A federal appellate court in New York ruled last year that the U.S. government must defend its decision to keep thousands of dollars seized from a Rochester, New York, woman in 2020 as part of a drug investigation involving her former boyfriend, and now the agency that had been keeping her money for more than three years has returned it rather than defend the seizure in court.
On Jan. 23, the Drug Enforcement Administration returned $8,040 to Cristal Starling following a multi-year court fight that ended happily when the agency abandoned its effort to keep the money after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit sided with Starling last August.
“A lot of people are fearful of the law because they don’t know their rights,” Starling said to the Democrat and Chronicle last week. “They don’t educate themselves. They don’t do research.
“Honestly, I’ve been saying this from the beginning. It wasn’t about me. It’s about other people and how these things can continually affect people like me.”
At the time of the seizure, Starling was running a successful mobile food cart business and making an honest living.
Having accumulated a small fortune, her plan was to use the mattress money to purchase a new food truck. This was thwarted when Rochester police raided her apartment in October 2020 and seized the cash as purported drug profits.
No drugs were found during the raid, and the suspect beau was ultimately acquitted by a jury.
But despite his vindication, Starling never received her money back.
She maintained her innocence in numerous government filings, but the confiscated funds were still handed over to the DEA, which sought to absorb the loot through a controversial method known as civil asset forfeiture.
After Starling’s money was confiscated, she set out to get the full amount back without a lawyer.
Through the months, she familiarized herself with administrative contacts and procedures, reached…
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