South Fayette retiree, daughter sue to recover $82K seized at Pittsburgh airport
A 79-year-old retired railroad engineer and his adult daughter Wednesday sued two federal agencies in an effort to recover more than $82,000 seized last summer inside Pittsburgh International Airport.
Rebecca Brown, 54, of Lowell, Mass., said her father, Terry Rolin, a resident of the South Fayette village of Morgan, had entrusted her with his life savings while she visited home in August for a weekend family wedding.
He asked her to help him manage the $82,373, cash he and his late parents had squirreled away for years in hiding spots throughout the family home, she said.
“It was late Saturday night after the banks closed when he gave me the money, and I had an early (Monday) morning flight home. So, I didn’t get a chance to get to a bank in Pittsburgh,” Brown said. “I was concerned about traveling with cash, so I checked online and found out it was legal to travel domestically with cash. I even took a screenshot of what it said and saved it on my phone.
“I was going to open a joint checking account so he could get some expensive, much-needed dental work done and make repairs to his truck,” Brown said.
She said her father also gave her permission to tap the account to pay $15,000 in back taxes she owed.
Brown, who has two brothers in the Pittsburgh area, said she routinely travels to her father’s home every two months or so. She said he asked for her help after they discovered discrepancies in his bank accounts.
Lawyers from the Institute for Justice, a nonprofit legal group in Washington, D.C., filed the class-action lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh. It maintains agents from the Transportation Security Agency and U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency acted unlawfully when they seized the cash Brown was carrying en route to a flight home.
The suit maintains the agencies routinely seize cash from air passengers carrying anywhere from $5,000 to $10,000 and asked a judge to prohibit agents from seizing cash at airports without specific probable cause.
A DEA spokesman did not immediately respond to a call for comment.
A TSA spokeswoman said the agency does not comment on pending litigation.
In August, Brown said a TSA agent working at a security checkpoint questioned her about the cash, which she was carrying in a small, zippered bag inside a satchel. That agent made her wait to undergo questioning by his supervisor.
After the pair cleared her, Brown said she had breakfast, then walked to the gate and sat down to get some work done while awaiting her flight. While there, Brown said she was approached by a state trooper and a DEA agent, who asked about the money and had her call her father.
“They woke him up at 7 a.m. This is a 79-year-old man who has cognitive issues,” Brown said. “He was confused. The agent said our stories didn’t match up and they were seizing the cash. It was ridiculous, but I was scared. They didn’t charge me with anything, and I’ve never been in trouble.”
Dan Alban, a senior attorney with the Institute for Justice, said the same thing has happened to others at airports across the nation.
“Flying with any amount of cash is completely legal. But the TSA and the DEA have a policy that if you hit a certain threshold, it’s suspicious. For the DEA, it’s $5,000. For the TSA, we think it’s about $10,000,” Alban said. “If you’re flying internationally and you have more than $10,000, you have to fill out a form. But this was a domestic flight from Pittsburgh to Boston. And you don’t forfeit your rights when you try to board an airplane.”
He said when the DEA sent Brown a civil forfeiture notice in October, informing her they intended to keep the cash, they cited “a broad catchall about seizing anything related to controlled substances.”
“It could be anything from aardvarks to zoo,” Alban said. “There is just no explanation for this.”
Deb Erdley is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Deb at 724-850-1209, [email protected] or via Twitter .