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Ninth Circuit panel unanimously orders FBI to destroy records it created during searches of US Private Vaults boxes.. PASADENA, Calif.—This morning, a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel unanimously ruled against the government in a long-running class action lawsuit from the Institute for Justice (IJ) on behalf of people who rented security deposit boxes at US Private Vaults. The decision slammed the FBI for overstepping its authority when it opened up hundreds of renters’ boxes, conducted criminal searches of them all, and attempted to permanently keep everything in the boxes worth more than $5,000, all without charging any box...

A judge ruled on September 29 that federal agents who raided 1,400 safe-deposit boxes in March 2021 at a private vault company did not violate search and seizure laws, court documents shared with Insider show. A lawsuit filed in August alleged the FBI and the US attorney's office in Los Angeles obtained warrants against US Private Vaults in Beverly Hills, California, by concealing critical details from the judge who approved them. In his ruling, District Court Judge R. Gary Klausner found no impropriety in the way the government got or executed the warrants for the raid. He dismissed the class-action...

‘The government’s theory is that having cash makes you a presumptive criminal, and I think every American should be worried about that.’ There is no denying anymore that our federal agencies have weaponized their power against the political adversaries of the left. But if you think the feds’ abandonment of all standards only affects outspoken critics of the regime, think again. More allegations of FBI corruption and hubris are coming to light after a lawsuit last week revealed FBI agents misled a judge so they could illegally seize and withhold property from innocent American citizens. Agents took more than $86...

The FBI and US Attorney’s Office misled a judge who issued a warrant for a controversial raid on a Beverly Hills safety deposit company that uncovered $86 million in cash and millions more other assets, according to a new report.A senior FBI agent recently testified that central to the plan, and not disclosed to the judge, was the permanent confiscation of the contents of every box that contained at least $5,000 in cash or goods, the Los Angeles Times reported.The alleged disclosure failure came out in FBI documents and agent depositions in a class-action lawsuit by box holders at U.S....

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...

In a case with a direct bearing on the search warrant issued on Mar A Lago, the March 22, 2021 FBI raid on a private safe deposit box operator in Beverly Hills, California just got even dodgier, according to court documents released by different federal judge than issued the warrant. You may recall that the FBI raided US Private Vaults in Beverly Hills and seized the contents of boxes of people accused of no crimes. Eric Boehm of Reason reports on the latest revelations that show a pattern of FBI abise of magistrate judges for the purpose of obtaining search...

Victims of the FBI's constitutionally dubious raid say they've been told to come forward and identify themselves if they want their stuff back. Dagny discovered that the FBI had seized the contents of her safe deposit box—about $100,000 in gold and silver coins, some family heirlooms like a diamond necklace inherited from her late grandmother, and an engagement ring she'd promised to pass down to her daughter—almost by accident. She'd been asked by a friend to recommend a convenient and secure location for keeping some valuables. Dagny searched Yelp to find the phone number for U.S. Private Vaults, a Beverly...