A duffel bag, a fortune, and heat from the law

By Abigail Goldman

Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2009 | 2 a.m.

He was going four miles over the speed limit when troopers pulled him over on the outskirts of the Las Vegas Valley.

And when they asked to search his car, according to court documents, Michael Simhard “dropped his arms to his side, and exhaled with a blank look on his face.”

He had $999,830 in the trunk.

Drug smugglers typically travel north on Interstate 15, while currency smugglers travel south, as Simhard was. The drugs come up out of Mexico, the sales proceeds go back. The Nevada Highway Patrol makes 10 to 15 big cash seizures annually. This one, just $170 shy of $1 million, is the biggest in years.

But let’s be clear: Simhard wasn’t arrested and hasn’t been charged with any crime.

Standing on the side of the road that August evening, right by the Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Simhard said he knew nothing about the cash, and wrote out a voluntary statement: “Bags aren’t mine. Money isn’t mine.”

A drug dog alerted to an odor of a controlled substance on two of the bags holding the money, according to the court filing. The search, however, found no illegal drugs in the luggage or anywhere else in the car. Just because a guy is driving with a fortune in his trunk doesn’t mean you can arrest him. So, according to court documents, Simhard left the money with Nevada authorities and returned to British Columbia five days later.

Law enforcement officials allege the cash in a blue duffel bag and blue canvas suitcase in the rental car’s trunk is “traceable to exchanges of controlled substances.”

Now the U.S. attorney’s office is in court, trying to keep the cash. In the legal logic of criminal forfeiture, the federal government is actually suing the money — the case is titled “United States of America v. $999,830.00 in United States Currency.” The cash is the defendant, and the defendant, if you believe law enforcement, is part of the drug trade.

Law enforcement agencies can seize, and eventually spend, the proceeds of criminal activity — the money is divided among the agencies that participate in the bust. In cases like this one, a public notice is printed first. In layman’s terms, the notices read something like this: “We seized a lot of money. We’d like to keep it, since we think it’s ill-gotten, but if it’s yours and you’d like to claim it ...”

If nobody tries to claim the money, it goes into government coffers. If someone does claim it, the case goes to court.

Simhard filed a claim in October. The case landed in federal court in Nevada last week. The Sun couldn’t find Simhard to ask him how money he knew nothing about became his to claim, and the case file provides no details.

The government’s filing in the court case does, however, lay out the explanation he allegedly gave police the night he was pulled over: He flew from Montreal to Newark, N.J., in early August. From Newark, he traveled to St. Louis. He was coming to Vegas to meet friends to shoot craps at the Bellagio. In the car, a white Ford, police found a one-way rental car receipt for $705.

The questions started.

“Simhard’s level of nervousness,” the court papers note, “was rising.”

Within minutes, more troopers, plus Metro officers and a DEA agent, had arrived. They asked Simhard if they could look at the phone numbers in his BlackBerry phone. He agreed, but the phone was locked. He didn’t remember the password. A Metro officer decided to try the word “BlackBerry.” When he punched it in, all of the information in the phone was erased.

None of the law enforcement agencies involved will talk about the case; neither will the U.S. attorney’s office. The money — the defendant — remains in custody of the U.S. Marshals Service.

Mike Flanagan, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration in Las Vegas, says that in his line of work you get used to coming across this kind of cash.

“It’s all just dirty paper to us.”

This story has been corrected. An earlier version of this story said the drug enforcement dogs did not smell anything in the trunk of Canadian motorist's rented car.