He Liked Cheap Cigars. So They Took His Boat Away
The Farcical Case of USA Versus Jeff Southworth
Not too long ago, Loose Cannon published a series of stories written by a wannabee sailor about his maiden voyage. Let’s just say his suffering was palpable, described in the hyperbolic style of humorist Dave Barry.
Funny guy Frank Genao had been volunteer crew on the Janice Ann, a Catalina 470 owned by one Jeffrey Southworth, the protagonist of today’s farcial story about our government at work: The feds took his boat away from him because of cigars.
Here’s how Genao described Southworth, a retired automotive engineer, in his “Passage from Hell” series:
He was brilliant. Even in categories I studied in college, he killed me. It turns out his MIT degree wasn’t some fluke. He was smart. Very smart. He excelled at math and held some kind of advanced electronic Master’s Engineering degree. Honestly, he was nothing short of being a crazier version of Einstein.
Was Jeff crazy? Hell yeah, he was crazy. He was stone cold out of his mind and eccentric…but he was also charming and likable. When I first saw him, he was walking around Puerto Bahia Marina with a bottle of rum in his hand; he looked like a madman. He was crazy but brilliant…brilliant in ways that truly madmen can be.
At some point, while editing the stories, I realized that I too knew this fellow. I had even written about him in 2013. The story was about how Southworth forced the federal bureacracy to back down from an attempt at civil asset forfeiture.
First, we must digress and dredge up some history for those of you born recently or somehow slept through the Cold War. As a Boy Scout in a carful of Boy Scouts returning from Expo 67 in Montreal, I remember us being asked two things by the U.S. Customs guy: Were we bringing any Chinese firecrackers? Did we have any Cuban cigars?
Yes, indeed. Fidel Castro’s cash-strapped country was hawking tobacco products to smokers of the world. This Communist plot had to be thwarted, our elders had decided, and even Boy Scouts were suspect. By 2013, the war against Beijing’s Black Cats and Gorillas was a distant memory, but not the ban on Cohibas and Romeo y Julietas, as the U.S. continued to joust against the ghost of the Soviet Union.
Under the terms of the U.S. Embargo of Cuba, which endures to this day, Cuban cigars could not be imported to the United States or Puerto Rico. Possession of Cuban cigars was a crime, punishable by fines and up to 10 years in prison.
The ban was not lifted until the second term of the Obama presidency. So, if Southworth’s voyage to Puerto Rico had happened two years later, none of what you are about to read would have happened.
The Mona Passage that separates the D.R. from American territory is a crossing point for people smugglers, heavily patroled, so it was no surprise that Janice Ann was stopped at sea and boarded.
U.S. Border Patrol officers then allowed Southworth to proceed to Ponce on Puerto Rico’s south coast to formally clear into the U.S. territory. Southworth had a 33 boxes of cigars with him, which he declared to Customs and Border Patrol at Ponce. Southworth explained to officers that he doesn’t drink coffee. Instead, he smokes cigars to stay awake on ocean passages.
“We talk about the cigars, and I tell him there are a lot on board, all of which are fake Cubans that I bought mostly in my city of Samana and some in Boca Chica, D.R.,” Southworth recalled. “Officer Rodriguez said they have an expert back at the office that can quickly tell whether they are Cubans or not. He said they will most likely be seized, but they would be returned if not of Cuban origin.”
By the way, cigar people are well aware that many, if not most “Cuban” cigars sold in the Dominican Republic are cheap knockoffs. They’re real cigars, mind you. The D.R. has many impressive brands of its own. They’re just not rolled by Cubans in Cuba. Anyone buying Cohibas on the streets of Santo Domingo thinking they were really Cubans might also buy a $40 Rolex from the same vendor and think that it too was genuine.
The officers kept questioning him, new officers arrived and searched the boat, and Southworth got the impression that someone may have dipped into his money stash. He communicated his suspicion and the questioning got uglier. Southworth said he was then taken out, spread-eagled against the feds’ car, searched and handcuffed before being driven to the agents’ office.
Southworth said no cigar expert ever came to verify whether the Cubans were bogus. He said everyone involved knew they were knockoffs, but he was told to take his personal possessions off the boat and leave. Southworth described how that happened:
I was detained in Ponce for hours. I had not slept for over 40 hours and can't remember the last time I ate. Eventually two Ponce officers handed me a forfeiture of the cigars, a one-page document to sign. I asked them if they could fill out the form properly and call the cigars what they are, rather than Cubans. They said no. If I signed the document I could return to my vessel and rest. I told them I would only sign the document under protest. If I had known that (U.S. Customs and Border Protection) would use that trumped-up document to seize my vessel (rather than just the cigars), I never would have signed it.
“Cuban Cigar Case Has a Bad Smell” was the headline on the Loose Cannon story, which at that time was published online by Soundings magazine. The Daily Caller treated it as news, too. Sailing columnists picked up the story. Southworth even got support from the libertarian Cato Institute. This was me then:
Our government is seizing someone’s $90,000 possession because there was $700 worth of cigars on board that might be Cuban. Really? And the standard for the seizure (to be upheld by a judge in civil, not criminal court) is not whether a crime had been committed beyond a reasonable doubt, but by the much lower standard of whether a crime had occurred by a preponderance of the evidence.
Southworth appealed and it was heard by CBP officials in Washington, not Puerto Rico.
“After a careful review of the case record we find a remission of the forfeiture is warranted. Please return the vessel to the petitioner, after waiving all storage charges,” John Connors, chief of the CBP Penalties Branch, said in a letter to CBP-Puerto Rico, adding, “You may share this decision with Customs and Border Patrol officers who processed [this] case.”
Which sounds a little like a reprimand, a hint that Connors believed the boys in Ponce had been a trifle wrongheaded in their treatment of the visiting sailor from Ohio. To get his boat back, all Southworth had to do was sign a hold-harmless agreement, releasing CBP from legal jeopardy. He had 30 days to sign or the government would go through with the forfeiture.
Nope. Southworth said the Puerto Rico office will not let him inspect the boat before he signed the agreement. He had no idea whether Janice Ann has been damaged or even whether she is being stored in the water or on the hard. “The last thing I want to do is take the boat back sight unseen and find it with holes in the hull or, God forbid, cut in half,” Southworth said.
So, he petitioned for permission to inspect his own boat, compensation for repair of any damage and that his name be “cleansed within the system.”
The latter was important. Southworth, having once been “arrested” by CBP, would be added to the list to be interrogated whenever he returned to the United States, whether by land, sea or air—forever. It had already has started. On a return flight to Puerto Rico he had gotten the let’s-go-talk-in-another-room treatment.
In August 2013, Southworth said that Customs and Border Patrol had decided “not to play ball” and his formal petition for relief. He got his boat back, but he had to do it their way—with a signature. The government kept the cigars.
We haven’t heard from Southworth himself yet. His hindsight might have been amusing. According to Coast Guard records, Janice Ann’s documentation is still in force.
The issue of civil asset forfeiture, as practiced by law enforcement agencies all over the United States, continues to make boil the blood of fairminded people. The crazy tale of Janice Ann and her cargo of faux Cubans should be taken as a warning: Even law-abiding cruisers are not immune from this vestige of the days of absolute monarchies.
Hey mon, you wanna buy some really great seegars? Having had a good knife stolen/forfeited by the gummint, I know how he felt. They refused to break the blade in my presence, so I suspect some officer of the law is wearing my Uncle Henry Bearpaw to this day.
These stories abour US Government and Puerto Rican local authority "pirates" operating between Puerto Rico and Mona have been told for decades. At least many of the officials in other parts of the islands are somewhat courteous and respectful. I have been out of the loop for some years, so what is the latest skinny on the Mona macho boy badge-wearing pirates?