Here's your Forbes Daily Briefing for Wednesday, October 16th.

Today on Forbes, the cop seized his 86,900 dollar life savings for no reason.

They picked the wrong marine.

It sounds like the opening of the Netflix hit movie Rebel Ridge,

but it happened in real life and the consequences are still playing out in the Nevada courts.

On February 19th, 2021, retired Marine Stephen Lara was making the 1400-mile drive from Lubbock

Texas to Portola, a small California town near Reno, Nevada, where his teenage daughters lived with his ex-wife.

Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, Laura, now 42 years old, was laid off from his hospital systems

administrator job in California and moved in with his parents in Lubbock to save money and

to save up for a house.

Laura had driven this four-day round trip dozens of times,

and it had become almost routine.

This time, however, he was pulled over by the Nevada Highway Patrol on I-80 near Sparks, Nevada, about an hour

from Reno, ostensibly for following and passing a tanker truck too closely.

He wasn't issued a traffic ticket or warning, let alone arrested or charged with a crime.

Yet the 90 minute encounter ended with the officers seizing Laura's life savings, some 86,900 in cash he had in a ziploc bag. is civil forfeiture. What that means is that despite the fact Laura was not charged with a crime,

the feds could legally keep his money,

kicking back $69,520 of it to the Nevada Highway Patrol as a sort of finders fee.

More than six months later, Laura got his cash back, but only after the Institute for Justice,

or IJ, a Libertarian not-for-profit law firm, sued the DEA on his behalf.

Now, with IJ still representing him pro bono, he's asking Nevada courts to rule that the state's Constitution, which protects

property rights, bars the Nevada Highway Patrol from participating in the quote, equitable sharing

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