THE names of court cases usually make sense. Think of “US v Bernard Madoff” or “US v Timothy McVeigh”. What, then, is “US v $35,651.11”? Why is Uncle Sam prosecuting a heap of money?

The answer, alas, makes even less sense than the name on the docket. Terry Dehko and his daughter Sandy Thomas (pictured) run a grocery store in Fraser, Michigan. It sells everything from bread to hand-made sausages. Fairly often, someone takes cash from the till and puts it in the bank across the street. Deposits are nearly always less than $10,000, because the insurance covers the theft of cash only up to that sum.

In January, without warning, the government seized all the money in the shop account: more than $35,000. The charge was that the Dehkos had violated federal money-laundering rules, which forbid people to “structure” their bank deposits so as to avoid the $10,000 threshold that triggers banks to report a transaction to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

Prosecutors offered no evidence that the Dehkos were laundering money or dodging tax. Indeed, the IRS gave their business a clean bill of health last year. But still, the Dehkos cannot get their cash back. “They offered us 20%,” says Ms Thomas, “But if we settle, it looks like we’re guilty of something, which we’re not.”

In criminal cases, the government can confiscate assets only after a conviction. Under “civil forfeiture”, however, it can grab first and ask questions later. Property can be seized merely on the suspicion that it has been involved in a crime. Citizens have no right to a swift hearing. For a small business, that can be fatal. The Dehkos’ store is surviving by paying suppliers late.

In many civil-forfeiture cases the agencies that seize the assets keep most of the proceeds, and can use them to pad their budgets or buy faster patrol cars. It is hard to know how common this is, but the Institute for Justice (a libertarian law firm that is representing the Dehkos) notes that the federal government shared $450m of seized assets with state and local authorities in 2012.

The grabbers do not always prevail. A motel owner in Massachusetts recently won back his motel after prosecutors tried to seize it because one guest in 13,000 had been arrested for drug offences. In October in California, prosecutors who were trying to seize a building because two of the tenants were marijuana dispensaries (which are legal under Californian law), gave up and let the landlord keep it.

But this is scant comfort for the Dehkos, who are struggling to hold on to the store they have run since 1978. “It’s kind of scary that they can do this to you,” says Ms Thomas. “In America, you’re supposed to be innocent until proven guilty.”