A Dodge Hellcat owned by a Taranaki businessman Lauchlan James MacMillan was seized from a New Plymouth address during a series of police raids.

It must be the fervent hope of police officers all over New Zealand that when criminals spend their loot they invest wisely.

A Maserati looks good on paper, but not so good in several dozen bits on a garage floor. So when police tracked down a Wellington drug defendant's luxury car it didn't take them long to say, "You keep it".

The 2008 Maserati was found at a mechanic's garage undergoing "significant" repairs, police said.

SUPPLIED/NZ POLICE A Rolls Royce Wraith was an exotic capture in an operation against the Comanchero motorcycle gang in Auckland. (File photo)

Cars are problematic. It costs money to store them and most fall in value over time.

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The Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act cases try to get ill-gotten gains forfeited, but can sometimes take years to sort out and a run of the mill car might be more trouble than its worth so police could ask the court's permission to sell the car quickly and preserve its value while the dispute is settled.

Abigail Dougherty/Stuff Police seized $3.7 million of goods and arrested senior members of the Comanchero Motorcycle Gang in Auckland after a year-long investigation.

But one car "restrained" this year in Auckland was a prime example of a good catch - something like a Rolls Royce Wraith doesn't come along very often.

The Comanchero motorcycle gang had very obvious trappings of wealth when police were looking for proceeds of crime to seize. Police in Auckland say almost $4m in assets were restrained, including two properties, the Rolls Royce, several Range Rovers and Harley-Davidson motorbikes.

Police investigating assets will often turn up cars and motor bikes but less obvious assets have also been seized. There was a comic book collection in the South Island and an extensive wine cellar in Auckland.

SUPPLIED/NZ POLICE One of the Comanchero's flashy motorbikes seized in April. (File photo)

Recently a Wellington court made a forfeiture order for cryptocurrency for the first time, and two more cryptocurrency seizures are in the pipeline.

But nothing plucks the heart strings of the asset recovery unit members like wads and wads of cash. It's the simplest and the best.

It costs almost nothing to store it, there's no dispute about how much it's worth and it doesn't have to be sold to realise its value, the manager of asset recovery, acting Detective Inspector Brent Murray said.

SUPPLIED/NZ POLICE Convicted Wellington drug dealer Darren McKinley's Chevrolet Corvette worth $13,000 was forfeited to the Crown. (File photo)

He sees his job as being about righting a wrong and making sure criminals are not benefiting at the expense of others. "If they are driving a flash car it will end up on the back of a tow truck," Murray said.

And what might make an impact if it was seized in one place might not in another so different considerations could apply in Auckland, compared to Masterton, for instance.

If a smaller community saw a drug dealer arrested and stripped of his cars, even if they're lower value, it sent a message that people couldn't profit from their crimes, Murray said.

SUPPLIED/NZ POLICE McKinley's Victory Jackpot motorcycle seized and was said to be worth $28,000. (File photo)

It was not fair and just in a community if people saw someone they knew was spending more money than they would have legitimately.

Most of the cases the unit dealt with were about disrupting organised crime, especially drug dealing, but it also looked at the proceeds of other types of crime such as tax cases, fishing offences, customs scams, and social welfare fraud.

One was about seizing the proceeds from people who had been making and fitting dentures but were not properly qualified.

SUPPLIED/NZ POLICE The Comanchero bust netted several Range Rovers. (File photo)

A recently released report said police were below expectations to meet a target set in 2017 of restraining $500 million worth of cash and assets by 2021.

By June 2019 they were at about $144m. The target is ambitious but police say its real aim is causing the most disruption to the highest value and highest harm branches of organised crime.

At 38 sites around New Zealand analysis of wastewater is tracking the use of methamphetamine and some other drugs as it's detectable in sewage. It demonstrated that people in more vulnerable communities were being exploited.

Murray said police and others could see the impact on communities through "collateral damage".

In Taranaki jobs went, and community groups and events lost a longtime sponsor, when local construction boss Lauchlan James MacMillan was arrested on drug charges.

Lasting images for the community were MacMillan in the courtroom dock and his 2017 Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat on the back of a tow truck.