...but 99 times out of 100, the property owner doesn't show up to court.
... and here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/09/08/t...
> Costello hired a local attorney to get the money back. After making a few calls, the lawyer told him to accept a deal from the government for half of the money. Costello agreed. But his legal fees were $9,000 — leaving him with only about $7,000.
> In one respect, Guerrero was lucky. His construction firm paid a small amount to make his legal struggle possible, and Stone had agreed to do much of the work without pay. Given the time involved, the legal bills would have been $50,000, Stone said. But he agreed not to press for his fee from the government as part of the settlement.
> He wanted to get his money back, but he had no idea how to sort through the intricacies of the federal civil forfeiture system, an arcane corner of the American legal world. Though he was never charged with a crime, he would have to prove, in effect, that he made the money legally.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/08/how-p...
> In New York, the multi-step process required to get the NYPD to release possessions can be opaque and circuitous. When the Bronx Defenders circulated a questionnaire in 2014 among its clients who had possessions taken from them at the time of arrest, nearly half said they were never even given the itemized voucher that Clavasquin received.
> Even with that voucher in hand, petitioning the district attorney’s office for the necessary forms to release items categorized as evidence can be fruitless: More often than not, requests to the district attorney’s office—whether phoned in, written, or emailed—go unanswered, said Adam Shoop, a Bronx Defenders attorney who helped bring the class-action lawsuit against the city. The only reliable way to force a response is to file an administrative appeal, a legal tool that the average non-lawyer almost certainly wouldn’t be able to use on his or her own, Shoop said.
The process for reclaiming seized assets is well documented...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United...
> Victims often have "long legal struggles to get their money back".
If I go see a lawyer and they tell me "it'll take years, you'll get back only some of the money, and most of it will go to paying me", I'd skip court too.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/special...