For three generations, the Vocatura family has been baking fresh Italian bread in
Norwich, Connecticut.
http://ij.org/ll/august-2016-volume-25-issue-4/ij-bakes-fresh-forfeiture-victory-connecticut/
Institute for Justice
August 2016 Robert Everett
Johnson Attorney
The current
generation can tell you stories about crawling into the industrial-sized ovens
as children (while the ovens were off, of course) and riding the trays like a
carousel. Now they work around the clock to keep the bakery going, baking at
night and working retail through the day.
The family
nightmare started in May 2013, when eight armed IRS agents descended on
the bakery and began asking questions about a series of under-$10,000 cash
deposits (the bakery was a cash-only business). The agents informed the Vocaturas they had seized the bakerys
entire bank account.
When IJ met
the Vocaturas, they had almost given up hope. Federal
prosecutors and the IRS had been hounding the family for years, first seizing
over $68,000 and then threatening the Vocaturas with
additional forfeitures and time in prison all because of how they deposited
money in the bank.
But IJ was
able to turn the situation around and in the process was able to help other
small businesses facing similar abuse.
As regular
readers of Liberty & Law are aware, IJ has litigated a series of
similar cases involving structuring laws. These laws which make it a crime to
limit the size of bank deposits to evade federal reporting requirements were
designed to target real criminals but have been applied to small businesses
accused only of doing business in cash.
Continue reading at http://ij.org/ll/august-2016-volume-25-issue-4/ij-bakes-fresh-forfeiture-victory-connecticut/
For a list of Institute of Justice articles, click here.
To view a pdf
of the IJ newsletter, click here.