Miami-Dade's sheriff pays a private firm a cut of what it seizes — a Florida court will decide if that's allowed
Miami-Dade Sheriff Rosie Cordero-Stutz's office hired a Coral Gables law firm to prosecute civil forfeitures on contingency — 20% to 30% of whatever it recovers, per court documents reported by Reason. The test case is the $45 million seized from 16 Miami-area phone businesses in an alleged money-laundering investigation, of which the firm could keep $9 million to $13 million. No one at the businesses has been criminally charged. A circuit judge let the arrangement stand; Florida's 3rd District Court of Appeal will now take the first ruling in state history on contingency-fee forfeiture prosecution.
- The arrangement: the sheriff's office — led by Rosie Cordero-Stutz, Miami-Dade's first elected sheriff since the 1960s — signed with the Coral Gables firm of Israel Reyes (a former detective, prosecutor and judge) two months before the seizures, paying 20% to 30% of successful recoveries, with the percentage rising when a claimant contests, settles or appeals.
- The case: more than $45 million seized from 16 Miami-area phone distributors and retailers in August 2025 ($42.7 million of it from SH Americas alone), in an alleged money-laundering probe involving two Chinese nationals. An arrest warrant was issued for the alleged enterprise leader, Weizhong Zhu — but per Miami Herald reporting cited by Reason, no one at the businesses has been criminally charged. The claimants' court papers say the firm stands to keep $9 million to $13 million on these funds, and that a further $2.6 billion in yet-unseized revenue is being pursued, carrying a potential $480 million in fees.
- The defense of it: the sheriff's office says it keeps full authority over which cases get filed and which settle. A Miami circuit judge agreed in April, denying the businesses' motion to disqualify the firm on the ground that the sheriff retained enough control.
- The challenge: the businesses, backed by amicus briefs from the Goldwater Institute and from the national and Florida criminal-defense bars, argue a prosecutor paid by the seizure cannot be neutral — a due-process problem. Florida courts have already held contingency fees for police informants unconstitutional; they have never ruled on contingency fees for the prosecution itself. MDSO and the Reyes firm did not immediately respond to Reason's requests for comment.
Civil forfeiture already runs on a tilt: the government can take property on suspicion, hold it under the civil standard of proof, and make the owner sue to get it back — no criminal charge required. Miami-Dade's sheriff has now added a second tilt, and it is the one Florida's courts are about to examine. Under an agreement signed two months before the seizures it is now being tested on, the Miami-Dade Sheriff's Office pays the Coral Gables law firm of Israel Reyes — himself a former detective, prosecutor and judge — a contingency fee of 20% to 30% of what its forfeiture cases recover. The fee rises when owners fight back: contested, settled and appealed cases pay the firm a larger share. In other words, the attorney prosecuting the seizure is paid out of the seizure, in proportion to its size, with a bonus schedule for resistance.
The test case is not small. In August 2025, the sheriff's office seized more than $45 million from 16 Miami-area mobile phone distributors and retailers and froze their accounts — $42.7 million of it from a single company, SH Americas — as part of an alleged money-laundering investigation involving two Chinese nationals. The criminal side of that investigation is real: an arrest warrant has been issued for the alleged enterprise leader, Weizhong Zhu. But according to Miami Herald reporting cited by Reason, no one at the seized-from businesses has been criminally charged, and the civil cases against their money were not brought by the sheriff's own counsel or the state attorney. They were brought by the firm on commission. The businesses' appeal papers put the firm's expected take on the seized funds alone at $9 million to $13 million — and allege the arrangement reaches much further: a further $2.6 billion in not-yet-seized revenue is being pursued under the same agreement, which by the claimants' math could carry some $480 million in fees. The sheriff's office disputes none of the structure; its position is that it retains authority over which cases are filed and which are settled, and a Miami circuit judge accepted that argument in April, refusing to disqualify the firm. The Florida 3rd District Court of Appeal now has the question, and it is genuinely new: Florida courts have held that paying police informants on contingency is unconstitutional, but no Florida court has ever ruled on paying the prosecution itself that way.
The briefs lining up against the arrangement are worth noticing for who signed them. The Goldwater Institute — a conservative legal foundation — filed in support of the businesses, arguing that a financial stake in the outcome destroys the neutrality due process requires of a prosecutor. So did the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and its Florida counterpart. When the limited-government right and the criminal-defense left arrive at the same courthouse door carrying the same objection, the objection is probably not ideological. It is structural: a prosecutor is supposed to be the one actor in the system with no stake in the answer. Everyone else at the table — the claimant, the defense, the judge — is either interested or neutral by design. Contingency prosecution makes the state's own advocate interested, and interested in a specific direction: bigger targets, longer fights, more seizures. The $2.6 billion figure, if the claimants' papers are right, is what that interest looks like when it is allowed to plan ahead.
None of that decides whether the underlying investigation is righteous. If the state proves a laundering enterprise ran through those phone businesses, punishment landing on the people who ran it — hard punishment, after proof — is the justice system doing exactly its job, and this page has no quarrel with it. The quarrel the appeal presents is about the instrument, not the target: a punishment follows a finding, but a contingency fee is paid on the taking, under the civil standard, whether a finding ever comes. The two are easy to blur and worth keeping separate, because the fee does not retire when a guilty enterprise is finished. The contract remains, and contracts go looking for work. That a case like this can be brought at all — argued in open court, with the sheriff's contract in the record and the state's appellate judges set to rule on it for every agency in Florida — is the checks-and-balances machinery visibly working, which is more than can be said for most forfeiture arrangements, most of which are never questioned anywhere. The 3rd DCA's answer will now draw the line for the whole state: whether 'the people' may hire their prosecutor the way a plaintiff hires a personal-injury lawyer. Whatever the court decides, it will decide it in the open — and that, on its own, is a healthy sign.