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The IRS took a family bakery's $68,000 over cash deposits and kept it for three years.

The IRS Seized a Family Bakery’s $68,000 Over Cash Deposits, Then Folded Within Hours of a Lawsuit

by
M.A. Rothman

By M.A. RothmanOctober 14, 2026 · 5 min read
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The IRS emptied the bank account of Vocatura’s Bakery, a third-generation family business in Norwich, Connecticut, and kept the money for three years without ever bringing its case before a judge. The supposed crime was depositing the bakery’s own cash in amounts under $10,000. The government gave every dollar back only after the family went to court, within hours of the filing.

The case dates to 2013 through 2016, and it is drawing fresh attention this month. It deserves it, because it shows exactly how civil forfeiture works when nobody is watching.

A raid over bank deposits

Vocatura’s Bakery was founded in 1919 in Westerly, Rhode Island, and has operated in Norwich since 1956. According to the Institute for Justice, which later represented the family, it has been run by three generations of Vocaturas. The brothers who own it today grew up crawling into the industrial oven, switched off, and riding the trays around like a carousel.

On May 1, 2013, federal agents arrived. The Institute for Justice describes eight armed IRS agents descending on the bakery. The Daily Signal, which interviewed co-owner David Vocatura in 2016, reported that more than eight agents and a U.S. marshal came to the bakery while other agents went to the brothers’ homes. David and his brother Larry were questioned separately.

According to The Daily Signal, David Vocatura recalled that agents first told him he would not need a lawyer, then questioned him for several hours, asking whether the owners were selling drugs out of their delivery trucks or running a prostitution ring out of the bakery. Then they got to what they were really after: a pattern of cash deposits under $10,000.

Federal law requires banks to report cash transactions over $10,000. Breaking deposits up to avoid that report is a separate crime called “structuring.” David Vocatura told The Daily Signal that the bakery began keeping deposits under $10,000 only after a bank employee called in 2007 to say that larger deposits required extra paperwork. “The terminology that they used was never really explained to us in detail,” he said. “We just thought it was an inconvenience or a nuisance for [the bank].”

None of that mattered to the agents. The IRS seized the bakery’s entire account: $68,382.22.

Three years, no judge, then a plea demand

The government charged no one. The IRS opened administrative forfeiture proceedings in June 2013, according to the Institute for Justice, and the family filed a claim to contest them, but prosecutors never took the case to court. They simply held the money. “For three years, they just held on to the money,” Institute for Justice attorney Dan Alban told The Daily Signal. “They didn’t file a civil forfeiture action. They didn’t file a criminal forfeiture action. They didn’t file anything.”

That silence came even after the IRS changed its own rules. In October 2014, after a run of embarrassing cases involving small businesses, the agency announced it would pursue structuring forfeitures only where the money came from illegal activity. The Justice Department followed with similar changes in March 2015.

Then, in February 2016, prosecutors came back. On February 18, according to The Daily Signal, an assistant U.S. attorney offered David and Larry Vocatura a deal: plead guilty to structuring, forfeit the $68,000 already taken, give up an additional $160,000 in personal assets, and face up to four years in prison. The Institute for Justice put the proposed sentence at 37 to 46 months.

The brothers said no. “Additional fines and prison time if we plead guilty we simply were not going to do,” David Vocatura told The Daily Signal. “It was ridiculous the way they came into the bakery, and when they were looking for everything, they didn’t find anything illegal, so we’re going to defend ourselves.”

The response was a grand jury subpoena, dated May 10, 2016, demanding practically every business record the bakery had produced since January 1, 2008, including bank statements, invoices and correspondence with customers. Alban called it what it looked like: “This is retaliation for [the Vocaturas] refusing to accept the plea agreement. That’s exactly what this is.”

The money came back in hours

On May 24, 2016, the Vocaturas and the Institute for Justice filed a motion in federal court demanding the return of their property. Within hours, the IRS announced it would give back all of the money.

Three years of pressure collapsed the moment a judge might look at the case. The government that had been demanding another $160,000 was suddenly eager to return the original $68,000. It still said it would press ahead with the tax investigation. Then, on June 7, 2016, according to the Institute for Justice, the prosecutor emailed to say the IRS was withdrawing the grand jury subpoena too.

“I’m happy the government is doing the right thing,” David Vocatura said at the time. “The past three years have been the longest in my life.” His attorney, Robert Everett Johnson, was blunter: “The IRS seized the Vocaturas’ money for no real reason and spent three years trying to find a way to keep it.”

The IRS told The Daily Signal it could not discuss the case. In a statement, it pointed to its 2014 policy change and said, “We recognize that there are individuals who may have had their money seized prior to our policy change, and we are working with our partners at the Department of Justice to address those issues.”

Why this case still matters

The Vocaturas were not alone. The Institute for Justice found that the IRS seized more than $242.6 million under structuring laws in more than 2,500 cases from 2005 to 2012, and that from 2007 to 2013 it took $43 million in more than 600 cases where structuring was the only alleged crime. After the Vocatura case was aired at a House Ways and Means oversight hearing in May 2016, the IRS announced it would send letters to roughly 700 property owners whose money had been taken under structuring laws, telling them they could petition to get it back.

That is a real result, and it came because one family refused to sign. But the lesson is uncomfortable. The money was never returned because the government reviewed the facts and admitted error. It was returned because the government did not want a judge to see what it had done. A policy change on paper did not protect a bakery that had been in business for nearly a century. A lawsuit did.

Civil forfeiture lets the government take first and justify later, and in this case “later” stretched to three years. Any small business that deals in cash, from a family restaurant to a roadside farm stand, should know how fast its account can disappear.

The IRS held a family bakery’s money hostage for three years and folded within hours of being taken to court, which tells you everything about the case it never had.

Editor’s note: This article covers a 2013 seizure and a case resolved in 2016 that drew renewed attention in October 2026.

Sources

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