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....Fan’s home was searched on the day he was arrested and the next day he reported to the FBI that items, including $2,500 and silvers bars, were missing from his bedroom. The items were not seized as part of the warrant served on his home, according to court records. ... ....Months later, the FBI announced that one of its own agents, Nicholas Anthony Williams, had been indicted on theft charges, over accusations he stole money and property while executing search warrants between March 2022 and July 2023. One of the three charges related to thefts is over the missing items...

FBI Overstepped in Search of Hundreds of Safe Deposit Boxes, Court RulesThe 9th Circuit compared the searches to the “abuses of power” that “led to adoption of the Fourth Amendment in the first place.”The FBI overstepped its constitutional authority when agents searched hundreds of safe deposit boxes without warrants in 2021, a federal appeals court ruled. The court compared the FBI’s tactics to the kind of indiscriminate searches that led to the enactment of the Bill of Rights in the first place.In March 2021, the FBI raided U.S. Private Vaults, a safe deposit box company in Beverly Hills, California. The...

“There’s literally been no explanation,” Pearsons said. “I think you have to assume that it’s the simplest explanation, and I think, unfortunately, the simplest explanation is they took it or lost it.” ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The nonprofit law firm Institute for Justice has filed two lawsuits on behalf of clients who allege that the FBI failed to return valuable rare coins and other property it took during a March 2021 FBI raid on the Beverly Hills–based U.S. Private Vaults. “We don’t know for sure how the property disappeared, we just know it disappeared,” Joe Gay, an attorney with the Institute for Justice,...

It does not appear the feds are willing to return these items. The Court or a Special Master should order them returned. The search warrant in the Mar-a-Lago Raid was so overly broad that it allowed the feds to rummage through vast areas of the complex and to seize almost anything in sight. That reading of the warrant is confirmed now that the Judge has unsealed the Investigative Team Status Review And Detailed Inventory that the Court had required under its prior Preliminary Order. The investigative team status report as of August 30, reflects, among other things: As of the...

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...