Sleight of hand

By Libby
Updated below

I'm not sure what's up here. It's all very mysterious and a quick google search turned up a vague rumor about some untoward hanky panky between Copperfield and a possibly underage American girl -- that happened in Europe. But whatever is going on, unless he's being accused of making money illegally, or tax evasion or something, it's hard to figure out the point of this.

LOS ANGELES - FBI agents have seized nearly $2 million in cash from a Las Vegas warehouse owned by illusionist David Copperfield, local media reports said on Thursday.

The agents also took a computer hard drive and a memory chip from a digital camera system during Wednesday's late-night operation.
KLAS-TV reported that an FBI raid with 12 agents took place Wednesday at Copperfield’s warehouse. KLAS quoted a source as saying the cash was stashed in a safe and that agents took the cash.

The FBI's own particular of magic. They just make your money disappear while you're watching. Last I looked it wasn't illegal to keep your own money in cash if you want to. Maybe they widened the scope of forfeiture laws when I wasn't paying attention. Pretty soon they'll be seizing your life savings for parking tickets.

Update: Fox News, having no compunction about spilling the dirt on Copperfield's Seattle case, are saying that he's being charged with a rape of an American women while they were both in the Bahamas. I'll leave that aside until some verified facts arrive, but assuming that is true, it certainly doesn't explain why they seized his money from the safe -- which Fox by the way fails to mention at all.

I don't recall a forfeiture provision for sex crimes. Maybe I'm wrong, but there's something wrong with the system if the police can seize all your cash for any alleged crime.