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If you're a young person traveling across Nebraska, be careful how much money you carry.

A driver from Cedarburg who got pulled over in 2009 near Lincoln, Neb., lost $48,100 after state troopers there seized it as suspected drug money, but a federal appeals court now says the government had no real grounds to keep the cash.

"Their only evidence was theoretical and conjectural," said Patrick Brennan, the Milwaukee attorney who argued for the money's return. He was unsuccessful at a 2012 trial before prevailing on appeal on Friday when the 8th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals reversed a lower court's decision in the government's favor.

The appeals court ordered the money returned, a fairly unusual result when citizens challenge large cash forfeitures.

The driver, John Nelson, was 22 when he set out from Cedarburg for Colorado in 2009. He was planning to move there, so he took his family's RV, large enough to accommodate Nelson's two dogs, to save him the cost of hotels.

He also took along, in a small safe, all his important personal papers to set up residency. And nearly $50,000 in cash. He said the money was the result of selling bonds his grandmother had given him.

Nelson stayed with friends in Denver a few weeks but learned the city restricts ownership of pit bulls, the breed of one of Nelson's dogs. So he headed back to Wisconsin in October.

In eastern Nebraska, Nelson was stopped for following another vehicle too closely, a minor traffic violation, though Brennan said the trooper later testified that he in fact was profiling the RV because it had Wisconsin license plates and a younger driver. The trooper said Colorado is a known source state for marijuana and Wisconsin a known destination for resale.

The trooper said Nelson seemed nervous, and at first he denied having any drugs and would not consent to a search of the RV. After the trooper called for a drug-sniffing dog, Nelson admitted he had a small amount of pot.

The trooper then searched the RV and found about a half-ounce of pot. Nelson was ticketed for the marijuana.

But the troopers kept the cash, found wrapped in bundles inside a backpack in the RV. A federal magistrate who presided at a civil forfeiture trial ruled the trooper's intuition, based on his experience, was enough to prove the money likely was intended for a major drug purchase that, for some reason, didn't happen.

She found that, no matter what Nelson told his parents, she believed he intended to use his life savings to buy marijuana to sell back in Wisconsin at profit, and she denied his claim to the money.

The federal appeals court said the undisputed facts supported both the government's and Nelson's positions. While traveling with so much cash is "suspicious," Nelson had a plausible explanation. And while the trooper suggested Nelson drove an inefficient RV so he could carry hidden drugs, it also made his trip — with dogs and without a place to stay — more comfortable.

The court also noted that anyone in Nelson's situation may have appeared nervous and that he, in addition, was taking medication for anxiety.

Most important, the court found that even if Nelson's credibility could be challenged on small lies, they alone don't make the government's theory more likely in the absence of any evidence at all that Nelson was planning a big drug deal.

"In the end, the government's theory about a planned transaction relies on mere speculation rather than circumstantial evidence," the court found.