Money shipped through the Indianapolis FedEx hub has been getting snatched up by Marion County authorities for years under the state's civil forfeiture law, and on Monday a judge delivered a decision that both curbed and preserved the practice. The Marion County Superior Court ruled that prosecutors violated due process by filing forfeiture complaints that never spelled out what crime the seized cash was supposedly tied to. But the same ruling found that Indiana still has legal authority to forfeit cash that is simply passing through the state inside FedEx packages, even when there is no connection to a local crime.
A Split Decision With National Stakes
The ruling, issued Monday, came in a long-running challenge brought with help from the libertarian legal group the Institute for Justice. According to the organization, the court found that Marion County prosecutors routinely filed forfeiture complaints without identifying the alleged crime or the facts supporting it, and that this lack of crime-specific information was legally insufficient. At the same time, the court found that IMPD and the Marion County Prosecutor's Office may continue impounding and seeking forfeiture of cash passing through the FedEx hub at Indianapolis International Airport, so long as authorities can eventually show an Indiana-specific crime was committed to persuade a judge.
Marion County is home to the country's second-largest FedEx hub, a detail Fox 59 notes has made the Indianapolis facility a magnet for cash-interception efforts by local prosecutors. Under Indiana law, prosecutors are permitted to seize cash amounts suspected of being linked to illegal activity, and civil forfeiture carries a lower standard of proof than a criminal case, according to Fox 59's reporting on the ruling.
How Much Money Is at Stake
The scale of the practice has been substantial. Marion County prosecutors have seized more than $2.5 million in cash since 2022, with forfeited funds totaling approximately $1 million over that span, per the Institute for Justice. Separately, Reason Magazine reported that between 2022 and 2024, Indiana law enforcement filed civil forfeiture suits targeting more than 130 in-transit FedEx parcels that both originated and terminated outside Indiana, seeking to forfeit over $2.5 million and ultimately collecting roughly $1 million.
Institute for Justice attorney Marie Miller said the Marion County Prosecutor's Office has capitalized on Indianapolis hosting the FedEx hub, and argued that a possible connection to crime does not mean Indiana may seize and keep the money. Miller disagreed with the portion of the ruling allowing transit-only forfeiture to stand, and the Institute for Justice said it will appeal that part of the decision on behalf of the Chengs to the Indiana Court of Appeals. Miller has framed the broader fight in constitutional terms, arguing that allowing Indiana to forfeit money purely passing through a logistics hub exceeds state jurisdiction under federalism principles.
The Jewelers Whose Case Started It
The case traces back to a package containing $42,000 that was shipped from Virginia to California, intended for a jewelry retailer, when an IMPD drug-sniffing K-9 alerted on it at the FedEx hub. The cash represented an overdue customer payment to jewelry merchants Henry and Minh Cheng, who have operated their wholesale jewelry business for 30 years and have never lived or done business in Indiana, according to the Indianapolis Business Journal. The Marion County Prosecutor's Office seized the package and later returned the money, but the Chengs engaged the Institute for Justice to challenge both the seizure and the law authorizing it.
That dispute was resolved in the Chengs' favor well before Tuesday's broader ruling. The Indiana Lawyer reported that in November 2024, Marion Superior Court Magistrate Judge Anne Flannelly ordered Marion County prosecutors to return the $42,825 in seized funds after the Chengs filed counterclaims challenging county seizure practices. Those counterclaims eventually grew into a class-action lawsuit, which the Marion County Superior Court certified in July 2025 on behalf of all property owners facing or at risk of facing similar cash forfeitures tied to packages routed through the Indianapolis FedEx hub without specific crime allegations, according to the Institute for Justice. The class action names Marion County Prosecutor Ryan Mears in his official capacity, along with the State of Indiana, as defendants.
Allegations of a Profiteering Scheme
WTHR reported that the lawsuit accuses IMPD and the prosecutor's office of participating in an unconstitutional profiteering scheme by seizing out-of-state packages, alleging that prosecutors routinely cited boilerplate language claiming cash constituted proceeds of an unidentified violation of a criminal statute. Monday's ruling appears to validate at least part of that argument, with the court finding that authorities must demonstrate an Indiana-specific crime was committed in order to persuade a judge going forward. Fox 59 reported that the Marion County Prosecutor's Office did not respond to a request for comment on the ruling.
This is not the first time Marion County's forfeiture practices have run into legal trouble. The Indiana Lawyer reported that a December 2017 federal ruling in Washington v. Marion County Prosecutor held that holding seized property without a prompt post-seizure hearing violated constitutional due process, with Southern District Court Chief Judge Jane Magnus-Stinson finding that Indiana's forfeiture framework lacked necessary due process protections at the time.
A Supreme Court Precedent Looms Large
The Institute for Justice has tangled with Indiana's forfeiture laws at the highest level before. The group previously persuaded the U.S. Supreme Court to issue a unanimous ruling against forfeiture of a convicted drug dealer's vehicle as excessive, with the court finding that seizing the vehicle for transporting narcotics exceeded the penalties prescribed for the underlying criminal conviction. That case, Timbs v. Indiana, began when Indiana seized a $42,000 Land Rover over a drug infraction that carried a maximum statutory criminal fine of just $10,000, and in February 2019 the Supreme Court ruled that the Eighth Amendment's Excessive Fines Clause applies to state and local asset forfeitures through the Fourteenth Amendment.
Under Indiana Code § 34-24-1, prosecutors pursuing civil asset forfeiture must file an affidavit of probable cause within seven days of seizure and establish by a preponderance of the evidence that the property was linked to a criminal enterprise, according to FindLaw. That standard is notably lower than what is required in a criminal trial and does not require a criminal conviction. For now, the structural question of whether Indiana can treat a shipping hub as a financial tollbooth for interstate commerce remains unsettled, with the fight headed next to the Indiana Court of Appeals.
