Homeland Security seized $2B from travelers

Dulles seems really notorious for this since the article states "About $41 million was taken from travelers, or nearly a quarter of the amount seized nationwide, according to the report. Dulles only accounts for 2 percent of the nation’s air travelers."

I dunno, the women with 41k was probably doing something sketchy. Having lived in Africa for years, let me tell you, you never, ever, ever want to traveling with large amounts of money across airports. The chance of her having over 50% stolen in bribes is very close to 100%. There's also maybe a 10-20% chance that all of the money would be taken and divided up by officers at the airport.

No one would take that risk, unless they were really desperate or doing something that they couldn't have bank records for.

That's not to say that what Homeland Security did is okay, I think it's totally fucked up that government agencies can just steal your money and then spend it themselves. But I don't buy the medical clinic for women story and I'm guessing neither did they.

Every single time I've traveled in an African airport I've had to pay a bribe to get my bags back. I've also had to give officers at the airport some of my stuff. It happened so frequently that I would purchase stuff like Bluetooth speakers, cigarettes, cheap cell phones, etc just for them, in order to distract them from the more expensive stuff.