When federal authorities come across a suspicious pile of cash but don't have enough evidence to bring criminal charges, they do what thousands of private citizens with disputes do every year: They file a lawsuit.

Prosecutors over the last five years have done so 28 times, most recently earlier this month when asking a judge to allow them to keep $33,000 in suspected drug money that firefighters discovered in the Fairhope trailer home of Anna Hernandez.

Sometimes as a prelude to criminal charges, other times after a prosecution -- and sometimes without any criminal charges at all -- civil forfeitures allow authorities to seize assets without meeting the high burden of convicting someone beyond a reasonable doubt.

But critics question the fairness of a law that allows the government to take people's possessions without even trying them on criminal charges.

Since 2002, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Mobile has won more than $750,000, plus real estate, 10 vehicles and 42 firearms. That does not include property and cash that the government sought through 115 criminal indictments during the same time period.

"It goes to local law enforcement agencies involved in the investigation and seizure and helps them better protect and serve us," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Alex Lankford IV, who handles many of the civil asset forfeiture actions for the federal government in Mobile.

He said 80 percent of seized assets go to local law enforcement agencies that participated in the investigations. Forfeitures also choke off the money and equipment used to finance drug trafficking and other crimes.

Critics maintain that forfeitures outside of criminal cases present too great a potential for abuse.

"I think the problem with that is over 200 years ago, we made a policy decision that we were not going to deny life, liberty or property without proof beyond a reasonable doubt," said Bill Messer, a Montgomery lawyer who serves on the board of the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

"This isn't a case where two people of roughly equal means have a dispute. You've got the power of the federal government against a citizen who for whatever reason they've decided to go after with this lower standard (of proof)."

In the Fairhope case, investigators became suspicious of such a large amount of cash in a plastic bag and determined the money had drug residue on it. Government lawyers contend in their complaint that Hernandez crossed the U.S.-Mexican border five times last year and could not explain where the money came from.

"I'm not certain what reason she has to explain where her money came from. ... I'm not sure we need to tell the government about every penny, every lawn chair, all of our material things," said Hernandez's lawyer, Noel Leonard, who noted that his client has not been charged with a crime. "I'm leery of a government that does that."

The Drug Enforcement Administration has said it continues to investigate the Hernandez case, but the U.S. Attorney's Office has won forfeiture orders before in cases that never produced a single criminal indictment.

Take the case of Atteba Nettles and Bernard Jackson Jr. Nettles was stopped at a security checkpoint in Mobile Regional Airport in March 2006 with $52,000 stuffed into three separate, sealed envelopes inside his jacket. Records in U.S. District Court in Mobile indicate that Nettles told authorities that he was flying to New York to buy a truck for Jackson, his cousin, who had given him the money.

The story sounded suspicious to the Mobile police officer who questioned Nettles. The traveler said he did not know the location of the truck, telling the officer he was going to contact his cousin once he arrived. When asked how he planned to get the truck back to Mobile, Nettles told the officer that he was supposed to find someone with a commercial driver's license, according to the government's account.

Nettles had paid $1,100.70 that morning for a round-trip ticket to New York, scheduled to return to Mobile six days later.

Nettles' criminal record also aroused investigators' suspicions. He had been charged with selling crack cocaine in 2004 and 2005 and also had been arrested in 2000 and 2002 for drug possession, according to court records.

Investigators, however, apparently never established a clear link between the $52,000 they took from Nettles that March day and any illegal activity, and the two were never charged with a crime.

Jackson's lawyer, John Wayne Boone, said Mobile County District Attorney John Tyson Jr. declined to go after the funds. Then the feds stepped in.

The U.S. Attorney's Office in June 2006 filed a civil forfeiture complaint. In addition to noting Jackson's criminal record, prosecutors insist Jackson simply never could account for where the money came from, and a review of his finances led investigators to believe it was unlikely he legitimately could have had $52,000.

"I took everything that he told me into account. ... But when you crunch the numbers, it didn't work," said Lankford, the assistant U.S. attorney.

Marty Vickery, a man from whom Jackson said he borrowed $15,000 of the $52,000, refused to answer questions from the U.S. Attorney's Office -- even as to whether he knew Jackson -- on grounds that he might incriminate himself.

The forfeiture complaint also stated that New York City is "widely recognized as a major drug source city."

Jackson, who owns a concrete and construction business, said he tried to show investigators that he had legitimate income from his business and also from a side endeavor fixing up and selling older cars.

He said he intended to go to New York to buy a Range Rover for his wife as a surprise. He denied telling the police officer that he planned to find someone with a commercial driver's license to drive the truck back to Mobile, according to the government's civil complaint.

U.S. District Judge Kristi DuBose ruled in favor of the U.S. Attorney's Office last month, deciding that the government was entitled to keep the $52,000 without even a trial since there were no material factual issues in dispute.

"They just f---ing took it," Boone said. "He'd been saving his money, saving, saving, saving."

With a criminal record and a large sum of cash -- he said he distrusts banks -- Jackson said he understands the situation looked suspicious.

"They just nailed me to the cross because of my past," he said. "I had to move on. I'm not bitter because it's not like they didn't have a point. But I'm sad the way it's turned out."

The 34-year-old Mobile man said he is resigned. "How are you going to fight the federal army?"

Boone, a former Mobile police officer, said he knows Jackson from his days on the beat. He called his client "one of the few success stories" and expressed frustration at the federal government.

"They don't have to prove nothing. They just have to allege. It's almost like the burden of proof is on you," he said.

"I want to think (the law is) designed to keep people who have benefited from illegal activity ... from building empires," he said. "I think it's a good statute, but I think it's misapplied sometimes."

The numbers of federal civil forfeiture cases have bobbed up and down in Mobile over the last few years. So far this year, the U.S. Attorney's Office has filed two claims after pursuing 11 civil forfeitures the year before and two in all of 2005.

When they can, prosecutors said, they attach forfeiture counts to criminal cases. "As a general rule, criminal forfeiture is the preferred way to go," said Assistant U.S. Attorney George May, the coordinator of the criminal forfeiture program.

In those cases, prosecutors must obtain a conviction with proof beyond a reasonable doubt. One of the largest criminal forfeitures in Mobile resulted from the 2002 arrest of a pair of Tennessee brothers later convicted of selling the chemical cousin of a so-called "date-rape" drug over the Internet.

The judge's forfeiture order included $800,000 in cash, real estate, rental houses, vehicles, jewelry, boats, computers, and brokerage and bank accounts.

The year-to-year fluctuation in forfeiture cases represents a normal ebb and flow dictated by the cases that arise, Lankford said. "It's not really driven by statistics," he said.

Civil forfeitures reach court only when someone claims ownership of the seized asset. And usually, no one does. Drivers pulled over with large sums of cash hidden in their vehicles, for instance, often disavow any knowledge the money was there. In those cases, the law enforcement agency simply keeps the cash.

Since those cases never make it to court, the U.S. District Court clerk's office has no statistics on the amount of so-called "administrative seizures."

When they do go to court, the government nearly always wins, according to a Press-Register review of court records. Claimants usually either fail to come to court, agree to let the government have the asset or lose their case in front of a judge.

Other times, though, people have been able to recover some or all of their seized assets -- even, in one instance, a man charged and convicted.

In that case, Loxley police in February 2005 responded to a convenience store for a shoplifting complaint and discovered a Land Rover containing drugs and cash. Officers found $164,650 inside luggage and about 40 grams of crystal methamphetamine, a gram of cocaine, several Ecstasy pills and bottles of Ketamine, a veterinary anesthetic.

Officers also found copies of e-mails confirming hotel reservations in Mexico City and a UPS document showing electronics items that had been shipped to Costa Rica.

Investigators later learned that the driver, Samuel Jones II -- no relation to Mobile Mayor Sam Jones -- was scheduled to begin a trial in Miami on federal drug charges the following week.

A federal grand jury in Mobile indicted Jones in May 2005 on possession with intent to distribute about 75 grams of meth. He pleaded guilty in December 2005 and received a 10-year prison sentence the following April.

In the forfeiture case, the U.S. Attorney's Office agreed to return $41,125 of the $164,650 police seized from the Land Rover at the time of his arrest. Lankford said Jones convinced authorities that a portion of the money was legitimately earned from an airline job he had.

Aspects of civil forfeiture law have been argued in appellate courts throughout the country -- including before the U.S. Supreme Court.

A unanimous Supreme Court ruled in 1996 that judges could not automatically award the government money and property from people simply because they were fugitives from justice. That sparked a legislative response from Congress four years later that gave judges discretion to prohibit someone from simultaneously fighting a forfeiture action while evading a criminal charge.

One of the earliest legal tests to that law came two years ago in a federal courtroom in Mobile, where U.S. District Judge William Steele ruled against a Mexican man who claimed ownership of $318,930 seized by the government while refusing to appear in court on a criminal charge of bulk cash smuggling.

"There were not that many cases out there at the time because it was a relatively new statute," Lankford said.

Alabama State Troopers in November 2003 had stopped a pickup truck driven by Jose Luis Aguila that had money inside a hidden compartment. Authorities released Aguila, who returned to Mexico. A federal grand jury in Mobile indicted him the following March on a charge of bulk cash smuggling.

Aguila refused to return to the United States to face prosecution. At the same time, however, he filed court documents asserting his claim on the seized money that he claimed was his life savings. Steele wrote in his order that Aguila's case was precisely the circumstance Congress meant to address when it passed the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act.

"The court will not exercise its discretion in favor of allowing Aguila to malign the government's case in the civil forfeiture action from afar even as he thumbs his nose at this court's jurisdiction over the pending criminal proceedings against him," the judge wrote.