© LAUREN PETRACCA Ryan Hamer once mailed $6,000 in money orders to a friend. But the money never got there because police claimed it was tied to the drug trade. Hamer discussed his experience in an interview on Sept. 19, 2017, at the Greenville Downtown Airport, where he runs a flight school.

The next day, his friend told him he hadn’t received the delivery, which required a signature to accept.

Ryan Hamer once sat in a Greenville parking lot, broke and hungry, and a friend offered him money to buy food and pay his cell phone bill.

He'd just moved back to town and needed a hand up. His friend came through for him.

Then that same friend found himself in need. He was down on his luck, out of a job, living with his mother in Washington state and in need of money quickly to pay child support, Hamer said. Hamer agreed to loan the man $6,000.

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Hamer didn’t want to send cash through the mail, so he went to the post office and asked the best way to mail money. They told him he could buy six $1,000 money orders, so he did. It was a Friday about noon in March 2016, and the U.S. Postal Service couldn’t guarantee it would arrive Saturday, so he went to the FedEx distribution center on Mauldin Road.

Once inside, Hamer dropped the money orders into a FedEx cardboard envelope, and an employee sealed it with tape. He paid a premium, $64.25, to ship the envelope overnight, his receipt shows.

Hamer took his receipt and left.

The next day, his friend told him he hadn’t received the delivery, which required a signature to accept. Hamer called FedEx.

The FedEx employee told him he needed to contact the Greenville Police Department. Officers had seized his package in a legal process known as civil asset forfeiture. The police believed Hamer’s package was related to illegal drug trade, according to court records.

Flustered, Hamer called the police. They invited him to come in for questioning. He called his godfather, an attorney, instead.

Hamer, a pilot and part-owner of a flight school at the Greenville Downtown Airport, wrote a letter to the police, explaining what happened. Two weeks after his money orders were seized, he received notice that Greenville police had asked the court to forfeit the money to them.

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Examining the evidence

A public record filed by Assistant Solicitor Sylvia Harrison laid out the police account. Greenville police were working parcel interdiction at the FedEx facility when they began investigating a package mailed from Hamer to a man named Gabriel Black with a Washington state address.

© LAUREN PETRACCA/STAFF Files belonging to Ryan Hamer related to the money he had seized during a parcel interdiction.

Harrison's filing said the phone number on the package was “disconnected or illegitimate and the parcel had flaps that were glued and taped down.”

Once unwrapped, the package contained a coffee bag and a vacuumed-sealed package with money orders totaling $6,000, the filing said.

It said the package was over-sealed and padded with foam insulation to try to deter drug-sniffing dogs. Further, the sender paid for the delivery in cash and used money orders to avoid a paper trail, the filing said.

That’s not what happened, Hamer said. And he has the receipts to prove it.

He showed The Greenville News receipts for his purchases of six money orders, a receipt showing he paid to ship the package overnight through FedEx and paid for it with a credit card on March 4, 2016. The receipt also listed his phone number, a number Hamer said he used twice to call Greenville police officers before they submitted court records saying the phone number was disconnected or illegible.

More: 'This is all I've got': SC grandma pays a price to save home from seizure

The News examined the FedEx slip, and the phone number was legible. It also showed an address in Greenville, also legible, where Hamer still resides.

There was no coffee bag. No foam insulation. No vacuum-sealed packages. No heavily taped box. Just the one envelope that weighed a tenth of a pound, a receipt shows.

When a deputy delivered the summons and complaint at his attorney’s office, Hamer said, “Lady, you’ve lost your mind. I’ve got you.”

Still not made whole

Hamer said he considered just letting the matter go because he was worried about future police harassment, but his attorney convinced him to fight it, and he was glad he did. “I’m sure that it was a huge embarrassment for them. And that’s what I wanted,” he said.

Since the police department had already filed a complaint for forfeiture, Hamer had to fight the claim in civil court. He provided an answer April 6, 2016. By then, the police had held onto his money for a month.

It took another two weeks to get his money returned. The check from police came with a verbal apology but no explanation, Hamer said.

“Why did they lie?” Hamer said. “From my understanding, the only reason ... is so they could take the money.”

Worse, even with his money returned, he wasn’t made whole. He had to pay about $1,200 in attorney’s fees. That still irks him, he said.

13th Circuit Solicitor Walt Wilkins said he wishes those wronged by the forfeiture process could be made whole. He said he’d be open to tweaking the state’s forfeiture law to allow attorneys to collect fees in cases where money was mistakenly seized from an innocent person.

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“I believe it would be fair — it would not hurt my feelings at all — that they should be made whole,” Wilkins said.

Hamer said he’s lost trust in police and still gets angry talking about what happened.

“What I did was not illegal,” Hamer said.

He never did get to send the money to his friend, and he said it strained their relationship.

More: Spurred by TAKEN series, South Carolina legislators seek to reform civil forfeiture

An explanation of sorts, and an apology

Presented with the case by The Greenville News, Greenville Police Chief Ken Miller pulled the reports from that incident — the search warrant for the package, the investigative report, photographs of the evidence.

Those reports support Hamer’s statements — it was just an envelope reinforced with packing tape, Miller said.

“The form the solicitor submitted is incorrect, and there isn’t any reference to that in any of the reports or affidavits,” Miller said. “They are all consistent with the rationale behind the search warrant, the opening of the package, the findings, the photographs are consistent with what Mr. Hamer said.”

© JOSH MORGAN/Staff Walt Wilkins, 13th Judicial Circuit solicitor for Greenville, campaigns on Augusta Road shortly before polls close on Tuesday, Nov 6, 2018.

The News then brought the case to 13th Circuit Solicitor Walt Wilkins. When told that the police reports supported Hamer’s claim that the complaint was untrue, his office scrambled to figure out what happened.

“Everybody’s distraught about it,” Wilkins said. “In our business, untruths are a big deal so nobody wants to put an untruth in a pleading or a filing.”

Harrison, the assistant solicitor who’d handled the case, dug up the Notification of Seizure, a working document police send to prosecutors every time they make a seizure. It also matched Hamer’s story, though it said the sender’s name didn’t come back to the address listed on the FedEx package. She’d added a handwritten note saying that couldn’t be true because she’d found Hamer at that address.

Wilkins said his office likely had already shredded other paperwork from the case because it was more than two years old and had been dismissed.

His best guess as to what happened?

“It’s possible that there was a miscommunication between this particular case and another case, and they got conflated,” he said. “If there was a mistake, it was an honest mistake."

Wilkins said he has three prosecutors assigned to forfeiture who work hundreds of cases a year, filing complaints, tracking down people and making motions. This was one mistake that they tried to make right by dropping the case, he said.

“If I made a mistake,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

Similar cases, different results

At least 15 times since 2016, Greenville police have seized packages filled with money or money orders — nothing illegal — from the FedEx facility on Mauldin Road.

Many of those cases share similarities to Hamer’s case, though none of those people have gotten their money returned.

In almost every case, police said the packages were being sent using fake names or addresses. Only once were they able to track down someone associated with a case, and that person didn’t contest the seizure.

Parcel interdiction is hugely profitable for the Police Department. They have the highest monetary value among the forfeiture cases Greenville police have filed.

Since 2016, Greenville police have seized at least $236,510 from parcels flowing through the FedEx location. Hamer’s $6,000 was the only amount returned.

Parcel interdiction made up 65 percent of all forfeiture money the agency seized in 2016.

The Police Department began monitoring FedEx shipments in 2016, and it continues today, Miller said. Officers must have permission to monitor on site, though no formal agreement is required, he said.

Sometimes officers just show up to inspect packages. Other times, they’ll get a call from an employee asking them to inspect a suspicious package. Sometimes packages will open by accident, and drugs will be visible inside.

FedEx declined to discuss its policy for notifying law enforcement when its employees find money or money orders – not contraband – in packages shipped through the company.

More: Trail of targets shows breadth of lives changed by forfeiture

More: How local cops use federal rules to seize millions on SC roads

“We routinely cooperate with law enforcement in their investigations, and we do not publicly disclose information about our security processes and procedures,” said Rae Lyn Rushing, a FedEx spokeswoman.

Officers will conduct criminal investigations when drugs are found, Miller said, but not once did the department investigate a criminal case attached to those 15 money seizures from FedEx packages since 2016.

Miller said that’s because of the difficulty of investigating cases where items are being mailed, usually out of state. It would take coordination with other agencies and too many staff hours to investigate thoroughly, he said.

Greenville’s not alone in using parcel interdiction, but it has the most robust program among law enforcement agencies in the state.

The Charleston County Sheriff’s Office filed 21 cases from 2014-2016. Many of those cases involved a controlled delivery where drugs in packages are delivered to the recipient, and money is seized from the person who accepts the delivery.

A handful of other agencies also used parcel interdiction in the same time period, mostly during a criminal investigation when officers came across packages of drugs, unlike in the city of Greenville where officers targeted packages of money or money orders. The Horry County Police Department had four cases from 2014-2016, the Berkeley County Drug Enforcement Unit, Dorchester County Sheriff’s Office and North Charleston Police Department each had two cases.

Sheriff’s offices in Greenville and Lexington counties each had one case, as did the 15th Circuit Drug Enforcement Unit and State Law Enforcement Division. Special agents work throughout the state at various shipping facilities as part of SLED’s narcotics team, said Thom Berry, SLED spokesman.

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Agents don’t just open packages at facilities, Berry said. There’s protocol to follow if a package is suspicious, he said. Packages may be damaged or display indications that narcotics may be inside. A drug dog may alert to a package. Sometimes, employees will alert agents of a suspicious package.

Packages may conceal money inside innocuous items like a crossword puzzle or a comic book. But sometimes innocent victims are caught up in the search for drug money, and if their names are deemed fake by police or prosecutors or their address is listed as vacant, they may end up in the same position as Hamer.

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When law enforcement seize money from the mail, there's often no interaction with their targets. More often though, it's the presence of cash at a traffic stop or investigation that leads to questions. And some South Carolinians are more susceptible to seizures because they carry the nation's currency.

Cash economy can make people prime targets

South Carolinians avoid banks more than the average American, giving them more reasons to carry cash and inadvertently creating more opportunities for police to seize that cash.

Some of those who can least afford to lose their cash — low-income, black people living in rural areas or many workers in the hospitality industry — are most likely to not use banks and are therefore most likely to carry cash.

© Getty Images Many restaurant workers earn a portion of their pay in cash. They also keep late hours, leaving work late at night, which could also increase the risk of getting pulled over.

Police don't often seize credit cards or debit cards or checks; just cash — up to a million dollars a year in South Carolina from people who are never arrested, according to three years’ worth of forfeiture data analyzed by The Greenville News TAKEN project team.

If those citizens had carried plastic instead of cash, they’d have kept their money.

“People who rely on cash are being squeezed out, and they’re probably on the lower end,” said Rob Baumann, chair of the economics and accounting department at the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts.

More than 55 percent of black people in South Carolina either don’t have a bank account or rarely use it, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.'s 2015 National Survey of Unbanked and Underbanked Households. That’s compared to 22 percent of white people.

Those who could most benefit from a bank account to avoid check-cashing or bill-paying fees — people earning $15,000-$30,000 per year — are most likely not to own or use an account, according to the FDIC report.

Andrew Ittleman, a partner at the Miami financial law firm Fuerst Ittleman David & Joseph, said a lot of low-income people avoid banks for many reasons: they could have poor credit; they could be migrants or immigrants or anyone else who prefers the privacy of cash; they could have a cultural distrust of banks.

Ittleman said he's also worked with Holocaust survivors who avoid banks.

Distrust of banks is also common in some black communities because of a variety of historical factors, including redlining, the discriminatory practice in which banks helped keep desirable areas white through unfair loan practices, said Vernon Burton, a Clemson University history professor who specializes in race relations and the South.

Decades of experience with banking have left many people preferring to hold their own money, he said.

Banking system problems

Race is a factor in the cash economy, but so too are wages and location and culture — the preference for cash passed down through generations.

The largest factor? Where you live. Those who live in rural areas are most likely not to have a bank account at all. Sixteen percent of those who live away from a metro area don’t have a bank account, according to the FDIC.

In the coastal parts of South Carolina where some of the state’s most aggressive civil forfeiture operations are located, restaurants are big business.

About 17 percent of workers in the Myrtle Beach metropolitan area are in the restaurant industry, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics — the highest concentration in the continental U.S.

Many restaurant workers keep late hours, leaving work late at night, which could also increase the risk of getting pulled over and searched. That increases their exposure even if they’ve done nothing wrong, said the Rev. Romando James, a Clemson University emeritus professor of family and youth development.

David Smith, a Virginia attorney who helped to author the nation’s civil forfeiture rules in the 1980s, said the only surefire way for people to avoid civil forfeiture of money is to avoid carrying our national currency at all.

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Have you lost property through civil forfeiture? Or do you have information about the practice we should know? We'd like to hear about it. Contact our reporters at taken@greenvillenews.com.

This article originally appeared on The Greenville News: Police can seize cash in the mail. An innocent man found out the hard way.