I think the point of the story was that the police suspected him of carrying a lot of cash, and they were fishing for it, but didn't find enough to confiscate. Correct me if I'm wrong OP.
That's correct. If you're the last person to board a flight as its about to leave, and the police had found any amount of substantial cash on me and confiscated it, it would have made it a pretty difficult process for me to find and recover that cash from them afterwards - legal process and all.
Haha, paperwork sucks. They have to value their time appropriately!