As civil asset forfeiture surpasses criminal theft FBI now seizing millions from safety deposit boxes without warrants. Who are the real crooks?

In March of this year, the US Attorney in Los Angeles, California secured an indictment against a secure vault company, alleging the company was engaged in money laundering, drug trafficking, and hiding taxable assets. None of the company's employees or owners were indicted.

FBI agents spent five days turning US Private Vaults upside down. Agents apparently emptied every safety deposit box housed by the business. They did this in complete contradiction of the limits imposed on them by the FBI's own warrant affidavit. Here's Eric Boehm of Reason with some background:

[T]he unsealed warrant authorizing the raid of U.S. Private Vaults granted the FBI permission to seize only the business's computers, money counters, security cameras, and large steel frames that effectively act as bookshelves for the boxes themselves. Per FBI rules, however, the boxes could not be left unsecured in the vault after the raid had been completed, so agents had to take them into custody too.

The FBI could have taken custody of the boxes without opening them and sought warrants for those implicated by the investigation. Instead, the FBI agents emptied the boxes while still on the premises, engaging in dozens of searches not authorized by any warrant.

in apparent direct contradiction of the search warrant's limits and the FBI's own policies.

[T]he FBI is now trying to confiscate $86 million in cash and millions of dollars more in jewelry and other valuables that agents found in 369 of the boxes.

Prosecutors claim the forfeiture is justified because the unnamed box holders were engaged in criminal activity. They have disclosed no evidence to support the allegation.


Beyond the $86 million in cash, the FBI is seeking to confiscate thousands of gold and silver bars, Patek Philippe and Rolex watches, and gem-studded earrings, bracelets and necklaces, many of them in felt or velvet pouches. The FBI also wants to take a box holder’s $1.3 million in poker chips from the Aria casino in Las Vegas.

The items the government claims -- without facts in evidence -- are the result of criminal activity includes unemployed food service worker's life savings: $57,000 he obtained from lawsuit settlements stemming from a car accident in which he suffered a spinal injury and a successful claim against a landlord for chronic housing code violations.

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