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>Howard tells Reason there was no attempt made by the FBI to contact him, his wife, or their heirs—despite the fact that contact information was taped to the to

• ascagnel_ 5y ago
  To me, there’s also the question of how the box was marked — safety deposit boxes have a locking outer door and a removable insert that can have a second lock on it. I would be shocked if USPV allowed this customer to post any identifying data on the outer door, and I haven’t seen a report either way on whether or not the FBI was allowed to open the outer door to access the insert if that’s where the label was placed. For what it’s worth, the original article is pretty awful — it provides only one perspective (that of a wronged customer), didn’t mention if the author contacted the FBI for comment, and also didn’t mention that the FBI was authorized to seize the “vaults” of boxes, but not granted the right to open the boxes themselves. Most of this is mentioned in other media reports, and in total paints this story very differently: USPV was involved with wrongdoing, there is a high likelihood that some boxes contain evidence of further crimes, but there will need to be some court-appointed team that has to go through the boxes in order to uncover this evidence while protecting all the other owners (and their identities) from the FBI.