Poker Pro Gets Poker Bankroll Taken Away By Police

It’s a poker player’s nightmare, and a story which seems to be repeating itself a lot these days – a pro having his bankroll seized with no criminal charges laid and no signs of the money ever being returned!

Ha van Nguyen is the latest to suffer from the ‘Civil Forfeiture Act’ or similar laws, which allow police to take and keep cash if they believe it to be the proceeds of illegal activity, even without a criminal charge being brought.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police force (RCMP) stated that Nguyen threw a bag full of bundles of cash from his truck window after turning away from a traffic check stop in New Brunswick.

When stopped he allegedly told officers, "The reason why I was scared was because I had [marijuana] it wasn't because I had money. The money was for my poker bankroll," after the police retrieved the bag containing $10,700 in six bundles of cash in a vacuum-sealed bag.

Nguyen was apparently "very co-operative and not upset about his money being seized though he did ask if he would likely have it back by the end of the weekend as he was going to go play poker next week," according to the arresting officer.

According to CBC News Canada, the forfeited money was tested for the presence of residue from controlled substances and explosives, with a court document stating that an officer “obtained positive results for the presence of explosives and/or cocaine and/or heroin on all the bundles of money and the loose money seized from Nguyen.”

Another investigator believes the cash seized from Nguyen to be the profits from the sale of a controlled substance, pointing to “the bundling of bills in the fashion used with Nguyen's money to be typical of the handling of money in the illegal drug trade”.

Or, of course, a professional poker player – Nguyen good enough to take down the Atlantic Canada $30,000 first prize at Red Shores Casino the following year plus several other prizes, and in the night of the stop returning from a night of poker at St. Mary's First Nation.

With Nguyen’s prior conviction for producing marijuana some 10 years previously, this was enough for authorities to confiscate the cash for good, a ruling he hopes to overturn. Another recent and similar case saw an out-of–court settlement in favor of the poker pros as I covered here.