Your home, your pension, your bank account are all at risk when, not if, the crash comes.The only obstacle in the way of the public theft of private assets is the United States Constitution and the Fifth Amendment. The preactice of Civilian Asset Forfeiture is setting the precedent that the government can steal all of your property.When this practice began in the 1990’s, the amount of property stolen without due process was in the millions. Today, this practice has grown to a $4.5 billion dollar governmental criminal enterprise.

That Little Thing Called the Constitution and the Fifth Amendment

The Fifth Amendment asserts that no person shall “be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”. Given the intended narrow definition of the Fifth Amendment, this article will demonstrate that the concept of private property is on life support and that government is attempting to separate as many private assets from its citizens as possible. One of the primary ways that the government is accomplishing this goal is through the RICO statutes and this will be the exclusive focus of this article.

What Is RICO?

The new game in America is called theft by law enforcement and RICO is the name. Much of the growth of federal criminal procedures has been tied to the expanded use of RICO. RICO stands for the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act of 1970. RICO has succeeded in blurring the lines between state and federal law enforcement and in overturning the protections inherent in the guarantees of the U.S. Constitution, namely due process. As previously stated, the Fifth Amendment states that government cannot deprive citizens of life, liberty and property without due process of law. As the Patriot Act negates the Fourth Amendment protections, RICO does the same with the Fifth Amendment due process rights.

RICO is essentially the seizure of goods and assets obtained as a result of ACCUSED criminal activity. At the inception of RICO in 1990, there were only three named federal criminal acts subject to RICO confiscation of assets and they were treason, piracy, and counterfeiting. Today, there are literally thousands of federal laws and regulations related to RICO. The mere violation of any one of them, no matter how unintentional and harmless the transgression, can lead to years of imprisonment for the convicted person and the forfeiture of all personal assets.

Rico statutes are where the police and federal law enforcement are no better than the criminals they purport to fight. Even when an individual is not charged or found innocent, their confiscated assets are still the property of the law enforcement agency. If a person is found not guilty in court, or the charges are dropped, the person can spend years trying to recover their assets. In some cases, the innocent never recover their stolen property.