Judge finds no rights violations in FBI seizure Beverly Hills safe-deposit boxes

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-09-30/judge-backs-fbi-beverly-hills-safe-deposit-box-raid

by tomohawk • 4 years ago

159 91 4 years ago

latimes.com

allears• 4 years ago

Paywall.

ccrush• 4 years ago

archive it with archive.ph which has no cookies and gets a free trial every time it archives a page

Scoundreller6• 4 years ago

Or use TOR. It's not just for criminals!

Lynx also works.

LatteLazy• 4 years ago

https://archive.ph/BhmFS/again?url=https://www.latimes.com/c...

Old news (Sept).

notch656a3• 4 years ago

Keeping things in an anonymous safe-deposit box is in general a terrible idea.

They are magnets for thieves, police, usually in urban area where a PI can easily follow you and even when acting fully within the law it could unintentionally look very bad if you are in the middle of some proceedings.

A hole in the ground is probably preferable 99 times out of 100.

mikeyouse• 4 years ago

I feel for the honest people using the service from the article but when you store your valuables in private safe deposit boxes owned by a criminal who advertised his safe deposit boxes as a way to store the proceeds of crimes, you’re gonna have a bad time.

hakfoo2• 4 years ago

Stupid question: If I wanted a safe-deposit box, where do I go?

Traditionally, the answer was "your bank", but does that apply anymore? Chase is discontinuing the service, I'm sure plenty of banks never offered it in the first place, plenty of people use "online-only" banks where there might be a branch for legal reasons, but it's nowhere they could easily stop in and retrieve documents, and entirely too many people are unbanked.

This seems like enough of a gap in the market that a third-party service that says "we've got a really secure building with armed guards and lots of cameras and stuff" could reasonably find an audience among the law-abiding.

I assume a service like the one raided doesn't advertise to the broad public "store dirty assets here" -- indeed, one would expect advertising the service to non-criminal customers would be an important part of their legal ass-coverage strategy.

chiph• 4 years ago

private safe deposit boxes owned by a criminal who advertised his safe deposit boxes as a way to store the proceeds of crimes

That is what is alleged, but has yet to be proven.

I doubt that the owners put up billboards or bought ads saying "Store your ill-gotten goods here, wink-wink". It is much more likely that the business was taken advantage of by criminals. Like how FedEx and UPS are used to ship drugs.

Judging by the lawsuit, there's at least 400 customers who used them for legitimate purposes. And some unknown number of customers who used them for nefarious purposes. At what percentage nefariousness does a business become a criminal enterprise, resulting in a large raid by the FBI? Sweeping up and inconveniencing the innocent customers in their dragnet?

trevyn• 4 years ago

Any best practices for holes in the ground? I can imagine that metal detectors and various animals change the threat model, but I suspect there are also unknown unknowns at play here.

LinuxBender• 4 years ago

unknowns at play here

This sounds like a fun thought exercise. No idea who we are protecting against but some factors might be:

- Moisture. The containers need to be completely sealed from moisture and have resistance to acid from the soil.

- Metal detector. Perhaps this could be mitigated using a skid-steer with an auger drill attachment? Some of the larger skid-steers can use an 80 inch bit. Excavators can use even larger bits and drill at angles to get under solid objects. Rock auger bits can get through some rocks. Layers of gravel might obscure detection from ground penetrating radar.

- Location should be obfuscated by trees to avoid satellite and aircraft imaging from Keyhole/Google/Others.

- Accessibility. If there is a few feed of rocks above the container and a rope passes through the rocks, then retrieval is less likely to damage the container and one would not need dig as deep for extraction.

- Drill numerous holes and find some other use for them whilst singing One of these things is not like the other

0cf8612b2e1e4• 4 years ago

I always assumed the best strategy would be PVC plumbing pipe. You can get 4inch (10cm) diameter sizes cut to any length. Stuff your cash/jewels/drugs + desiccant and use PVC sealant caps with waterproof sealant. Bury as deep as you want. I would expect that to last decades. Plus it should not set off any metal detectors.

gopher_space• 4 years ago

You might look at improving or expanding your drainage. You'll learn something useful and look less suspicious. In my mind the threat model is whatever cost/benefit analysis the people searching have in their heads masked by the unknowns you mention. People can just dig up your yard, if you see what I mean.

int_19h• 4 years ago

If you google for "how to bury guns", you will find plenty of advice.

dzonga• 4 years ago

the fact you separate thieves and police as separate entities is funny. I tend to put them under the same bracket. only that thieves have a full time to steal, whereas for police thieving is an auxiliary activity

kodah2• 4 years ago

The warrant request omitted a central part of the FBI’s plan: permanent confiscation of everything inside any box containing at least $5,000 in cash or goods, a senior FBI agent recently testified.

We really need to have a reset on law enforcement in this country. I don't think anyone's happy with the police anymore, federal or otherwise.

tptacek4• 4 years ago

That's manifestly untrue. There's probably a way to write that sentence to make it much less trivial to refute, but it will make a claim much more specific than "nobody is happy with the police". As written right now, the opposite is closer (somewhat) to the truth.

andrejguran• 4 years ago

Unless you're a lawyer or a lexicographer, in a good faith conversation with someone smart, you rarely have to talk about the meanings of the words you're using. So if you have to, it's a sign that you're talking to someone stupid or intellectually dishonest. - Paul Graham

https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1598272844106174466

hanafudafan• 4 years ago

No, it's true. Same with domestic intelligence - they're all rotten. Ask anybody.

RickJWagner• 4 years ago

There are lots of us who are happy with police. It's a hard job, and now it's politicized. Everybody's an armchair quarterback. It doesn't pay well. And bad guys sometimes try to ambush and kill you.

Still not convinced? Talk to some family members of cops. I am confident you'll come away with a new point of view.

dontbenebby• 4 years ago

I very briefly dated someone whose brother was a police officer when I lived in DC, and prior to grad school I was encouraged to consider law enforcement by the very field office I’m complaining about a little over ten years prior to this thread.

I find your comment condescending considering it’s in reply to an admittedly emotional rant stemming from the fact my local police failed so thoroughly in their mission it made an FBI agent’s eyes go wide and say they’d open a civil rights investigation.

(Though maybe they were more focused on the fact I also very bluntly said “I’m not a Russian spy” and listed off the people making want to re-enact the scenes from the hit HBO television series “The Americans”.)

Being a police officer is less risky than say, a construction work flagger, but people feel coerced into giving them unearned respect since a construction work flagger can’t misunderstand on purpose and shoot you dead if you don’t kiss their butt like they’re an aggrieved military officer in 1930s Germany they will lie through their teeth and not follow through on their claim that they will do their damn job.

Please pick up a copy of “Rise and Fall in the Third Reich” and get back to me before replying again because I think you have no grasp of history.

kodah2• 4 years ago

I was in the military and served in country. I get it's a dangerous job with arduous hours and on average pay that doesn't match the areas they serve.

That doesn't mean the principles and guidelines that drive our policing forces don't need a rewrite from time to time. I'm less critical of individual cops, and less inclined to blast the profession, but what I said is the best way I can express disatisfaction without getting personal or rude, to be quite honest.

aiisjustanif• 4 years ago

I have 3 officers in my family, 1 of them being a parent. I’d have to disagree, but not strongly. So would they, they are a lot of fair criticism of how police are trained these days and a fair level dislike. My family members needed a degree, require extensive training comparably, and had more programs with the community.

Even talking about the police as a collective from the perspective of the US is odd. So many departments are different, they are not fully one entity.

The most important thing is that it is just that, a job.

KingMachiavelli• 4 years ago

This seems very strange so maybe the article is leaving something out but if a warrant for X but not Y can still lead to confiscating Y, then what actually limits the power of warrants?

In their warrant request, the FBI and U.S. attorney’s office asked U.S. Magistrate Judge Steve Kim for permission to seize the store’s racks of safe-deposit boxes for forfeiture, but “not their contents.”
The warrant request omitted a central part of the FBI’s plan: permanent confiscation of everything inside any box containing at least $5,000 in cash or goods, a senior FBI agent recently testified.

Is the crucial detail that the cash/goods lack any protection under the law? If there was a written and notarized murder confession in a box would that be permissible in court? I thought anything taken/found outside the scope of the warrant would be impermissible. Is the cash now impermissible for prosecuting actual crimes? (i.e. FBI can just keep it and make the owner sue for its return).

notch656a3• 4 years ago

It's been awhile since I read it. I was thinking the judge authorized the FBI to itemize the contents of the boxes "for their return" or something of the sort. No idea what happens if police legally obtain access to evidence of a crime as a byproduct of a warrant, although I imagine for a non-publicized case it would not be good for the defendent. [note: not a lawyer]

cperciva4• 4 years ago

Never mind murder confessions -- what happens if there's legally privileged information in a safe deposit box? Seizing documents without providing any opportunity to litigate privilege is a legal Pandora's box.

tptacek4• 4 years ago

This happens all the time in searches, and, unsurprisingly, there's a bunch of very well-defined processes in the DOJ for handling privileged information found in searches. You should follow Ken White's podcast and Twitter feed if this is an interesting topic for you.

Spivak• 4 years ago

I thought anything taken/found outside the scope of the warrant would be impermissible.

That isn't true in general, the supreme court has a test for whether things outside the warrant can be seized / not constitute an unconstitutional search.

1. Must be in plain sight.

2. Must be apparent that it was used in a crime.

3. Doesn't have to be accidentally or inadvertently found but if it's not the bar for it being a legal search is much higher.

Since it's a safety deposit box 1 & 3 are pretty much already checked and I think falls down on 2. I can't possibly see how the existence of cash is apparent that it's used in a crime.

jandrese2• 4 years ago

How is something locked in a safety deposit box "in plain sight?"

CogitoCogito• 4 years ago

On the upside, maybe the next time cops go into the vault of a bank during a robbery, they can just take all the money they find and fund their pensions.

Edit: I posted this as a (bad) joke, but then I see this sister comment on the article:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33848245

I liked it better as a joke.

bewaretheirs2• 4 years ago

There is a "plain view doctrine" which says that obvious contraband or evidence spotted during a legal search for something else can also be seized.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_view_doctrine

jandrese2• 4 years ago

I don't think these safety deposit boxes were mugging passersby. Maybe you could make a case if there was a famously stolen artifact in them, but a wad of bills or an expensive watch are not necessarily criminal.

pdonis8• 4 years ago

This doctrine can't possibly apply in this case, because something that is inside a locked safe deposit box can't possibly be in "plain view".

Based on reading what appears to be the judge's actual opinion in the case (I've posted a link upthread), the excuse the FBI offered, and which the judge accepted, was that they had to open the boxes in order to "inventory the contents". But they also said they would only search the boxes to the extent required to identify their owners. From what I can gather, each box was contained in a "sleeve" which, in many cases, had a form in it, that could be read without opening the box, that identified the box's owner. Since each box was locked, the FBI could have simply made an inventory that, for each box, said "one safe deposit box, number #X, locked, contents unknown", with an additional note that either said "form found identifying box owner as A", or "no form found identifying box owner".

In other words, the FBI relied on an inconsistency in the warrant: it said they did not have permission to seize the contents of the boxes, but it also said they could follow "standard inventory policy", which in turn contained provisions that could be interpreted inconsistently to both require an inventory of the contents and to only authorize a search to the extent needed to identify the owner, if possible. This certainly seems to me to violate the Fourth Amendment.

In the case of boxes which were accompanied by a form identifying the owner, what obviously should have happened was that the FBI should have done nothing more with those boxes until the owner could be investigated to see if there was probable cause to think they had put evidence of a crime in the box. If there was, an additional warrant could be obtained to search that box. If not, the box could just be returned, unopened, to the owner. (In fact, the boxes of many plaintiffs were returned during the course of this lawsuit--but not unopened.)

In the case of boxes which were not accompanied by a form identifying the owner, the question would be whether that in itself was probable cause to think the box might contain evidence of a crime. In any case, that would be a question to be properly addressed by applying for an additional warrant.

So I think there were several rights violations here: first, the judge who approved the warrant should have spotted the inconsistency in what the FBI was asking for and resolved it; second, the FBI should have adopted an inventory policy that was consistent; and third, the judge in this ruling should not have let the FBI get away with what they actually did.

smaryjerry• 4 years ago

Seems like the FBI is trying to confiscate the boxes themselves, and in the process of getting the boxes only, they happen to take out the contents. I could see that line of reasoning, effectively letting them search the boxes, but why keep all contents that weren’t suspected of a crime, and why not return contents once found not to be part of a crime?

chriscappuccio• 4 years ago

Search warrants allow you to search an area that might reasonably contain the items listed in the warrant. Once they are in the safe deposit box, it sounds as if they are using civil asset forfeiture to steal the money.

Not long ago people were joking on Steve Lehto's YouTube videos that the police might as well do forfeiture on armored cars. In California, the police started doing exactly that. You can hear them lamenting in one case that they only seized $300,000 and not the $1,000,000 they were expecting. This practice is being fought but it is still common in the US for police to seize assets just because they feel the assets might have been used in a crime, or might be proceeds of a crime. No criminal charges are necessary, and you have to sue to get assets back.

rkagerer• 4 years ago

Klausner’s ruling did not mention the privacy invasion documented by the plaintiffs: Federal agents took photos and made video recordings of password lists, bank statements, pay stubs, immigration records and many other private papers of box holders who are not criminals.

How is this possibly kosher?

rvba• 4 years ago

Because the justice system does not work and has norhing to do with justice

vegetablepotpie3• 4 years ago

1. Judge Steve Kim gave the FBI a warrant to search US Private Vaults in Beverly Hills, but did not grant agents permission to search the contents of safe deposit boxes.

2. FBI raided US Private Vaults, investigating the company for drug trafficking and money laundering in March 2021. FBI opened 700 safe deposit boxes on the assumption that their contents were associated with crimes.

3. 400 Owners of the boxes filed a class action suit, saying the FBI violated their 4th amendment rights.

4. September of 2022 U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner found no impropriety in the way the government obtained or executed the warrants

rsync• 4 years ago

I'd like to learn more about this because it's genuinely interesting ...

If you have a warrant for a building, or suite, and there's a bunch of little boxes inside ... what difference does that make ?

It seems to me that a savvy deposit box operator would create office space leases for every individual box such that you would have to enter a "premises" for each box, just as you would for individual offices in an office building ...

... or, at the very least, subdivide the box rooms such that every 50 boxes is in a different office with a different master tenant ...

vegetablepotpie3• 4 years ago

The Savviness of this safe deposit boxes owner was using their business to obscure crimes. Their legitimate customers got caught in the middle.

If you’re looking at ways to prevent this from happening to you, the question is, would the FBI do something like this with the banks?

The answer is no. They are much larger and politically connected than a private safe deposit company. I recommend checking out a video by Steve Lehto if you want to learn more https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Lt5g3g2JHpQ

Bottom line is that you do not have any real privacy in society. Law enforcement is willfully ignorant of constitutional rights, and when they overstep, they often get away with it.

givemeethekeys• 4 years ago

I'm not very smart, so I might be interpreting what you laid out incorrectly:

1 judge says, "you can grab the boxes, but not open them". The FBI grabs the boxes, then opens them anyway.

It seems like judge #2 ruled in favor of the FBI to save face.

vegetablepotpie3• 4 years ago

Yes, the FBI grabbed, then opened the boxes after judge #1 said that they should not open the boxes. In fact not only did the FBI open the boxes and inspect their contents, they co-mingled the contents of all the boxes such that the boxes original contents could not be determined. Then they reached out to US Vault customers, and asked them to step forward and identify their items. Knowing that the FBI presumed guilt and not innocence, 400 of these customers filed a suit instead.

Judge #2 ruled in favor of the FBI. The Plaintiff is appealing to the 9th circuit.

jmyeet• 4 years ago

Courts are political. That's the lesson i want people to take from this. The idea that there is an objective or absolutist interpretation of the Constitution is not true and has never been true. That too is a political ideology.

This case is just another example of how the Fourth Amendment is essentially dead.

This decision is just more overreach in the same vein as civil asset forfeiture, which gets around "unreasonable search and seizure" by basically saying the money and the property seized has no rights and uses some twisted logic that allows a civil action against property for a perceived criminal violation even though no criminal complaint is made. It's ludicrous.

An originalist interpretation fo the Constitution is propaganda, nothing more. The idea was also invented in the 1970s and 1980s. Don't fall for it.

Courts as a general rule side with prosecutors, law enforcement (qualified immunity anyone?) and the wealthy. The pseudo-intellectual hand-wringing is just a pretense for political views.

pdonis8• 4 years ago

I found this link to what appears to be Judge Klausner's actual order and its basis here [1], linked to from an article at reason.com [2]:

[1] https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/23115856/092922-uspv-...

[2] https://reason.com/2022/09/30/federal-judge-decides-safe-dep...

cmer• 4 years ago

I guess "not your keys, not your coins" also applies for safe-deposit boxes.

coffeebeqn2• 4 years ago

They usually have two keys (one for you to keep, one for the institution) and you need both. The boxes can of course be brute forced open

anm893• 4 years ago

Lets just call it what it is. If you are involved in law enforcement in the USA, many if not most laws simply don't apply to you in many if not most circumstances. The courts have signed off on this, it's really not a secret or something anyone should be surprised by at this point.

emodendroket• 4 years ago

The ruling did not address some of the most controversial aspects of the raid, such as the FBI’s attempt to confiscate assets from box holders on the presumption they were criminals, even in cases where agents had no evidence to validate their suspicions.

This seems like the most salient issue so that's rather unfortunate.

“Unfortunately for plaintiffs, the mere presence of such a motive is not by itself enough,” he wrote, citing a U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in another search and seizure case. “An impermissible investigatory motive must be the only reason the agents conducted the inventory.”

This would seem to almost give carte blanche to craft warrants on the flimsiest means possible and then wildly overstep the original scope of investigation.

sacnoradhq• 4 years ago

By this argument, civil-asset forfeiture "should be legal" too.

"Prove that you're not a criminal (assumed guilt without a trial or due process), and we'll return property we stole from you."

Since "Orwellian" and "Kafkaesque" inadequately encapsulate the evil this represents, I think we need new adjectives to describe this insidious and corrosive abuse of rights in the name of the color of law.

Disgusting.

metacritic122• 4 years ago

As part of the ruling, the judge notes "Through the pendency of this litigation, nearly all Plaintiffs and class members have had their seized property returned".

Basically, the FBI in this case actually did give nearly all the property back. Seems like a win right?

Not actually -- I don't think the FBI necessarily expected this case to blow up like this, so they're going back to their favorite playbook.

Make the facts of the case most favorable, so the judge will be inclined to rule on the law itself. In other words, the FBI wanted a favorable ruling, so it returned everything.

If there was no suit, was no publicity, would the FBI have returned nearly as much? I doubt it. Civil asset forfeiture needs an examination in this country.

danuker• 4 years ago

In other words, the FBI wanted a favorable ruling, so it returned everything.

How and why does the FBI work against the interests of the public (i.e. property rights)? Do they simply get to keep the proceeds of the seizure, which would be a perverse incentive?

metacritic122• 4 years ago

The DoJ gets to keep the money from what I understand. On the Federal level this is the better version, because at least it needs to be reappropriated to the department through institutions.

At many local level states, literally the police dept gets to keep the money and fund e.g. bonuses using them, which is really a peverse on the ground incentive.

salawat3• 4 years ago

The Ninth Circuit strikes again! Jesus.

"It is not enough for an impermissible investigatory motive to be present to invalidate a search and seizure. It can only invalidate it if that is the only motive behind the search."

So apparently the 9th Circuit endorses the issuing of flimsy warrants for fishing expeditions, and once again, ignores the requirement whereby the warrant must describe that which is to be searched and seized.

Firthermore, this catalog of other, no evidence present, but still anonymous customers, is an implicit nod that anonymity is criminal in character according to law enforcement.

Giorgi• 4 years ago

But government is your friend, they take care of you, like a father.

Judge finds no rights violations in FBI seizure Beverly Hills safe-deposit boxes

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