FBI Misled Judge in Warrant
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FBI misled judge who signed warrant for Beverly Hills seizure of $86 million in cash
The 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.
They rummaged through personal belongings of a jazz saxophone player, an interior designer, a retired doctor, a flooring contractor, two Century City lawyers and hundreds of others.
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.
It took five days for scores of agents to fill their evidence bags with the bounty: 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.
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.”
After a two-year investigation that opened in 2019, leaders of the FBI’s Los Angeles office believed U.S. Private Vaults was a magnet for criminals hiding illicit proceeds in their boxes.
The business was charged with conspiracy to sell drugs and launder money.
The FBI and U.S. attorney’s office denied that they misled the judge or ignored his conditions, saying they had no obligation to tell him of the plan for indiscriminate confiscations on the blanket assumption that every customer was hiding crime-tainted assets.
FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said the warrants were lawfully executed “based on allegations of widespread criminal wrongdoing.”
“At no time was a magistrate misled as to the probable cause used to obtain the warrants,” she said.
U.S. Private Vaults has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to launder drug money, and the investigation is continuing, she said.
The plaintiffs in the class-action suit have asked 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.
It 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.
Until the FBI shut it down, U.S. Private Vaults was an easy-to-miss store in an Olympic Boulevard strip mall with a Supercuts hair salon and kosher vegan Thai restaurant.
More about "Private Vaults" at the link.
"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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FBI misled judge who signed warrant for Beverly Hills seizure of $86 million in cash
The 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.
They rummaged through personal belongings of a jazz saxophone player, an interior designer, a retired doctor, a flooring contractor, two Century City lawyers and hundreds of others.
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.
It took five days for scores of agents to fill their evidence bags with the bounty: 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.
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.”
After a two-year investigation that opened in 2019, leaders of the FBI’s Los Angeles office believed U.S. Private Vaults was a magnet for criminals hiding illicit proceeds in their boxes.
The business was charged with conspiracy to sell drugs and launder money.
The FBI and U.S. attorney’s office denied that they misled the judge or ignored his conditions, saying they had no obligation to tell him of the plan for indiscriminate confiscations on the blanket assumption that every customer was hiding crime-tainted assets.
FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said the warrants were lawfully executed “based on allegations of widespread criminal wrongdoing.”
“At no time was a magistrate misled as to the probable cause used to obtain the warrants,” she said.
U.S. Private Vaults has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to launder drug money, and the investigation is continuing, she said.
The plaintiffs in the class-action suit have asked 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.
It 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.
Until the FBI shut it down, U.S. Private Vaults was an easy-to-miss store in an Olympic Boulevard strip mall with a Supercuts hair salon and kosher vegan Thai restaurant.
More about "Private Vaults" at the link.
@George-K said in FBI Misled Judge in Warrant:
They rummaged through personal belongings of a jazz saxophone player
OK, enough's enough.
Unless of course it was Kenny G, and they were trying to find whether or not he had any shame whatsoever.
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FBI misled judge who signed warrant for Beverly Hills seizure of $86 million in cash
The 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.
They rummaged through personal belongings of a jazz saxophone player, an interior designer, a retired doctor, a flooring contractor, two Century City lawyers and hundreds of others.
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.
It took five days for scores of agents to fill their evidence bags with the bounty: 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.
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.”
After a two-year investigation that opened in 2019, leaders of the FBI’s Los Angeles office believed U.S. Private Vaults was a magnet for criminals hiding illicit proceeds in their boxes.
The business was charged with conspiracy to sell drugs and launder money.
The FBI and U.S. attorney’s office denied that they misled the judge or ignored his conditions, saying they had no obligation to tell him of the plan for indiscriminate confiscations on the blanket assumption that every customer was hiding crime-tainted assets.
FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said the warrants were lawfully executed “based on allegations of widespread criminal wrongdoing.”
“At no time was a magistrate misled as to the probable cause used to obtain the warrants,” she said.
U.S. Private Vaults has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to launder drug money, and the investigation is continuing, she said.
The plaintiffs in the class-action suit have asked 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.
It 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.
Until the FBI shut it down, U.S. Private Vaults was an easy-to-miss store in an Olympic Boulevard strip mall with a Supercuts hair salon and kosher vegan Thai restaurant.
More about "Private Vaults" at the link.
@George-K That is very funny. Almost like the plot of the first "Harry Bosch" book, which I just finished reading. Involves a plot to access the Beverly Hills Private Safe Box company. (and it did involve a corrupt FBI agent!!!
Life imitate art!!!
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@George-K That is very funny. Almost like the plot of the first "Harry Bosch" book, which I just finished reading. Involves a plot to access the Beverly Hills Private Safe Box company. (and it did involve a corrupt FBI agent!!!
Life imitate art!!!
@taiwan_girl noticed that, did you?
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