EDITOR'S NOTE: Manninglive.com will be looking at the Top 15 stories of 2016, with a few updates here and there as available, over the next few days.
Deputies with the Clarendon County Sheriff’s Office made the traffic stop of a lifetime in April, confiscating more than $800,000 in bundled cash investigators believe has been used in the drug trade.
The Interstate Crime Enforcement Team initially stopped a vehicle with New York license plates April 6 for driving below the posted speed limit in the fast lane of Interstate 95.
The deputies said they noticed immediate signs of criminal activity.
“Their trip and their story of their trip was consistent with criminal activity, so we did a probable cause search with K-9 Ruin,” Sheriff Randy Garrett said. “He set on the vehicle and we found a suit case and bag of money.”
The bag of money was vacuum-sealed, Garrett noted. He said that Ruin identified the money due to trace narcotics.
“What happens is, this type of money, when it’s been around narcotics, it absorbs some of that, and it’s on the money, so the dog sets on the narcotics on the money, not the money itself,” he said.
Both suspects – one from Florida and the other from Colombia in South America – said they had rented the car and knew nothing of the money, Sheriff Randy Garrett said.
Maj. Kipp Coker said overall that deputies seized $813,817 in cash. Garrett said it is the most ever confiscated in Clarendon County.
The money itself was counted twice at a local bank, with extra security from deputies. Garrett said that, after the entire case and investigation is settled, including trials for the suspects, 80 percent of the money will return to the county for use by the Sheriff’s Office.
“The money can only be used for Sheriff’s Office equipment, training and enforcement,” Garrett said. “You cannot use it for anything else. By enforcement, we mean that we use that to do undercover drug buys.”
