Its no wonder that nobody trusts the FBI anymore. The Federal Bureau of Instigation flat out lied to a judge, just so they could rob “1,400 safe-deposit boxes at the U.S. Private Vaults store in Beverly Hills.” Without a shred of evidence that anyone committed a crime, the bureau “presumed” hundreds of unknown box holders were all storing assets somehow tied to unknown crimes. That was their excuse for snatching up more than $86 million in treasure for the Treasury.
FBI lies, cheats and steals
The FBI lied and cheated so they could steal “personal belongings of a jazz saxophone player, an interior designer, a retired doctor, a flooring contractor, two Century City lawyers and hundreds of others.” The “wholesale privacy invasion,” LA Times writes, “was vast.”
They drilled and pried with wanton abandon after tricking a judge into letting them do it. The victims say the raid was like “police barging into a building’s 700 apartments and taking every tenant’s possessions when they have evidence of wrongdoing by nobody but the landlord.”
While they were at it, 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.” According to the court records, the bureau were downright body-snatchers.
When the FBI and DOJ asked for a warrant to raid US Private Vaults, it didn't tell the judge of their plans to seize every box with more than $5,000 and try to take them forever through #CivilForfeiture. New release in this blockbuster @IJ case: https://t.co/4Gxq8rd81P
— Andrew Wimer (@andrewwimer) August 10, 2022
“In one box, agents found cremated human remains.” They confiscated them too. A full 18 months after it went to court, “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 admit that they lied.
The judge would have been furious if they knew the things which the FBI didn’t tell the court. For instance, they left the main purpose out entirely. Because it’s blatantly illegal.
One senior agent testified that “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.” They did that on purpose, the sneaky rats. The plaintiffs want U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner to “declare the raid unconstitutional. If he grants the request, it could force the FBI to return millions of dollars to box holders whose assets it has tried to confiscate.”
A presumption of guilt
Contrary to what it says in the Constitution, the FBI justified “the dragnet forfeiture” with a “presumption that hundreds of unknown box holders were all storing assets somehow tied to unknown crimes.” It’s not supposed to work that way but the Constitution is nothing but toilet paper, now.
Bureau agents pillaged and plundered for a full five days. By the time they were done, Uncle Sam had pirated away “more than $86 million in cash and a bonanza of gold, silver, rare coins, gem-studded jewelry and enough Rolex and Cartier watches to stock a boutique.”
Ever since the owners filed suit to get their rightful property back, the feds managed to keep a tight lid of secrecy on all the disclosure documents. That changed recently when “a judge rejected its request to keep them under seal.”
Looming over the legal skirmishes is the possibility that U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner or another judge will grant the box holders’ request for a ruling that the entire raid on U.S. Private Vaults was unconstitutional.https://t.co/uSMmck1BRK
— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) September 19, 2021
The public has a right to know the sneaky crimes committed by the FBI, even if it does result in another wave of death threats from senior citizens and soccer moms from coast-to-coast. This revelation “could also spoil an unknown number of criminal investigations by blocking prosecutors from using any evidence or information acquired in the raid, including guns and drugs.”
Not only did the FBI hide their plan to steal everything in the entire vault, they ignored “the restrictions that U.S. Magistrate Judge Steve Kim set in the warrant.” They were specifically ordered not to tiptoe through the evidence in search of a crime but that is exactly what they did.
“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. “That’s why the warrant application did not even attempt to argue there was probable cause to seize and forfeit box renters’ property.“
