the value.

How do I know this isn't going to happen again tomorrow? So I have to be very, very careful around that piece of it. The second part of it is our customers now are very concerned.

Now, Steven and Global Coin Logistics have teamed up with IJ to file two lawsuits, one against DEA and one against the CBP, standing up for the same basic principle.

If the government wants to take your property using civil forfeiture, it has to tell you why. So my biggest hope here is that we can fight this.

We can get the government to change the way that they they seize and for it. I worry about all the other people too, that have no idea that this could happen to them.