FBI aims to keep valuables, $86M cash confiscated in safe deposit store raid

[Hydrogen]

The FBI wants to keep $86 million in cash and millions more in jewelry and other valuables seized in a raid on a Beverly Hills, California, safe deposit box business, even though a judge specifically said the contents of the boxes weren’t up for grabs.

Prosecutors claim it’s fair to make the renters of the 369 safe deposit boxes forfeit their valuables, because they were engaged in criminal activity, the Los Angeles Times reported. But there’s no evidence to support the allegation.

The box holders and their lawyers say the FBI is trampling on the rights of people who were unaware the business, U.S. Private Vaults, was charged in a sealed indictment with conspiring to sell drugs and launder money.

The warrant that US Magistrate Steve Kim signed on March 17 giving permission for the FBI to raid the business even said, “This warrant does not authorize a criminal search or seizure of the contents of the safety deposit boxes.”

If the FBI wanted to search the boxes, it needed to meet the standard for a warrant of probable cause that evidence of a crime would be found. But agents rifled through about 800 boxes anyway, filming their searches and bagging the property as evidence even when the holders were unknown and not suspected of crimes.

Now, the government is trying to keep the cash, gold and silver bars, pricey watches and even $1.3 million in poker chips from a Las Vegas casino.

The government “can’t take stuff without evidence in the hopes that you’re going to get it later,” Benjamin Gluck, an attorney who represents box holders suing the government to retrieve their property, told the Times. “The Fourth Amendment and the forfeiture laws require the opposite — that you have the evidence first, and then you can take property.”

“We have some basis to believe that the items are related to criminal activity,” Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the FBI’s LA office, told the Times.

The contents of about 75 of the 800 boxes initially seized have already been returned, and at least 175 more will be given back, Mrozek said. The feds haven’t figured out who owns what was stored in many of the others.

The indictment says U.S. Private Vaults marketed itself to attract criminals who wanted to store valuables anonymously and hide from tax authorities. One of the company’s owners and a manager were involved in selling drugs and co-conspirators helped customers convert cash into gold to evade government suspicion, the Times reported.

But box owners like Joseph Ruiz, who kept $57,000 in cash from two legal settlements there because he doesn’t trust banks, say the government is stealing their money.

“I’m made out to be a criminal, and I didn’t do anything,” said Ruiz, the son of a retired Los Angeles police officer, told the paper. “I’m a law-abiding citizen.”

Ruiz has joined one of 11 lawsuits filed by box owners seeking the return of their property.




https://nypost.com/2021/06/12/fbi-aims-to-keep-valuables-86m-cash-found-in-safe-deposit-store-raid/

....



Interesting story here.

The FBI confiscated more than $86 million dollars worth of money, valuables, jewelry and items stashed in safety deposit boxes, in a raid. Despite a search warrant which expressly forbid them from confiscating anything contained in the boxes.

This happened in los angeles. Of course, this being america there were lawsuits filed. But it seems the FBI and the state have no intent to return much of the stolen items. Despite them not having filed lawsuits against the holders of the property or providing evidence suggesting any of the assets were involved with illegal activity.

There have been claims of the DEA (drug enforcement agency) confiscating $100,000 from the safe of legal medical marijuana retailers. Without the lost funds being returned. But this is on an entirely different level with more than $86 million confiscated. Not from fringe operations like legalized weed. But from middle class or wealthy americans, who don't seem to have been involved with anything illegal or sketchy.

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[jackg]

I was reading an article a while ago of how self storage could be more secure than safe deposit boxes as they're still quite well insured, in busy areas, and a camouflaged by other items. Your $1M of gold could be between lockers containing a piano, bed sheets, a sofa, a desk chair...



How did they manage to take photos of stuff and then not be able to identify whose is whose, that bit is a bit confusing.

It looks like they'll be able to get their stuff back (but might have to say what they actually had - although considering the FBI apparently can't read they might've contaminated evidence too)...

[Darker45]

It's kind of funny how a highly developed country is going through the same problem with the authorities as with a developing country like mine. Of course, I know it is a lot worse in our case, though.

When a neighbor got raided by the local police for illegal drugs, the policemen took away not just the suspect with the planted evidence but also his properties including in fact his fighting roosters. It has become an unfortunate pattern here that a police raid is almost like a license to steal.

I was reading an article a while ago of how self storage could be more secure than safe deposit boxes as they're still quite well insured, in busy areas, and a camouflaged by other items. Your $1M of gold could be between lockers containing a piano, bed sheets, a sofa, a desk chair...

Although if one is a criminal, doing so might not be a good idea. It would only take a single raid to gather all your precious belongings, out of which only half might be declared.

[ShowOff]

How did they manage to take photos of stuff and then not be able to identify whose is whose, that bit is a bit confusing.

In the quote below that I bolded, I thought it was much more confusing even though an FBI spokesman said they had reason to believe the seized items led to criminal activity.

But agents rifled through about 800 boxes anyway, filming their searches and bagging the property as evidence even when the holders were unknown and not suspected of crimes.

I don't know if the FBI broke the law when they confiscated the items simply because they suspected and believed that the owners and items were involved in criminal activities. Meanwhile, the applicable law states that "you have the evidence first, and then you can take the property". Obviously foreclosure is like stealing other people's things because they don't have evidence first.

[davis196]

Poor people.They should've sold all their valuables and invest everything in Bitcoin+a good hardware wallet. 
I bet that the FBI would never find and confiscate their cold wallets.Smirk.
Anyway,I have faith in the American court(I've been watching too many "Law&Order" episodes,when I was a kid ).
Lawsuits were filed and the people will get back their valuable possessions.
I don't live in the USA,but I would never put anything valuable in a safe deposit box.

[Kong Hey Pakboy]

I guess that's what you get when you do illegal stuff, you damage other people's property by being part of the seized products. I think that what the FBI did is fair, they were around the crime or have been involved in it so I think that the seizure is fair plus they will probably auction it off when the time comes. If this people could've invested in bitcoin, the amount of seizure would probably be smaller.

[bryant.coleman]

Does this surprise anyone? Asset seizure has become a regular occurrence in the United States. Anyone remember what happened to user BurtW? And this is not just the case with US, but with almost every country in the world. Nowadays a lot of the regimes think that being successful is a crime. If you have a few hundred thousand USD worth of savings, then you are automatically being labelled as a criminal. And more so, if you are keeping your assets away from the banks and stock exchanges.

[magneto]

This is just another reason why digital assets are going to be the future. Physical assets are just way too clunky, hard to transport, and easily exposed to be long term store of values.

There is no way for the feds to be seizing a completely decentralised, online asset class. If you were wrongfully accused of some crime then no one is going to notice that little USB stick that carries the majority of your net worth, so you are totally protected on that front.

Heck, this even reminds me of how valuable the idea of a brain wallet is (if it doesn't have all the security flaws that it does).

[Haunebu]

The FBI is just as corrupt as any other organisation in this world which is why this news didn't surprise me at all. I feel sad for the innocent people that got caught in this mess. They should have stuck to safe and legal methods instead.

I feel that many of those lawsuits will simply be tossed aside. This raid reminds me of the crazy dark web raid in the past.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

Hmm.  I hadn't heard anything about this story, but I do hope this:  that if there was, in fact, criminal wrongdoing on the part of the people whose money the FBI wants to seize that they're brought to justice--real justice, and not just the FBI getting to keep all that money; and that if what the lawyers say is true, and that the FBI has no claim on these assets, that they get handed right back to their rightful owners with undue haste.

I don't like that the US government feels that it can seize the assets of even people who commit crimes, unless those assets are directly involved in criminal enterprise.  Unfortunately a lot of alphabet agencies think they're entitled to just take whatever they want, and nobody's going to complain.  Luckily for the accused in this case, it seems like they're wealthy and can afford good lawyers so they might have a chance not to get all that money taken by the FBI.  It's Beverly Hills; if this had happened to some storage facility out in Bumblefuck, Indiana things might go much differently.

The FBI is just as corrupt as any other organisation in this world which is why this news didn't surprise me at all.

They've always been corrupt, ever since their beginning.  They, like most law enforcement agencies in the US, have far too much power and not enough checks and balances.

[LoyceV]

The feds haven’t figured out who owns what was stored in many of the others.

So it's legal to run an anonymous safe deposit box business?

The indictment says U.S. Private Vaults marketed itself to attract criminals who wanted to store valuables anonymously and hide from tax authorities. One of the company’s owners and a manager were involved in selling drugs and co-conspirators helped customers convert cash into gold to evade government suspicion, the Times reported.

That's just dumb If you're offering a service to criminals to store their money, you shouldn't be involved in anything else that makes you a suspect.

But it seems the FBI and the state have no intent to return much of the stolen items. Despite them not having filed lawsuits against the holders of the property or providing evidence suggesting any of the assets were involved with illegal activity.

I get it from the FBI's perspective: you can bet at least some of the money came from criminals, so obviously they don't want to return it. And chances are the local drug lord won't ask for it either. But it's seriously bad when government just ignores their legal boundaries and the basic "innocent until proven guilty". Of course it's easier to catch bad guys that way, but for the same reason they're not allowed to search all houses hoping to find something.

[Ucy]

Well, Anonimity and Transparency would work well in things like . Anonymity Rights of innocent depositors can't be taken away because of criminal depositors otherwise tyrants or "bad actors" could use this as an opportunity to flood that deposit boxes with valuable of criminals in order to de-anonymize the innocent and probably completely take away the Anonimty Rght.

The right Level of transparency (like we have in true crypto currency) should help the Security agency track and trace criminal activities,then the agency could bargain with the business owners to have some sort of encrypted private information of the criminals de-anonimised (without de-anonimizing the innocent) and properly investigated

[Wexnident]

Well, that was a pretty stupid move. At least show the said "basis" that you guys are relying on to say that the said items are actually related to criminal activity, otherwise, it's just you guys pushing an argument backed by nothing by your words, which is probably the worst argument one could ever make, especially in a case like this. Sure, I understand that what they are saying "could" be true, but as LoyceV has said, "innocent until proven guilty" is the basics of the basic.

[Lucius]

But it seems the FBI and the state have no intent to return much of the stolen items.

According to the article, 75 boxes have already been returned, and another 175 will also be returned to their owners - meaning that the feds return everything that is not illegal, as well as those boxes for which it can be determined to whom they belong. Everything that is illegal and kept with fake documents remains in dispute, although looking at all those American films, without a valid search warrant, all the evidence found at that place cannot serve as evidence against anyone because it was obtained illegally.

It would be interesting to find out if there were crypto backups in all these boxes, or maybe hardware wallets - which would certainly increase the total value of everything there.

[Vishnu.Reang]

According to the article, 75 boxes have already been returned, and another 175 will also be returned to their owners - meaning that the feds return everything that is not illegal, as well as those boxes for which it can be determined to whom they belong. ~~~

OK.. that's pretty cool. Why limit this to safe deposit boxes? Let FBI seize all the property owned by the Americans - cash, real estate, stocks, bullion, antiques.etc. Then they can ask the owners to submit evidence to prove that these assets were not illegally obtained. If the Feds are not satisfied with the documents, then they can just seize the assets and distribute it among themselves. Sounds like a really cool idea. BTW, what about the allegation from one of the victims that $75,000 worth of gold coins are missing, after the feds rifled through the boxes?

[el kaka22]

Another great example about how crypto is the way you should hold your money, and not in coinbase or anything like that neither where FBI could reach it, just put it in a safe wallet and just lock that down, that way even if you are caught they will not be able to take control of your money, think about it the comparison is that in fiat world your money is stolen by FBI even if you are not a criminal, and in crypto world you get to keep your money even if you are a criminal, that is a staggering difference. This is why I love crypto, I am not a criminal myself but I do like to keep my money away from everyone.

I do not have to worry about FBI anyway since I am not in USA and not even remotely close to rich enough to be cared (actually not even rich, unfortunately) but I still do not like it when government branches act whatever the way they want to do without worrying about consequences. This is the same FBI that did COINTELPRO and nobody cared, nothing happened.

[Hydrogen]

Does this surprise anyone? Asset seizure has become a regular occurrence in the United States. Anyone remember what happened to user BurtW? And this is not just the case with US, but with almost every country in the world. Nowadays a lot of the regimes think that being successful is a crime. If you have a few hundred thousand USD worth of savings, then you are automatically being labelled as a criminal. And more so, if you are keeping your assets away from the banks and stock exchanges.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/23/cops-took-more-stuff-from-people-than-burglars-did-last-year/


I completely forgot about this until you mentioned it.

Every so often the media will publish a story about $10,000 in savings, stashed in a mattress being devoured by termites. Or a family's life savings being lost as a man's wife did not know he had hidden it in something she threw away in the trash. I always wondered if those stories were true, or contrived. Intended to discourage people from not putting their savings in banks or financial institutions.

I find it interesting as many appear to believe cryptocurrencies are not safe. But that traditional safety deposit boxes and banks are. Despite many recent events suggesting the opposite.

[just_Alice]

Just another example of a powerful organization doing whatever they want. I realize that they are investigating some serious stuff, so they went as far as to violate the law, doing seizures without a proper warrant, intruding the privacy. But that is no excuse for what they've done, they had to make it properly!
Yes, it would have been pretty difficult to prove the criminal activity here by catching the organization red-handed, with the real evidence, but they're the FBI, they should be giving an example of how to act legally here, too bad they just went the easy way.
I hope those people win their lawsuits!

[Sithara007]

Another great example about how crypto is the way you should hold your money, and not in coinbase or anything like that neither where FBI could reach it, just put it in a safe wallet and just lock that down, that way even if you are caught they will not be able to take control of your money, think about it the comparison is that in fiat world your money is stolen by FBI even if you are not a criminal, and in crypto world you get to keep your money even if you are a criminal, that is a staggering difference. This is why I love crypto, I am not a criminal myself but I do like to keep my money away from everyone.

I do not have to worry about FBI anyway since I am not in USA and not even remotely close to rich enough to be cared (actually not even rich, unfortunately) but I still do not like it when government branches act whatever the way they want to do without worrying about consequences. This is the same FBI that did COINTELPRO and nobody cared, nothing happened.

Wealth confiscation and asset forfeiture will become more and more common in the future, because the world is moving towards a socialist style of government. Leaders with socialist leanings are getting elected in countries around the world, and they are moving ahead with their agenda of more taxes, and more handouts (greater government spending in short). The problem with this system is that the government assumes that the tax revenue will simply increase if they hike the tax rates. That seldom happens. It goes down, because tax evasion and tax avoidance increases. So in order to maintain the budget, government would resort to extreme measures such as confiscation.

[jaysabi]

The FBI wants to keep $86 million in cash and millions more in jewelry and other valuables seized in a raid on a Beverly Hills, California, safe deposit box business, even though a judge specifically said the contents of the boxes weren’t up for grabs.

Prosecutors claim it’s fair to make the renters of the 369 safe deposit boxes forfeit their valuables, because they were engaged in criminal activity, the Los Angeles Times reported. But there’s no evidence to support the allegation.

The box holders and their lawyers say the FBI is trampling on the rights of people who were unaware the business, U.S. Private Vaults, was charged in a sealed indictment with conspiring to sell drugs and launder money.

The warrant that US Magistrate Steve Kim signed on March 17 giving permission for the FBI to raid the business even said, “This warrant does not authorize a criminal search or seizure of the contents of the safety deposit boxes.”

If the FBI wanted to search the boxes, it needed to meet the standard for a warrant of probable cause that evidence of a crime would be found. But agents rifled through about 800 boxes anyway, filming their searches and bagging the property as evidence even when the holders were unknown and not suspected of crimes.

Now, the government is trying to keep the cash, gold and silver bars, pricey watches and even $1.3 million in poker chips from a Las Vegas casino.

The government “can’t take stuff without evidence in the hopes that you’re going to get it later,” Benjamin Gluck, an attorney who represents box holders suing the government to retrieve their property, told the Times. “The Fourth Amendment and the forfeiture laws require the opposite — that you have the evidence first, and then you can take property.”

“We have some basis to believe that the items are related to criminal activity,” Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the FBI’s LA office, told the Times.

The contents of about 75 of the 800 boxes initially seized have already been returned, and at least 175 more will be given back, Mrozek said. The feds haven’t figured out who owns what was stored in many of the others.

The indictment says U.S. Private Vaults marketed itself to attract criminals who wanted to store valuables anonymously and hide from tax authorities. One of the company’s owners and a manager were involved in selling drugs and co-conspirators helped customers convert cash into gold to evade government suspicion, the Times reported.

But box owners like Joseph Ruiz, who kept $57,000 in cash from two legal settlements there because he doesn’t trust banks, say the government is stealing their money.

“I’m made out to be a criminal, and I didn’t do anything,” said Ruiz, the son of a retired Los Angeles police officer, told the paper. “I’m a law-abiding citizen.”

Ruiz has joined one of 11 lawsuits filed by box owners seeking the return of their property.




https://nypost.com/2021/06/12/fbi-aims-to-keep-valuables-86m-cash-found-in-safe-deposit-store-raid/

....



Interesting story here.

The FBI confiscated more than $86 million dollars worth of money, valuables, jewelry and items stashed in safety deposit boxes, in a raid. Despite a search warrant which expressly forbid them from confiscating anything contained in the boxes.

This happened in los angeles. Of course, this being america there were lawsuits filed. But it seems the FBI and the state have no intent to return much of the stolen items. Despite them not having filed lawsuits against the holders of the property or providing evidence suggesting any of the assets were involved with illegal activity.

There have been claims of the DEA (drug enforcement agency) confiscating $100,000 from the safe of legal medical marijuana retailers. Without the lost funds being returned. But this is on an entirely different level with more than $86 million confiscated. Not from fringe operations like legalized weed. But from middle class or wealthy americans, who don't seem to have been involved with anything illegal or sketchy.

This is the most open and shut case I've ever seen on the 4th amendment. The government has no evidence any of the property seized is related to criminal activity. They also violated a court order in seizing the contents of the boxes. On a related note, Congress needs to outlaw civil asset forfeiture on a national level, local police departments abuse the system far too much to be trusted even with stricter oversight. The only remedy is eliminating the program.