Judge Slaps Feds

welcome once again to lato's law here's steve lato we've been following a story out of california about the safe deposit boxes in the private business not a bank but in a private business and the fbi raided the business and they had a warrant to do that and they seized the boxes that were in the business even though those boxes were being rented by people unrelated to that business other than the contractual relationship simply to rent the box when the fbi got possession of the boxes they then said well we have to inventory the boxes and they inventoried the boxes and they went through the inventory in the boxes they said hey a lot of this stuff appears to be stuff that we could forfeit under civil asset forfeiture so they started making noises about simply seizing the stuff and saying it's been forfeited so a lot of the box owners then hired lawyers and went to court and filed suit and so this has been working its way through the court system and i've done a couple updates on this because it has appeared that the judge was leaning towards uh disagreeing with the fbi about whether what they're doing was correct well the los angeles times michael finnegan reports the fbi breached the rights of the beverly hills safe deposit box holders that's the judge's ruling and here we are federal authorities have suffered two new court setbacks in their attempts to confiscate tens of millions of dollars seized from safe deposit boxes in beverly hills that the government was legally barred from searching they weren't allowed to search them but they were allowed to inventory them so you've got this loophole which can swallow the rule the judge klausner u.s district judge uh issued some rulings on friday he rejected the prosecutor's rationale for keeping the cash that two people had stored in boxes they rented at the company called u.s private vaults it was on west olympic boulevard the fbi is trying to confiscate about 86 million dollars in cash and millions more in jewelry and other valuables that the agents found when they searched the 369 boxes i mean they inventoried the 369 boxes they based that on unspecified allegations of criminal wrongdoing conducted by the box holders they basically said look this person's got cash it's in a safe deposit box it must be some kind of money that we can seize now the warrants authorizing the raid back in march prohibited the government from searching what was inside the roughly 800 boxes that contained valuables because the fbi did not show that it had probable cause to believe that evidence of crimes would be found in each one in the case of one box holder who sued the government he's seeking to get the return of 914 000 in cash the judge rejected the prosecutor's request to dismiss the case saying the government had made no showing that there's anything illicit about the money the government will take the position you've got money it must be that you've broken the law and that money must be the result of some kind of criminal activity it must be and it's that weird it's it's not even circular logic it's it's it's it's hard to use where logic in a sentence that describes that they simply say you've got money we can seize it there's something wrong with you having money now i know some people say steve who's got 914 000 cash who cares no this is what blows my mind whenever i mention something about the government cracking down on free speech people go steve first amendment and people go nuts but when i talk about civil asset forfeiture i always get some people to go yeah but come on who's got 914 000 in cash i wish i did if if i had that kind of cash i'd be happy i had it i wouldn't be ashamed of it i wouldn't advertise it i might put in a safe deposit box i don't know one of the beautiful things about property is if you own something you can do what you want with it right so i've mentioned before i've got a widget i can sell the widget i can keep the widget i can take the widget up back and smash it with a sledgehammer it's my widget so so if this money is yours you can put in a safe deposit box you can invest it in certificates of deposit you can invest it in collateralized debt obligations i don't care the point is it's your money you can do what you want with it now if the government's got evidence and proof that you stole the money and they can prove it they can go to court and try to prove it but the idea that they say well you've got money you prove to us how innocent your money really is is backwards so let's not even go there sister in the case of another box holder the judge gave the government seven days to return his money or provide an adequate explanation for its attempted confiscation that man i've mentioned before is an unemployed food service worker from los angeles who stored his life savings and cash in the box he had 57 000 saved up it's all the money he had and he kept it in that box because he lost faith in the banks i believe during one of the recent crises that we had financially the judge found that the facts and the law clearly favor that man in his claim that the government violated his rights by seizing and refusing to return the cash the government has failed to provide any justification for holding the cash the judge wrote the judge said it was troubling that the man had declared in a sworn statement that he desperately needs the money for food and medicine and he's currently living off canned foods that he stockpiled during the pandemic so luckily while keeping his cash in a safe deposit box he'd stockpiled emergency food in case something happened what happened the government seized his cash so in march the federal grand jury indicted u.s private vaults that's the company that had these boxes on charges of conspiring with its customers to sell drugs launder money and structure financial transactions to dodge detection by the government but the only customers identified by prosecutors so far are a drug enforcement administration agent working undercover and some unnamed government informants so they basically say look we're convinced they're working with these bad people except the only bad people who've identified our informants and and obviously they're doing this on our behalf have you identified anybody who's not working for you breaking the law no not yet the fbi and u.s attorney's office in los angeles claimed that most of the people who stored valuables anonymously were criminals but have declined to specify the crimes they allegedly committed or to actually reveal the evidence they have that that could possibly be true fbi spokesperson referred questions to a spokesman for the u.s attorney's office who declined to comment so you've got one spokesperson referring you to another spokesperson neither of whom will speak you've got one job when your spokesperson guess what it is when fbi agents and prosecutors initially asked for permission to rip all the safe deposit boxes out of the walls us magistrate set strict limits the fbi could seize the boxes but had to return the contents to the owners that magistrate wrote in his authorization this warrant does not authorize a criminal search or seizure of the contents of the safe deposit boxes so the magistrate's own words told the fbi you cannot do what they went and did the man who had his money taken who's a food service worker is skeptical about the fbi returning his money he said i can't really get my hopes up too high if they can just straight up step on our constitution and wipe their feet on it they just can't be trusted his words not mine a previous ruling from the same judge blocked the government's forfeiture of cash gold and silver belonging to four box holders including the man i just mentioned who have all sued the government now that man's attorney said it shouldn't take a class-action suit to get the fbi to respect the fourth amendment but guess what it probably will so we call on the fbi to give up its 85 million cash grab and give people their stuff back the judge excuse me the attorney said in the other case on which the judge ruled friday an assistant u.s attorney who is a prosecutor in charge of the investigation asked the judge to dismiss the suit brought by a box holder using a pseudonym who is seeking the return of more than 914 000 in cash the assistant attorney said that that man was a wealthy person living in the u.s who has the means to hire a large law firm to do his bidding and spend well over a thousand dollars a year to store items anonymously at us private vaults the judge wrote this argument is misguided though plaintiff may indeed be a wealthy person plaintiff is also a person living in the united states and is therefore afforded the protections of the us constitution and i get that question a lot from foreigners people in other countries contact me say steve i'm curious if i travel in america does the constitution apply to me and if you look at the constitution it often says that people or persons have rights it doesn't limit that to citizens it actually says persons so you've got the same rights when you're traveling here so the fact that this person is a wealthy person who can hire an attorney should not be held against them the assistant attorney argued that the customer should be required to identify himself or herself the fbi so the government can investigate whether the cash was legally acquired the judge agreed with the plaintiff that the government was trying to force the plaintiff to choose between loss of the fourth amendment protection on unreasonable searches and seizures and loss of the fifth amendment protection against self-incrimination and here's the bigger problem with that the government says we think this money was illegally gotten and the judge says what's your evidence they go we don't have it yet but identify the person who's got the money so we can identify so we can work on this well that by definition means you haven't gotten the evidence if you need to investigate to find the evidence you must not have the evidence and the mere existence of that money is not in and of itself a crime and it doesn't prove a crime there are people i hate to break news to you there are people in this country who've got money that they got legally and they just chose not to put it in a bank you don't have to go back to people who lived through the depression see how many of them trusted banks and find out what many of them did with their cash and although they might not have stuffed 914 thousand dollars underneath their mattress uh factoring for inflation some of them may have put amounts quite large stacked you know stashed around their house the judge also rejected the government's argument that that plaintiff could uh proceed anonymously the judge said yeah this person can proceed anonymously there's no reason that you can't come into court under certain circumstances and have an attorney on your behalf say i represent this person we're not going to reveal their name we don't have to and the judge says you don't have to so whether plaintiff is wealthy or poor a criminal or a model citizen to require plaintiff to self-identify would leave plaintiff vulnerable to the investigatory powers of the federal government the judge also the government had made no showing that there's anything illicit about the property it sees so that's really i think what this turns on more than anything else because obviously a person saying here's my name oh now we've got a case against you now it's more about what do they know about this money if they could prove this money was fruit of a crime then yeah we might have the right to find out who has it because that would connect them to a crime uh the argument would be better let's let's suppose that you had an extremely rare coin an extremely rare equine 1933 20 dollar gold piece there weren't that many of them minted uh that survived they actually made quite a few of them but most of them were melted later 1933 20 gold gold piece so there's very few of them in the world and they know where most of them are they think they know where all of them are but there could be fewer floating around out there let's suppose that one got stolen boom gone and when they go through these boxes they find one and go wait a second one got stolen there one is there's a good chance that this is the stolen 20 gold piece in that case i suspect the judge would say you know something since that's likely connected to a crime you'd have the right then to find out who has it but it's another argument altogether but here it's simply a pile of cash there's no evidence that the cash is guilty of anything so there's no need to identify who's got it the attorney for the plaintiff who is being anonymous called the ruling very significant as the government continues to fight a dozen other lawsuits over its seizure of the safe deposit boxes the judge ruled quite clearly the government cannot take a citizen's property and use it as a hostage to enable the government to investigate that person the judge flatly rejected that idea and has said that the citizen has no obligation to provide the government any information to help the government in its investigation of that person so the weird thing about this is that there are still about a dozen other lawsuits going on you would think that when the fbi and the federal government gets hit with one bad ruling and say you know something we're done but no it looks like they're gonna fight all of these tooth and nail and and then what happens if you get different rulings from different judges weird things can happen and i wouldn't be surprised if something this large winds up going up on appeal so you might find yourself for the ninth circuit somewhere down the road and possibly even scotus but what i think is gonna be the strongest argument the plaintiffs have got the people who had the stuff in the boxes is that the magistrate's own order said you can take possession of the structure that is the nest that all these boxes were you can take possession but you cannot dig through those boxes looking for evidence of a crime that's what it looks like they did but we'll see what happens as they continue to litigate it but as of right now as of right now i'd say it's about the fourth or fifth inning and the plaintiffs are ahead about seven zero just making up numbers here but they've got a healthy lead but the game is far from over unfortunately but as of right now the most recent ruling sent me by a lot of people including phil romney george doug tom and troy thanks a lot from the la times michael finnegan the fbi breached the rights of beverly hills safe deposit box holders a judge rules questions your comments put them below let's talk to you later bye-bye thank you for watching latos law you can't move mountains by whispering at them

Channel: Steve Lehto

Views: 168,126

Rating: 4.974493 out of 5

Keywords: lemon law, michigan lemon law, lemon law attorney, lemon law lawyer, http://www.lehtoslaw.com, steve lehto

Id: OS32k8DWhSM

Length: 15min 23sec (923 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 27 2021