In United States v. Hernandez-Escobar, --- F.3d ---, No. 17-50134 (9th Cir. 2018), the Court affirmed a forfeiture order. The petitioner argued that money forfeited in connection with his son's drug conviction was actually his and thus not subject to criminal forfeiture.
The Court disagreed. It held, "the District
Court did not need to determine whether Mr. Hernandez had
actually given cash to [his son] Roberto, or how much. The answers
to those questions have no bearing on the forfeitability of the
cash that was found in Roberto’s bedroom and that the
District Court concluded was drug proceeds."
The one silver lining is that the court agreed there is no tracing requirement. In other words, a petitioner does not need to trace the exact bills given to a defendant in order to recover those funds: "Mr. Hernandez argues,
correctly, that a bailor need not trace the exact currency that
was bailed. But we do not affirm because the bills were not traced.
Rather, we affirm because the evidence as a whole supports the District Court’s finding that the forfeited money was, in
fact, drug proceeds."
