Washington — The Drug Enforcement Administration seizes cash that has no connection to any broader criminal investigation, potentially violating the civil liberties of those whose money is taken, a Department of Justice Inspector General report concluded.

In a 74-page report released on Wednesday, the inspector general faulted the DEA for not measuring how its asset forfeiture practices benefit criminal investigations and said in a sample of 100 cash seizures its investigators reviewed, the agency could only verify that 44 were even related to criminal investigations.

In one example cited in the report, the DEA took more than $70,000 from a piece of checked luggage without doing any more investigation or attempting to question the owner at the airport — instead simply putting a receipt in the bag and sending it on to its final destination.

“Even accepting that the circumstances surrounding the discovery of this large volume of concealed currency justified law enforcement suspicion and seizure, we find it troubling that the DEA would make an administrative forfeiture without attempting to advance an investigation, especially considering that the DEA had opportunities to contact the potential owners of the currency instead of simply providing written notice of the seizure,” the inspector general wrote.

In a memo responding to the findings, Acting Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Blanco said the inspector general took a sample that was not representative of broader Justice Department practices and drew faulty conclusions based on mistakenly analyzed data. Blanco wrote that 81 of the 100 seizures “were likely” tied to a criminal investigation and “were not the sorts of seizures that pose risks to civil liberties.”

Blanco also wrote that the inspector general report “fails to acknowledge the scale of the problem that asset forfeiture is intended to combat — that is, the staggering volume of illicit proceeds (often cash) that are generated globally and which criminal actors move and conceal in increasingly creative ways.”

Civil liberties advocates have long criticized the Justice Department’s asset forfeiture program, which allows law enforcement to take people’s money and other property without judicial oversight.

The program is lucrative, and the department uses what it seizes to help crime victims and state and local law enforcement. According to the inspector general’s report, the department has doled out $4 billion in forfeited funds to crime victims since fiscal year 2000 and has provided over $6 billion to state and local law enforcement.

U.S. Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said the inspector general’s report “makes it clear that asset forfeiture is in desperate need of reform.”

“While asset forfeiture is a useful law enforcement tool to fight crime, the current lack of oversight and training poses dangers to Americans’ civil liberties,” he said.