Can you imagine airport authorities seizing $181,500 from you, deeming it illegally acquired, and refusing to return it? That's the alleged situation that prompted Scott Smith and Michael Rozenberg, the owners of FGL Transport, Inc., to sue the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Customs and Border Protection over money taken from the company in September at Tampa International Airport, according to the Tampa Bay Times. The Tampa-based company reportedly sent Boris Nulman, one of its employees, on a trip to Cleveland with $191,500 in a carry-on bag to buy four big rigs, and when TSA agents pulled Nulman aside for a bag inspection, he was only allowed to take $10,000, according to the lawsuit the newspaper obtained.
Nulman was reportedly given a receipt for the confiscated $181,500, but now federal authorities are claiming that they only took $159,950 and that they won’t even return that. “This is legitimate money,” Rozenberg said. “There is nothing dirty about this. We have evidence to show we took this out of our business account. Something is fishy here.”
An attorney for Nulman, Rozenberg, and Smith said in the lawsuit that Nulman was questioned for 45 minutes at the airport, asked to go to the airport police station, and eventually allowed to re-book the flight he missed, keeping only a portion of the cash he went to the airport with. After the company turned in a verified claim form in an attempt to retrieve the seized funds, a Customs and Border Protection representative described the $159,950 as derived from “specified unlawful activity” and didn't address the $21,550. FGL authorities are accusing federal agencies of unreasonable search and seizure. “They are treating us like criminals,” Rozenberg said. “This does not make any sense.”