$70,000 cash seized from man claiming to be well-paid DJ, Middle Georgia cops say
On the afternoon of Oct. 21, a Monroe County sheriff’s deputy pulled over a black Dodge Journey headed north on Interstate 75 near Forsyth. The Dodge was reportedly following another car too closely.
There were two men and a child in the Journey. The driver, an Albany man in his early 40s, and another man in the Dodge were “very nervous” and “breathing heavily,” the deputy’s write-up noted. The passenger said they had left Macon and were heading to South Carolina, but that they were lost. The driver, meanwhile, said they were on their way to Atlanta.
Both men were asked about the “very strong odor of air freshener coming out of the vehicle” and if there was anything illegal inside. They said no. A drug-sniffing dog, however, “alerted” and a search turned up $70,220 in cash — some in a plastic bag in the back seat, the rest in the SUV’s center console.
The passenger said it was “just money they had.” The driver said they were “going to buy a speaker in Atlanta” that cost as much as $40,000, but that he “did not have any specific speakers in mind, nor did he know where he was going to buy” it.
Asked where the money had come from, the man said he was a DJ and that “he made $50,000 to $100,000 per night in cash. … (He) also stated he did not report his cash to the IRS as income.”
The deputy’s report went on to say that the deputy told the driver “that it was tax fraud to not report income to the IRS. (He) stated he reported ‘some’ of his income to the IRS, however, he did not file taxes in 2019.” The driver was cited for a traffic infraction and sent on his way, but the cash was turned over to the DEA.
Dispatches: A recent Monroe sheriff’s report noted on the form’s “Offender” section that the culprit was a “Large Tree Limb.” It seems that one morning late last month, a man was driving a 1998 Dodge Dakota pickup on Johnstonville Road when he drove over said tree limb thinking he could clear it. Well, he did not clear it. “The limb got stuck under his truck, making it hard to steer and damaged the truck’s radiator and undercarriage,” a deputy’s report said. “I got out and tried to help (the man) remove the tree limb … but we had no luck.” . . . A woman who lives along U.S. 41 south of Forsyth called the law Nov. 10 about “a disturbance.” A sheriff’s deputy was later informed by the woman, 61, that her nephew had somehow run over her asthma inhaler, “causing damage.” She wanted the nephew to buy her a new inhaler. By phone, the nephew told the deputy “he does not recall running over her inhaler, but will pay for a new one when he has money.”