FBI Misled Judge in Obtaining Warrant To Seize Hundreds of Safe Deposit Boxes

New court documents show that the FBI planned for months to seize and forfeit property found inside safe deposit boxes in an L.A. raid under the pretext of doing an inventory.

The FBI told a federal magistrate judge that it intended to open hundreds of safe deposit boxes seized during a March 2021 raid in order to inventory the items inside—but new evidence shows that federal agents were plotting all along to use the operation as an opportunity to forfeit cash and other valuables.

Federal agents failed to disclose those plans to the federal magistrate judge who issued the warrant for the high-profile raid of U.S. Private Vaults, a private business in Beverly Hills, California, that had been the subject of an FBI investigation since at least 2019. When the raid took place, the FBI also seems to have ignored limitations imposed by the warrant, including an explicit prohibition against using the safe deposit boxes as the basis for further criminal investigations.

Those details regarding the planning and execution of the FBI’s raid of U.S. Private Vaults are now out in the open after a different federal judge ruled this week that the government could not keep those details out of the public record. As Reason has extensively reported, the raid on U.S. Private Vaults resulted in federal agents seizing and attempting to forfeit more than $86 million in cash as well as gold, jewelry, and other valuables from property owners who were suspected of no crimes. Attorneys representing some plaintiffs who are trying to recover their possessions interviewed the FBI agents who planned the raid, but federal prosecutors tried to keep some details of those depositions redacted.=- READ MORE