his money in relatively small amounts, $5000 or so at a time.
*
* While Alvarez had come to know Perot's gloomy predictions were off the
* mark, he did not know that the federal international government, in its
* hysteria about drugs, had persuaded Congress to greatly expand the
* government's civil and criminal powers to seize assets of individuals
* it felt might be up to some illicit business. The government's concern
* was so overwhelming that in 1986 Congress was prevailed upon to add a
* provision to the seizure law forbidding any "structuring" of financial
* transactions in a way so as to evade and existing requirement that cash
* transfers of more than $10,000 had to be reported to the government.
[
The New York Times, April 13, 1997
U.S. Under Secretary Raymond W. Kelly signed an order on Aug 7th requiring
New York businesses transmitting cash to report all transactions over
$750. The order was not publicly announced. It is part of emergency
powers. [President Clinton subsequently makes it permanent nationwide.]
----
NYC Mayor and former federal prosecutor Rudolph Giuliani has made
some emphatic statements proposing $100 dollar bills be eliminated
to combat drug dealers. Perhaps all cash will be next.
]
* On November 11, 1993, apparently tipped off by a friendly bank clerk who
* thought Alvarez's redeposits looked like "structuring", the Internal
* Revenue Service seized $88,315.76, the life savings of a hard-working
* immigrant.
*
* The government, of course, had no evidence that Alvare