Looking at Wikipedia's definition of civil asset I see my "in head definition is slightly wrong:
> Civil forfeiture in the United States, also called civil asset forfeiture or civil judicial forfeiture, is a process in which law enforcement officers take assets from people who are suspected of involvement with crime or illegal activity without necessarily charging the owners with wrongdoing. While civil procedure, as opposed to criminal procedure, generally involves a dispute between two private citizens, civil forfeiture involves a dispute between law enforcement and property such as a pile of cash or a house or a boat, such that the thing is suspected of being involved in a crime...
So my use of clearly illegal assets being seized means it wouldn't actually be civil asset forfeiture. Mea culpa!
If it were a big shipment of plutonium laced heroin, it seems fair game.
I think the biggest issue with civil asset forfeiture is the conflict of interest where police departments are keeping/using the seized assets. From the outside it looks a lot like the government acting like a gang.
The other big problem is it seems like it is up to the owner to prove the assets "innocence", rather than police proving the assets were the result of illegal activity.
If assets are seized, they need to go to a third party that can store them safely, return the assets to their owners. If found "guilty", the assets should go to some victims of crime fund, or destroyed.