Prosecutors used tough Proceeds of Crime, or Poca laws, to seize the cash – even though they were not able to convict the suspected couriers.
Their seizures came as police increasingly target the old M74 "Heroin Highway",the main route for drugs coming into Scotland from Liverpool and London
Many couriers caught on the motorway – or parallel West Coast rail line – face jail.
But those who are stopped with cash they can not account for will certainly lose the money – even if they escape prison.
The Crown Office's Civil Recovery Unit (CRU) today named three unconvicted mules it had stripped of their cash cargoes.
They included Andrew Ould, from Wrexham, Wales, who was found last year with £34,350 in a plastic bag in the footwell of his car during a routine M74 traffic stop near Lockerbie.
Crown lawyers said: "Ould was acting as a drugs courier and 'cash mule'.
"It is suspected that the cash found in his car represented payment for a consignment of controlled drugs that he had earlier delivered to persons unknown in the Glasgow area.
"The A74(M) connects the West of Scotland with Merseyside and the rest of England. The motorways are used on a daily basis by drugs couriers."
Ould did not contest the confiscation order in court.
Nor did Emmanuel Akuany, of Leeds, when he lost £36,840 in cash after the CRU won a forfeiture order this March.
Crown lawyers argued that Akuany was another drug mule caught on the A74(M).
He was described as a "clean skin recruit to an organised crime group involved in the trafficking of controlled drugs from England into Scotland".
The actions against Ould and Akuany came on top of a third action, revealed earlier this year, when police found William Reid at Glasgow Central Station with a bag stuffed with American $100 bills.
When asked why he had the cash, Reid said he was "delivering it to a guy in Glasgow for a card game."
The police didn't believe him.
The Crown Office said the forfeiture, following the seizure in December 2010, "demonstrated his ongoing involvement in high-level criminality."
The Crown took $58,000 and £703 from Reid, who has a long history of criminal connections.
He was investigated during Operation Folklore – a massive, multi-year police investigation in to Glasgow gangster Jamie "The Iceman" Stevenson.
He was, the Crown Office said yesterday, "detected" on board a trawler carrying £24 million worth of cannabis back in 2005.
He did time in Spain for drug-trafficking.
The CRU is only part of the Crown Office's now substantial operation collecting the proceeds of crime.
Prosecutors also seize cash and assets – everything from speedboats to luxury homes – from criminals.
Overall, the Crown raised £10.5m from proceeds of crime, £3.5m through the CRU.
All that cash – which is less than last year when there were two unusual big seizures after long-standing cases – will go to good causes.
The Solicitor-General, Lesley Thomson, QC, stressed Poca was not just about money.
She said: "Just as important as the sum recovered is the disruption caused to individual criminals and crime groups in Scotland.
"Depriving criminals of their money and assets can significantly disrupt their activities. When the money and assets go, so does the status and power.
"There is no place in Scotland for those who want a lifestyle funded by crime."
david.leask@ heraldandtimes.co.uk
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