A major Civil Asset Forfeiture (CAF) ruling yesterday overturned the crazy ruling by the courts in the case of the Feds versus a US Private Vault customer.
What's probably just as crazy is the ruling came out of the 9th Circus!
Summary: The FBI was issued a warrant against the company, US Private Vault (UPV). The warrant was to look for evidence of crimes such as money laundering against the company, but not the customers who rented safe deposit boxes there. The warrant specified the FBI could open, examine, inventory and RETURN the contents of customer-rented boxes, but they were not authorized to seize any of it.
The FBI had planned all along to keep as much loot as they found under CAF, even though they knew they had a warrant that stated they couldn't do it.
A customer sued to get their property back, and the initial courts ruled the government could keep the contents under CAF if they suspected the property to be linked to criminal activity. Meanwhile, no criminal charges were ever filed against the box owner.
The case was finally appealed to the 9th Circus, and they ruled that as a matter of law, the contents of the box must be returned -- period. The FBI can't use a warrant against the company to shoehorn CAF actions against the customers when the warrant expressly forbids it. (Duh).
The FBI raided the vault in March 2021. A lawyer involved in the class action to get customers their property returned said the raid was the "largest armed robbery in US history."
Here's the story on the lower court dismissing the lawsuit, saying the FBI raid of US Private Vaults did not violate the Fourth Amendment, even though 1,400 boxes' contents totaling millions of dollars were seized.
The lawsuit was filed after FBI agents raided the Beverly Hills branch of
US Private Vaults, seizing more than $86 million in cash, as well as jewelry
and gold from 1,400 safe-deposit boxes. It said owners' items still had not
been returned and that agents misled a judge to get the warrant.
None of the people who owned the boxes has been charged after almost
five years of investigating; various agencies concluded "the problem was
the business itself," court documents said.
https://www.businessinsider.com/fbi-raid-1400-boxes-us-private-vaults-ruling-2022-10?op=1Three years to finally get the government to return what they literally stole from people in violation of the Constitution, the law and the warrant they used.
