Hi all,

I was hoping to get any kind of advice I could in light of the events that took place last night at the US border. Here's what happened:

A friend and I decided we wanted to make a trip to Niagara Falls to play at Seneca for the day (both of us are Canadian citizens). When planning the trip the week before my friend told me he would love to come and if it was possible for him to borrow me US funds because he didn't have any. Friends and I who make these trips do this all the time; we borrow foreign currency from each other in order to save on the spread from currency exchanges. If my friend were to lose he would have simply given me back my US dollars or he would have paid me in Canadian at the spot rate.

I brought 9500usd and my friend borrowed 8500usd. We let the agent at the border know exactly what we were carrying right away. We were pulled into secondary and when questioned I explained to the agent that I gave my friend the money to borrow because he did not have any USD. The border agent accused me of structuring and the funds were seized. They had my friend and I in separate rooms for over 5 hours pinning us against one another and trying to get the other to admit that one of us was purposefully trying to carry under 10k so we did not have to declare. We told them this is simply not true and that was the money we needed for the day. I have no problem declaring, in fact, I declared 12k USD on two separate occasions the week before.

They had a "special agent" from homeland security question me. When I explained the situation to him he told me that this would be handled "administratively" and not "criminally." He said I would have to appeal to get the money back and that it was out of their hands now as the money goes to another department.

Should I obtain legal advice to get the money back?