Millennia ago, the wealthy and powerful worked out that one of the easiest and most effective ways to inspire enthusiasm and ensure loyalty in the mercenary thugs they hired to fight and kill for them was to allow them to loot and pillage their victims. And not only did it inspire the thugs - it served to offset some of the lords' need to fund them, and kept the people that much poorer and more sibjugated, so they posed less of a recurring threat.
The only thing that's changed really is that that looting and pillaging is now called "civil asset forfeiture." It's still the same thing, carried out by the same sorts of people, at the behest of the same sorts of people, and for the same purposes.