On Dec. 1, 2009, the police searched a house on the outskirts of Thunder Bay, Ontario, looking for an illegal .22-caliber handgun. Instead, they found cash....The man renting the property, Marcel Breton, was charged with possessing criminal proceeds and other offenses. But at trial, he successfully challenged the search warrant that the police used to seize the money, and was acquitted. That left the question of what to do with the cash....Michelle Gallant, a law professor at the University of Manitoba, said... “there’s almost a presumption that it has got to be from criminal activity”... [a]nd when the money is stashed in a Rubbermaid tub and buried in a garage, prosecutors will inevitably ask why it was not deposited in a bank....
November 20, 2025
"How many people have that much cash buried in tubs under their property?"
Wrote the trial judge, quoted in "Police Found $1 Million in a Tub Under a Garage. The Government Gets to Keep It. A court ruled that the hidden cash, which the police found while searching for an illegal gun in Ontario, did not lawfully belong to the man living on the property" (NYT).
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81 comments:
"How many people have that much cash buried in tubs under their property?"
"...the money is stashed in a Rubbermaid tub"
Oh. A RUBBERMAID tub. That's different. I wasted a non-zero amount of mental effort wondering how you stash money in a giant cast-iron tub. That's a minute and a half of my life I'm never getting back.
"prosecutors will inevitably ask why it was not deposited in a bank" . . . ask my grandparents why, after they lost their life savings during the Great Depression when the banks went bust. Or ask me now, who does not trust FDIC insurance one penny when the system all goes to hell one day because of hyperinflation and the dollar is no longer accepted as international payment.
"I wasted a non-zero amount of mental effort wondering how you stash money in a giant cast-iron tub"
With a backhoe, but one of those is probably illegal without a permit in Canada too.
I think the money is mine. I totally remember leaving Rubbermaid tubs full of Canadian money in various places over the years. It's just a little something I like to do for fun.
Does the article say who should contact to get my money?
During the truckers protest in Canada a couple of years ago, Canadian banks blocked access to the assets of some of the truckers and others who were targeted by Trudeau, so that could be one reason for not depositing in a bank.
A Canadian waitress had her bank accounts frozen because she had given $15 to the trucker's protests, which, you may recall, were about the truckers objecting to being forced to take an experimental COVID vaccine in order to work. They would not be allowed to cross provincial lines.
A Rubbermaid tub is just dumb when he could have buried the cash in a mattress.
Americans should remember that Canadians have NO rights -- only the privileges their government(s) allow them to enjoy as government, or even bureaucrats, deem "appropriate". Canada is not a free country as Americans would even remotely understand it. If you defend yourself against a home invasion YOU will be arrested. Knife, baseball bat, hammer, frying pan ... you are the offender, because you attacked the invaders instead of just leeing them steal yur studd, including cars.
Québec is the worst, because it operates under Code Napoleon, and the judicial presumption is that the government would not charge you with something, were yu not guilty. You have to *prove* your innocence in court, but only through your lawyer, with whom you're not allowed to speak.
The Québec government have even proposed that people should have to get a licence in order to speak ay language other than French outside their private homes.
I'm near-native fluent in French, but Canadian authoritarianism, especially in Québec -- even in 1991 -- was so bad that I moved to the States. These days it s vastly worse.
Rapidly moving to a legal framework of "If it's not mandated, its prohibited." The US wa heading down that same path, but we fixed it, at least for a while, in 2024.
“there’s almost a presumption that it has got to be from criminal activity”
The almost in that sentence is hilarious. There's absolutely a presumption of guilt. They are charging him with possessing stolen money, and they have no idea where the money came from? You can't do that. In the USA, those prosecutors would be laughed out of court.
The Medellin/Escobar drug operation had so much cash coming through that they used to store it in buried barrels. Given the volume, it often sat there for an extended period. It was not infrequent that when they finally unearthed the stash they found that, because of poor wrapping, water had leaked in and hundreds of thousands of bills had rotted.
They were a sophisticated operation, and their accountants used ~7% as a "shrinkage" estimate--the difference between raw cash coming in at the front end, and what finally made it through to pay for operation or for laundering.
That 7% number is sometimes still used as a variable estimate for businesses running a high cash-only business with loose controls.
A Canadian waitress had her bank accounts frozen
I know, right? Isn't it insane for the government to hijack the banking system and freeze accounts? The Biden administration did this with crypto entrepreneurs. The government has given itself all kinds of powers to freeze bank accounts. And now Canada wants to make it illegal to keep your money at home?
"How many people have that much cash buried in tubs under their property?"
Non-conformity = criminality.
The answer, of course, is that nobody knows how many people have buried money, or otherwise keep their money at home, or keep it in safety deposit boxes instead of accounts tracked by the government.
I imagine there is a lot of money that is untracked by the government. This judge sounds like a real piece of work.
Rich people put safes or vaults in their home, and keep valuables there. Poor people bury it.
This is discrimination against the poor.
St croix: “ In the USA, those prosecutors would be laughed out of court.”
Maybe today. But at the height of the asset forfeiture craze, this would have been par for the course. Remember it’s just a civil standard of proof. Which the govt would meet by having experts testify that this method of cash storage is common to criminals. Oh and then there’s always testing the bills for drug residue - until some wag started testing random cash and found it nearly all has drug residue. CC, JSM
Yes given the last few years I’d be worried about being debanked. I suppose to the government trying to avoid it is criminal enough…
Canadians are ruled by an Unelected king with powers that would make Stalin drool with envy.
Yeah, I know, he doesn't exercise those powers publicly. He doesn't need to.
Not even a Canadian king. A British king
John Henry
I would say this is just another pile of droppings on the trail to a cashless society. First, cash will become awkward (We just got back from a week in the UK. Most retail is credit/debit card only. ATMs have almost disappeared.) Then cash will disappear as legal tender. The social credit scheme being perfected in China will be introduced. Canada and Australia will lead the way, but the USA will follow in a few years.
Canadian government seizing assets, the UK government jailing people for their words. It’s only a matter of time for US to take the same route.
Oh wait, we had the Biden administration jailing citizens for praying.
Reading the above comments, Canadians should be thrilled to become our 51st state. About time!
Canada? Oh
The government always has a right to your money. You have to sue the money to get it back, in the US. That means appeals if you win.
Well...he could have been like former Afghan President Hamid Karzai and drug his millions behind him on the ground in black trash bags. Not suspicious at all, just a homeless guy carrying his bedding...
“there’s almost a presumption that it has got to be from criminal activity”
Is that a legal term "almost a presumption"? Almost is equivalent to "not quite". So it is not a presumption?
As a tenant it is not his property, unless he proves it was his. Therefore, it belongs to the landlord just as any personal property abandoned by a previous tenant.
By the way, anyone thinking that Trump has libertarian beliefs underlying his actions as president needs to think harder. We are still being governed by executive orders.
“there’s almost a presumption that it has got to be from criminal activity”
Almost?
I’m not surprised Canada has its own version of civil asset forfeiture. It’s the Canadian way to chart a middle ground between the US and the UK by adopting the worst aspects of each.
I wanna know why they were suspiciously searching for an ‘illegal’ .22 handgun. It’s a pea shooter. Only if it was the last illegal gun in Canada does that not make it a fishing expedition…
Some further context. The police had a warrant to search the home for a gun (not sure why they were looking at this particular guy). They did not find one, but found cash hidden in various locations in the house, in addition to the plastic tub of money buried in the dirt-floored garage. They also found cocaine, ecstasy pills, marijuana and cannabis resin with an estimated street value of $22,000. They charged him with drug distribution and possession of proceeds of crime.
In a first trial at which he represented himself, he was found guilty and sentenced to 9 1/2 years in prison. He appealed, saying that the state had not provided him with sufficient assistance in his self-defense, and a new trial was ordered. At the new trial, it came out that the gun was a pretext and the police did at the time think he was a drug dealer and were looking for drugs and money. The judge disallowed the results of the search, and the man was found not guilty.
The court subsequently determined that while he was found not guilty, the money itself was consistent with drug trafficking and that he had offered no other basis for how he came to have the money. The concerns over the warrant overreach were given less weight because incarceration was not on the table, just loss of property. Hence, they let the state keep it.
Remember, a few years ago, Biden sent the FBI goons to raid a safe deposit facility in California, on the premise that a few of them had illegal proceeds. There are people still trying to get their money and stuff back from the government.
And, all this over a .22 plinking toy!!!
Bart Hall (Kansas, USA) said...
"Americans should remember that Canadians have NO rights -- only the privileges their government(s) allow them to enjoy as government, or even bureaucrats, deem "appropriate". Canada is not a free country.."
you'd THINK that Ken Burns would mention that if not for 1776, we'd all be Canadians . Well, Actually, you'd ASSUME that he would NOT mention it
Thanks to @tommyesq for the explanation.
Thanks for the context. Obviously, he was a rich drug dealer. The guy could have proven the cash was his by showing he'd put it in the bank, withdrawn it, and buried it. Or shown that he'd earned it in some legal way. My suspicion is the guy didn't have a job other than "drug dealer".
He's lucky the Canadian Version of the IRS isn't looking in to it. Because if he has $1 million, it should be on his tax return.
When under IRS in-person audit, one question they often ask is do you have any money buried in the backyard or under mattresses. Once the auditee says there is no hidden money, then if an indirect test shows your expenses are vastly greater than your income, if you can't show you were living off investments or gifts, you got problems.
In the era of de-banking and asset seizures in Canada, there's a good reason to save and hide cold, hard cash.
Dave at 549. Let's do Greenland first. Cheaper for USA and fewer headaches.
The "burden" of bills exposed to the light.
In 1970, Canadians were as free as Americans were at the time. This is the government they elected.
Breezy at 5:51, I got it and had a laugh. Nice one.
- Krumhorn
Family Guy on Canadians
Canada must not have the fruit of the forbidden tree doctrine?
If the guy was acquitted, can't he just collect his money? Or does double jeopardy not apply in Canada?
I think the reasoning is that the solution to crime is theft.
Bart Hall, I grew up just over the border in NY and learned about some of the crazy things going on in Quebec in the 1980s by listening to Montreal radio (CHOM FM). The Language Laws always fascinated me, and of course I've heard the French version of Glass Tiger's Don't Forget Me When I'm Gone way too many times. Currently at my job we have a French sentence in our WW clickwrap agreement - of course it's for the benefit of the Quebec folks and it says, basically "we agree to contract in English". About once a year I get an IM from someone, telling me we have a typo in our agreement - "did you know, there's this sentence in French!". I've bookmarked the Wikipedia page on the PQ Language Laws, and each time I send it over to whoever is asking. Because if I have to know this, so do you.
Jaq
It is not the govt the Canadians "elected" Canadians may vote for their politicians but the pols are appointed by king chuck.
He may rubber stamp them as a formality but if he decided not to rubber stamp one there is nothing anyone can do.
He may be an asshole but he is the king
John Henry
"In the USA, those prosecutors would be laughed out of court." Maybe used to be . . . but now the "law" would just depend on what judge.
Tommyesq's information leads me to believe that they will get him for tax evasion if he tries to collect.
Interesting.
There were several episodes of "Justified" which revolved around several hundred thousand dollars of unclaimed and apparently forgotten money in an evidence locker at the Federal courthouse.
’When under IRS in-person audit, one question they often ask is do you have any money buried in the backyard or under mattresses.’
I put the cash proceeds from my boat sale in the freezer, so I’m in the clear. William ‘Cold Cash’ Jefferson ain’t got nothing on me…
We also need a concept of unexplained wealth. If a person with a modest income (and no access to inherited wealth) has a bathtub filled with cash and lives an extravagant lifestyle, he must be doing something illegal. This doctrine would be helpful in public corruption cases. DOGE identified many, many public officials with enormous wealth and very modest salaries.
JAQ reminded us:
"A Canadian waitress had her bank accounts frozen because she had given $15 to the trucker's protests, which, you may recall, were about the truckers objecting to being forced to take an experimental COVID vaccine in order to work. They would not be allowed to cross provincial lines.
American Democrats salivate.
Murdoch Mysteries is a fun, camp mystery series on the CBC. It's set in Toronto in the Victorian/Edwardian era (now they're up to George V) and is kind of steampunk: Detective Murdoch uses the techniques of scientific criminology (fingerprints, toolmarks, etc) as they get invented. As the series went on, Murdoch has become almost like Urkel, inventing stuff that's a bit ahead of the actual history. So it's kind of a Wild, Wild North.
A recent episode revolved around a master of disguise replacing the Prime Minister and launching a conspiracy to slowly annex the US over twelve years. It's called Project 1925. No malice against Trump - just funny. If anything, the series as a whole is nostalgic for Canada as it used to be. CC, JSM
Don't bury all your eggs in one basket...and maybe he didn't.
..."The appeals court noted that a trial judge found in 2023 that it was “unusual for an average person to have such a large amount of money buried in tubs underneath their property.”
A high price to pay for 'being unusual'.
The only thing that is abundantly clear about the money, is that it didn't belong to the Canadian government, but they decided that it does, at the point of a gun. Maybe he should move to the UK and complain about it online.
RCOCEAN II said...
Thanks for the context. Obviously, he was a rich drug dealer. The guy could have proven the cash was his by showing he'd put it in the bank, withdrawn it, and buried it. Or shown that he'd earned it in some legal way. My suspicion is the guy didn't have a job other than "drug dealer".
He's lucky the Canadian Version of the IRS isn't looking in to it. Because if he has $1 million, it should be on his tax return.
Another reason to repeal the 16th amendment and abolish the IRS.
ronetc said...
"In the USA, those prosecutors would be laughed out of court." Maybe used to be . . . but now the "law" would just depend on what judge.
And city and state.
When my grandmother first got sick, she gave my sister a map of where the coffee cans were buried
When my brother died, I cleared out his house which was a ranch w/o a basement, just a slab. He had chopped a hole in the slab in a closet and buried $80,000 in a metal box, along with papers showing he had withdrawn that amount from a brokerage account. The money was very moist and the bank, after counting it, said it would have to be disposed of some how.
My grandparents buried their household valuables before they fled on foot from the communists after WW2. Arrived in US with literally pennies to their name. No family member has returned to former family homestead. Wonder if subsequent occupants found the mother lode.
The people in the Government of Canada that froze bank accounts and are stealing personal property based on assumptions should face the same amount of prison time as any other thief.
They should have 20 years added to that sentence for destroying public trust in institutions.
@Saint Croix, remember several years ago when the FBI said to their Canadian counterparts, "hold my beer". They seized approximately $86 million in cash, along with gold, silver, rare coins, jewelry, luxury watches, and other valuables from about 400 private security boxes. The 9th Circuit ruled what they did was illegal but as far as I know most of the items still haven't been returned to the owners.
I've stopped pointing fingers at other governments without looking at our own first.
Just try to pry the tubs of slaw from my cold dead hands!
I submit that the safest place to keep your cash these days is in your mattress, and particularly in that large mound in the middle that married couples know as "the No Go Zone". No decent burglar would ever think to look there because it looks so natural and no government these days wants to be known as one that pries in the bedroom. Crazy? Sleep on it a bit.
Before anyone tries this, consider how long a Rubbermaid tub's seal would keep out moisture. The guy probably put it in a plastic bag first and took other precautions before closing and burying the tub.
Lazarus: "consider how long a Rubbermaid tub's seal would keep out moisture."
Modern Canadian currency is plastic. It probably would survive long after the Rubbermaid was reduced to atoms.
But yeah, if Yanks try it, be sure of your waterproofing. Although our currency "paper" is really cloth - 100% rag content. So it can survive quite a bit of immersion - witness what happens when you leave money in your pockets then wash your pants. CC, JSM
Jeff Vader said...
“When my grandmother first got sick, she gave my sister a map of where the coffee cans were buried.”
That wouldn’t work today. There’s only so much you can stuff into one of those little itty-bitty Keurig cups.
I don't think you people truly appreciate how strongly the ground seeks to turn everything into soil
What if it had been gold coins? Does the same presumptive process of thought hold that it must be from illegal activity?
What if it had been gold coins? Does the same presumptive process of thought hold that it must be from illegal activity?
Fred Dodge says that gold wants to travel to the center of the earth. That tells us where it’s going; not where it’s been.
- Krumhorn
Saint Croix said...
“Rich people put safes or vaults in their home, and keep valuables there. Poor people bury it.”
I wanna go Medieval and have a cavern under my yard with a lake in the middle where a fire-breathing dragon zealously guards my stache of gold coins.
Canada produced some of the best snipers in the world at one time.
Hey he was renting the property. Who is to say that the money wasn't buried by some prior tenant? Meantime the Canadian government plays finders keepers.
“ Fred Dodge says that gold wants to travel to the center of the earth. That tells us where it’s going; not where it’s been.”
It’s true, all things that have mass want to go to the center of the earth, and the center of everything else too. Gravity is real.
Everyone involved in stealing that money from that guy should be shot.
No, you don't get to "assume" it's criminal, you have to prove it
Police in the US would absolutely seize the money as well. He's have to prove it was earned legally to get it back. And if I recall correctly, post a 10% bond to even start the process. Asset forfeiture in the US is a disgrace, even though most of the money confiscated is drug money.
If this case were in a U.S. court, I believe the man claiming the money was his would have to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that (a) it was his and (b) was obtained lawfully. For example, he could testify that he made the money by gambling and hid it because he didn’t trust banks. The Government could respond either by impeaching the plaintiff’s credibility or by offering other contravening evidence.
In the US, when you buy property, you buy everything on it. It's yours, whether the previous owners knew it was there or not.
I recall recently reading a case where nearly the same thing happened. The money wasn't found in a public place, wasn't in a wallet with ID, but there by itself. And- went to the property owner. I'm not certain if it would be capital gains or income. Would make a difference in the mount of tax paid. If the money source cannot be identified- it's presumed legal. Different rules apply if a stash is found in your bedroom or trunk of your car during an official- where it's presumed illegal unless the source can be identified. So to really launder ill gotten gains, convert it all into bills printed BEFORE you bought your property, bury it for a few years, then uncover it doing some gardening or foundation digging...
Was a similar case in one of the Scandinavian countries recently when someone found a treasure haul of what was apparently Viking gold and jewelry. The owner will get at least the value of the gold and jewelry. It's his- was on his property.
OTOH, In jolly ol' England- it's not yours. Found treasures from everything I've read over the years, belongs to the government. The laws differ from country to country. Why most people who come upon hidden stashes never report them. And if halfway intelligent, try not to draw attention to themselves with sudden displays of ostentatious wealth.
But as many of the comments reveal, the tub wasn't quite "hidden treasure" placed there by previous owners. And the property was being rented. So if it had been hidden, it would belong to the property owner, not the tenant.
FYI, the land owner was apparently a member of Hell's Angels, so it is possible that the money was ill-gotten gains of him and not the tenant.
Dave Begley said..."Reading the above comments, Canadians should be thrilled to become our 51st state. About time!"
Dave, that would be stupid as it would include the liberals in BC and most of the provinces other than Alberta. We should work to extract only Alberta from this nightmare and the attitude that Canada has against letting Alberta prosper from its fossil fuel resources.
tommyesq said...
"FYI, the land owner was apparently a member of Hell's Angels, so it is possible that the money was ill-gotten gains of him and not the tenant."
This is from a CBC report on the trial:
"Earlier on Monday, the Crown called Marcel Breton's mother, Irene Breton, as a witness.
Speaking through a French-language translator, she testified that she owned the Mapleward Road home in Thunder Bay that had been searched.
Breton, who lives in North Bay, said she bought the Thunder Bay property in 2007 as an investment, and that her son lived there and paid her rent."
Third Coast, thanks for that heads up. Wow.
More on the FBI seizing $86 million.
I wanted to be an FBI agent when I was a kid! I see them as the bad guys now. Police officers or KGB assholes?
Regardless, all loose cash in Canada belongs to the government - also not loose cash.
I have a tub of “I Can't Believe It's Not Butter!” buried under my property. Never should have trusted Fabio.
@Vonnegan at 7:40am:
Sounds like you and I are of an age, and were sort of neighbors! I grew up in Northern Vermont at the same time, and CHOM-FM was a constant companion. I too, found the language laws interesting, especially since French language broadcasting bled across the border; I’m sure it was the same on your side of the Lake. It certainly made learning the language in school a lot easier when you heard it every day in real life. It was amusing that rules governing radio broadcasting (at least in Quebec) mandated that a certain percentage of songs played per hour had to be from French language artists. I think I have that right.
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