Cops Seize Combat Vet’s Life Savings
Stephen Lara did everything right. But even innocent people aren’t safe from civil forfeiture. In February 2021, Stephen was making his usual trip west through Reno to visit his family when he was pulled over by the Nevada Highway Patrol for supposedly following a tractor-trailer too closely. Ninety minutes later, Stephen had been robbed of his life savings—$86,900. The government sat on his life savings for months, ignoring the legal deadlines requiring it to charge Stephen with a crime, begin a civil forfeiture case against his property, or return the money within six months of seizure. They did none of those things. So, IJ sued on Stephen’s behalf.
Former Marine Fights To Get His Life Savings Back
In February 2021, while driving down a Nevada highway on the way to visit his daughters, Stephen Lara was robbed in plain sight. But his assailants were not ordinary criminals—they were police officers from Nevada Highway Patrol.
Using a controversial legal tactic called civil forfeiture, the officers fabricated a reason to stop Lara, detained him for more than an hour, and eventually left with his entire life savings. The officers never alleged he’d done anything illegal, but they took Stephen’s money to hand over to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), in the anticipation that the federal agency could take Stephen’s money and kick back a portion of the proceeds to the Highway Patrol through a program called “equitable sharing.”
Stephen, who is a decorated Marine Corps veteran who served in both Afghanistan and Iraq, is no stranger to a fight, and so he partnered with the IJ to file a lawsuit to shut down the Nevada Highway Patrol’s civil forfeiture scheme.
In less than 24 hours, the DEA had learned of our lawsuit, answered hard questions from The Washington Post, and committed to reviewing its policies for federal adoptions. But the fight isn’t over: IJ and Stephen our continuing our case so that no one else in Nevada has their rights violated the way Stephen’s were.
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