5 ms·

The place was apparently owned by an extremely shady criminal who's on wire admitting to laundering millions of dollars for customers of his safe deposit boxes

The place was apparently owned by an extremely shady criminal who's on wire admitting to laundering millions of dollars for customers of his safe deposit boxes and a litany of other crimes; https://www.thedailybeast.com/co-owner-of-shady-beverly-hills-business-us-private-vaults-had-extensive-criminal-empire-feds-allege https://www.thedailybeast.com/co-owner-of-shady-beverly-hill... The business recently pled guilty to laundering for drug traffickers: > The company admitted that it recruited drug traffickers as customers and used the illicit proceeds to run the business. It also acknowledged that people at the company sold cocaine, arranged drug deals at the store and instructed customers how to structure cash transactions to dodge currency reporting requirements. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-03-03/beverly-hills-store-admits-to-using-safe-deposit-boxes-to-launder-drug-money https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-03-03/beverly-...

refurb 4y ago
That might all be true, but that's not the argument of the article? The argument is that the FBI is not being transparent about the process that led to the seizure. It's hard to hold the government accountable when you don't even know what the government did.
throwaway0a5e 4y ago
That doesn't justify the search and seizure of all his customers' property without due process.
- mikeyouse 4y ago
  There's clearly a balance to be had - but if millions of dollars in ill-gotten cash and property in the boxes were his (as he's admitted) then of course the Feds are going to seize those and any others with unknown provenance. It's not like this was a bank, it was in a strip mall. Judges have been siding on behalf of people who haven't been accused of crimes, and they've had their property returned (https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-07-26/judge-rules-against-fbi-beverly-hills-raid https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-07-26/judge-ru...) which of course is proper.
  - dhbanes 4y ago
    > It's not like this was a bank, it was in a strip mall. Not sure what you're getting at here. Beverly Hills has a very large population of Iranian Jews, many of whom do not trust safe deposit boxes in banks because of their own lived experiences in Iran in 1979. This was a business filling a need in our community.
    - jacquesm 4y ago
      Same with people in former USSR countries. They still do quite a bit in cash and tend not to trust banks.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > That doesn't justify the search and seizure of all his customers' property without due process. The fundamental due process issue doesn't seem to be in dispute, though remedies for that are being litigated. What the article is focussed on is not the due process issues, but the right of people outside of those directly affected and whose rights related to involved property are being litigated to law enforcement background information relating to the planning for the operations, which is a completely separate issue.
  - indymike 4y ago
    The issue with all of this is that we're allowing actions against property while not respecting the rights of the owner. The FBI/cops can and should raid a place being used for crime, but it does not mean the cops should get to keep all the property that is seized. A much more mundane situation: Dad shouldn't have the family car auctioned off because his kid's friend decided to shoot up in the back seat. This civil asset forfeiture thing is insanely unconstitutional.
    - jeffbee 4y ago
      That example seems clear cut from both ethical and constitutional perspectives. If juveniles use your property to commit crimes, that property is rightly in jeopardy.
      - notch656a 4y ago
        I'm not sure that's true, but if it is that is absolutely terrifying and I hope it is rectified at once. I think this would lead to the seizure of all public parks in my city.
        jeffbee 4y ago
        I guess like all libertarians you will be surprised to learn that there is a separate body of jurisprudence around public property, separate from private property law.
jacquesm 4y ago
So what? I once hosted in a place that turned out to be a hotbed for spammers. But Spamhaus actually did the legwork required that there was an exception for our servers.
- tptacek 4y ago
  So, it's an extremely useful detail and a positive contribution to a thread that is dominated by conspiracy theories about how the government wants to abolish private property and make us all eat bugs. The parent comment didn't express an opinion about the process used here.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    All it takes is one.
    - tptacek 4y ago
      I don't have an opinion about this raid, and I don't know that we know the parent commenter does either. What I do know is that most people with very strong opinions on this thread likely haven't read even the whole Reason article, let alone did their own digging about the raid, and when people take the time to do that and share with the thread, we should be careful to celebrate it rather than cross-examining it.
      - jacquesm 4y ago
        Fair enough. But given an X number of safety deposit boxes to assume without further prior evidence that each and every one of them must contain money that was illicitly obtained seems to be a bit coarse as well. The article certainly does not suggest transparency with regards to the way the raid was conducted.
        tptacek 4y ago
        Neither me nor the parent commenter have argued that the process used in this search was legitimate. All I know about it is what I read in the Reason article, and the details the parent commenter contributed to the thread. We should try not to hang unrelated debates off of positive contributions to threads; the details here are very useful and deserve not to be drowned out.
bilekas 4y ago
This. This publication also seems to have a habit of sensationalism. Just read another of their articles. > Fauci conceded that the cloth masks that most people were required to wear indoors throughout the pandemic do not substantially prevent the transmission of COVID-19. Infact quoted is him actually saying : > "Right now, we are very, very clear that masks do work in prevention of acquisition and transmission," said Fauci. "But you've got to get a well-fitted mask that is of a high quality. And the two we know are high quality are N95 and KN95." No mention of the surgical masks at all there, but 'reason' wrote an assumption as fact. So grain of salt for me personally.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > This publication also seems to have a habit of sensationalism. Reason is to American libertarianism as Jacobin is to American socialism.
  - SauciestGNU 4y ago
    It's a shame too, because I think we need quality journalism from a wide diversity of viewpoints/biases. Unfortunately the ones we do get very rarely publish high quality journalism.
  - anigbrowl 4y ago
    Astute summary. Both are thought-provoking and do a lot of sincere advocacy but their arguments sometimes rest on shaky axiomatic foundations and strategic disingenuity. Of course, many avowedly utilitarian institutions do the same thing at scale and radical political journals are trapped within a paradigm of trying to leverage a dysfunctional status quo to turn one way or the other while trying to compete in the field of abstractions at the same time.
- thaumasiotes 4y ago
  The quote you pull says that, in order for a mask to work, it must be well-fitted and of a high quality. And then it defines high quality as being N95 or KN95. Cloth masks don't meet any standard of quality or well-fittedness, so I'm having difficulty seeing what problem you think exists in the restatement by Reason. I also can't tell what you mean by "no mention of the surgical masks". What surgical masks? Surgical masks aren't mentioned in the quote from Fauci or the quote from Reason.
theknocker 4y ago

refurb 4y ago

That might all be true, but that's not the argument of the article? The argument is that the FBI is not being transparent about the process that led to the seizure. It's hard to hold the government accountable when you don't even know what the government did.

throwaway0a5e 4y ago

That doesn't justify the search and seizure of all his customers' property without due process.

mikeyouse 4y ago
There's clearly a balance to be had - but if millions of dollars in ill-gotten cash and property in the boxes were his (as he's admitted) then of course the Feds are going to seize those and any others with unknown provenance. It's not like this was a bank, it was in a strip mall. Judges have been siding on behalf of people who haven't been accused of crimes, and they've had their property returned (https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-07-26/judge-rules-against-fbi-beverly-hills-raid https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-07-26/judge-ru...) which of course is proper.
- dhbanes 4y ago
  > It's not like this was a bank, it was in a strip mall. Not sure what you're getting at here. Beverly Hills has a very large population of Iranian Jews, many of whom do not trust safe deposit boxes in banks because of their own lived experiences in Iran in 1979. This was a business filling a need in our community.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    Same with people in former USSR countries. They still do quite a bit in cash and tend not to trust banks.
dragonwriter 4y ago
> That doesn't justify the search and seizure of all his customers' property without due process. The fundamental due process issue doesn't seem to be in dispute, though remedies for that are being litigated. What the article is focussed on is not the due process issues, but the right of people outside of those directly affected and whose rights related to involved property are being litigated to law enforcement background information relating to the planning for the operations, which is a completely separate issue.
- indymike 4y ago
  The issue with all of this is that we're allowing actions against property while not respecting the rights of the owner. The FBI/cops can and should raid a place being used for crime, but it does not mean the cops should get to keep all the property that is seized. A much more mundane situation: Dad shouldn't have the family car auctioned off because his kid's friend decided to shoot up in the back seat. This civil asset forfeiture thing is insanely unconstitutional.
  - jeffbee 4y ago
    That example seems clear cut from both ethical and constitutional perspectives. If juveniles use your property to commit crimes, that property is rightly in jeopardy.
    - notch656a 4y ago
      I'm not sure that's true, but if it is that is absolutely terrifying and I hope it is rectified at once. I think this would lead to the seizure of all public parks in my city.
      - jeffbee 4y ago
        I guess like all libertarians you will be surprised to learn that there is a separate body of jurisprudence around public property, separate from private property law.

jacquesm 4y ago

So what? I once hosted in a place that turned out to be a hotbed for spammers. But Spamhaus actually did the legwork required that there was an exception for our servers.

tptacek 4y ago
So, it's an extremely useful detail and a positive contribution to a thread that is dominated by conspiracy theories about how the government wants to abolish private property and make us all eat bugs. The parent comment didn't express an opinion about the process used here.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  All it takes is one.
  - tptacek 4y ago
    I don't have an opinion about this raid, and I don't know that we know the parent commenter does either. What I do know is that most people with very strong opinions on this thread likely haven't read even the whole Reason article, let alone did their own digging about the raid, and when people take the time to do that and share with the thread, we should be careful to celebrate it rather than cross-examining it.
    - jacquesm 4y ago
      Fair enough. But given an X number of safety deposit boxes to assume without further prior evidence that each and every one of them must contain money that was illicitly obtained seems to be a bit coarse as well. The article certainly does not suggest transparency with regards to the way the raid was conducted.
      - tptacek 4y ago
        Neither me nor the parent commenter have argued that the process used in this search was legitimate. All I know about it is what I read in the Reason article, and the details the parent commenter contributed to the thread. We should try not to hang unrelated debates off of positive contributions to threads; the details here are very useful and deserve not to be drowned out.

bilekas 4y ago

This. This publication also seems to have a habit of sensationalism. Just read another of their articles. > Fauci conceded that the cloth masks that most people were required to wear indoors throughout the pandemic do not substantially prevent the transmission of COVID-19. Infact quoted is him actually saying : > "Right now, we are very, very clear that masks do work in prevention of acquisition and transmission," said Fauci. "But you've got to get a well-fitted mask that is of a high quality. And the two we know are high quality are N95 and KN95." No mention of the surgical masks at all there, but 'reason' wrote an assumption as fact. So grain of salt for me personally.

dragonwriter 4y ago
> This publication also seems to have a habit of sensationalism. Reason is to American libertarianism as Jacobin is to American socialism.
- SauciestGNU 4y ago
  It's a shame too, because I think we need quality journalism from a wide diversity of viewpoints/biases. Unfortunately the ones we do get very rarely publish high quality journalism.
- anigbrowl 4y ago
  Astute summary. Both are thought-provoking and do a lot of sincere advocacy but their arguments sometimes rest on shaky axiomatic foundations and strategic disingenuity. Of course, many avowedly utilitarian institutions do the same thing at scale and radical political journals are trapped within a paradigm of trying to leverage a dysfunctional status quo to turn one way or the other while trying to compete in the field of abstractions at the same time.
thaumasiotes 4y ago
The quote you pull says that, in order for a mask to work, it must be well-fitted and of a high quality. And then it defines high quality as being N95 or KN95. Cloth masks don't meet any standard of quality or well-fittedness, so I'm having difficulty seeing what problem you think exists in the restatement by Reason. I also can't tell what you mean by "no mention of the surgical masks". What surgical masks? Surgical masks aren't mentioned in the quote from Fauci or the quote from Reason.

theknocker 4y ago