This case is two years old and is just coming in to view. Isle, no, you can't go on a fishing expedition in a search warrant. Everything in the boxes is now useless in court. Pedojoe needs to reign in his DOJ.
FBI misled judge who signed warrant for Beverly Hills seizure of $86 million in cash from safe-deposit boxes
The wholesale privacy invasion was vast when FBI agents drilled and pried their way into 1,400 safe-deposit boxes at the U.S. Private Vaults store in Beverly Hills.
Agents took photos and videos of pay stubs, password lists, credit cards, a prenuptial agreement, immigration and vaccination records, bank statements, heirlooms and a will, court records show. In one box, agents found cremated human remains.
Eighteen months later, newly unsealed court documents show that the FBI and U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles got their warrant for that raid by misleading the judge who approved it.
They omitted from their warrant request a central part of the FBI's plan: Permanent confiscation of everything inside every box containing at least $5,000 in cash or goods, a senior FBI agent recently testified.
The FBI's justification for the dragnet forfeiture was its presumption that hundreds of unknown box holders were all storing assets somehow tied to unknown crimes, court records show.
The U.S. attorney's office has tried to block public disclosure of court papers that laid bare the government's deception, but a judge rejected its request to keep them under seal.
The failure to disclose the confiscation plan in the warrant request came to light in FBI documents and depositions of agents in a class-action lawsuit by box holders who say the raid violated their rights.
The court filings also show that federal agents defied restrictions that U.S. Magistrate Judge Steve Kim set in the warrant by searching through box holders' belongings for evidence of crimes.
"The government did not know what was in those boxes, who owned them, or what, if anything, those people had done," Robert Frommer, a lawyer who represents nearly 400 box holders in the class-action case, wrote in court papers.
"That's why the warrant application did not even attempt to argue there was probable cause to seize and forfeit box renters' property."
FBI illegally seized $86M from owners of safe deposit boxes, court documents say
The raid happened in March 2021 at U.S. Private Vaults, which has since pleaded guilty to conspiracy and money laundering. Yet the FBI is still holding the contents of boxes belonging to hundreds of people who have not been charged with any crimes, according to court documents.
“We brought suit on behalf of seven clients, but we were representing a class of at least 400 people,” said attorney Robert Frommer with the nonprofit group Institute for Justice. “What we’ve been trying to show for the past several months is that the government’s actions violated the search-and-seizure protections of the U.S. Constitution in the Fourth Amendment.”
U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner issued a temporary restraining order last year to stop the FBI from keeping assets from 369 boxes.
“This notice, put bluntly, provides no factual basis for the seizure of Plaintiffs’ property whatsoever,” Klausner wrote in his ruling. He cited the Fifth Amendment, which prohibits seizures without due process.
Lawsuit filed after FBI agents raided 1,400 deposit boxes at a US Private Vaults branch claims owners' items have still not been returned
Deposit box holders whose property was seized by the FBI in a March 2021 raid are suing the bureau.
The agency raided US Private Vaults and seized the contents of 1,400 safety deposit boxes.
A lawyer involved in the class-action said the FBI raid was the "largest armed robbery in US history."
The FBI and the US attorney's office in Los Angeles obtained search and seizure warrants against US Private Vaults by concealing critical details from the judge who approved them, according to the lawsuit.
Robert Frommer, a lawyer with the Institute for Justice which brought the lawsuit, said in the court papers: "The government did not know what was in those boxes, who owned them, or what, if anything, those people had done."
After the raid many box-holders asked the FBI for their property back, Frommer told Insider.
"We brought suit on behalf of seven clients, but we were representing a class of at least 400 people. What we've been trying to show for the past several months is that the government's actions violated the search and seizure protections of the US constitution in the Fourth Amendment," he said.
"The scope of what the FBI did is unprecedented," Frommer added. "This was the largest armed robbery in United States history, and it was committed by the FBI."
The Fourth Amendment protects against "unreasonable searches and seizures." It requires the government to get a warrant by showing probable cause explaining why a location needs to be searched and describing specifically what it is seizing.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit have asked for the FBI raid to be deemed unconstitutional by a district judge, the LA Times reported. Doing so could force the return of assets worth millions of dollars to box holders.