BANGOR (AP) – A federal judge ruled against two railroad workers who found $165,580 in cash in a duffel bag beside some railroad tracks in northern Maine, saying the money belongs to the government.

The U.S. attorney had opposed the workers’ efforts to keep the money, asserting that it belonged to the government because it was tied to drug trafficking.

Judge John Woodcock, who held a hearing on the matter in U.S. District Court in Bangor last week, agreed Wednesday.

The men who found the money “can no more claim ownership in the proceeds of an illegal drug deal than they could claim rightful ownership in illegal drugs themselves or in the proceeds of an illegal gambling operation or house of prostitution,” Woodcock wrote. “Simply because they found the money on the side of the railroad tracks does not legitimize the cash or their claim to it.”

Daniel Madore, 44, and Traves La Pointe, 54, both of Fort Kent, found the money on Feb. 4, 2005, in some bushes beside the Maine, Montreal and Atlantic tracks. The pair – LaPointe works for the railroad as a conductor and Madore is an engineer – turned it over to Border Patrol agents.

Several days later a third man, Allen Gagnon, 45, of Van Buren, claimed the money was his life savings and that he had lost the duffel bag stuffed with $100, $50, $20 and $10 bills while driving his snowmobile on the tracks from Van Buren to Madawaska.

LaPointe, Madore and Gagnon all laid claim to the cash, although Gagnon allowed his claim to lapse.

Woodcock found that the two railroad workers had not met legal requirements to claim found property, including making certain notifications. The judge also found that their claims under state law were subordinate to federal law making money gained through illegal activities subject to forfeiture.

The area where the money was found is known to law enforcement agencies as a drug-smuggling route between Maine and Canada, the judge wrote.

“In the deep of the Maine winter, the St. John River … freezes over as it flows through the town of Van Buren,” Woodcock wrote. “Instead of a moat, the river is seasonally transformed into a pathway, suitable for travel by foot or snowmobile; for those who prefer to avoid United States Customs. …”

Typically, the smuggling consists of drugs being brought in the United States and cash heading for Canada.”

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Information from: Bangor Daily News, http://www.bangornews.com

AP-ES-02-22-07 0912EST

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