Imagine you hand your local crack dealer a wad of cash to hold for you temporarily. The crack dealer adds it to his bigger wad of cash and promptly gets busted. The drugs and money he's holding are seized. That's what happened here. Would you expect the government to return your wad of cash?
Then you should've filed a claim with the court after:
1) the government filed "US v. A Wad of Cash Found in the Pocket of Danny Drugdealer"
2) the wad of cash was found to be subject to forfeiture
3) Danny Drugdealer didn't contest that he was innocent of drug dealin' or he attempted to and lost
4) The government posted that the wad of cash was subject to forfeiture at www.forfeiture.gov.
You'd then be entitled to make the case that ten dollars in Danny Drugdealer's wad of cash actually belonged to you and were not subject to forfeiture. You might've even won!
No one filed a claim to block forfeiture of all or part of the Silk Road bitcoins. Not even DPR. I think everyone knows why that is.
They did it because they had the capability. Civil forfeiture is an absolute perversion of the justice system, and is a direct contributor to police corruption. The damage it causes to the integrity of our rule of law is far greater than any deterrent effect it may have upon crimes.
