The firm has developed a special expertise in the area of civil forfeiture. Civil forfeitures occur when an agency of the United States government, or of a state government, confiscates property because of the property's alleged involvement in a crime. In such cases, our task is to help the property owner get the property back or a lienholder maintain its secured position. In the typical civil forfeiture, the property owner is not charged with a crime and may in fact have no knowledge of the criminal activity in which the property was allegedly involved – or no knowledge that the United States government might consider the activity giving rise to the forfeiture to be a crime. This can occur, for example, when a person exchanges local currency for dollars with a “cambista” or “doleiro” in Latin America, then deposits or invests the dollars in the United States. Even though the local currency exchanger abroad may have a spotless reputation and take all reasonable measures to avoid involvement with funds from illegal sources, the United States government often aggressively confiscates dollars in those circumstances on the curious theory that anyone who buys dollars outside the banking system should know that he is contributing to money laundering.

In addition to dollars, vehicles and real property are other types of property which are commonly subject to civil forfeiture actions. In all these cases, because of shifting ownership, the owner at the time the property is seized by the government may well have no idea about the alleged criminal activity giving rise to the forfeiture. In one such action, the firm represented the owner of an airplane which was seized for its alleged involvement in drug transport. Despite a three-and-a-half-year investigation, the government was never able to develop any direct or even hearsay evidence connecting the airplane to any drug-related money or activity, and the parties reached a settlement whereby the airplane was returned to the owner.

Mr. Fine has spoken at numerous seminars on civil forfeiture issues and his article on forfeitures based on parallel market transactions, Of Forfeiture, Facilitation and Foreign Innocent Owners: Is a Bank Account Containing Parallel Market Funds Fair Game?, was published at 16 Nova Law Review 1125, 1992.