3 ms·
That’s not at all a good description of what happened here. The safety deposit box company was pretty clearly a criminal enterprise, it marketed itself to drug
by CPLX 3y ago
That’s not at all a good description of what happened here.
The safety deposit box company was pretty clearly a criminal enterprise, it marketed itself to drug dealers and so on. A few random rich people might have wandered in but it was a fairly unique company.
The point here is that this shouldn’t fucking matter. The government should have to prove its case anyways by having individualized probable cause and a warrant for each and every safe deposit box, and going on a fishing expedition is patently unconstitutional.
- marcus_holmes 3y agoEspecially since they can apparently keep anything they find if they suspect it's the proceeds of crime, right? (they don't need a successful conviction to forfeit the goods, as I remember, just the suspicion). Which seems crazy to me as a foreigner. As TFA points out, it allows cops to behave as robbers legally.
- sandworm101 3y agoYup. Which is why people look for places, like deposit boxes, where it is harder for them to grab stuff.
- Eji1700 3y agoI think being missed is more than that: > The warrant authorizing the raid expressly forbade federal agents from engaging in a "criminal search or seizure of the contents of the safety [sic] deposit boxes." and then > Under typical FBI procedure, the boxes should have been taken into custody until they could be returned to their rightful owners. But those "supplemental instructions" drawn up by the special agent in charge of the operation told agents to be on the lookout for cash stored inside the safe-deposit boxes and to note "anything which suggests the cash may be criminal proceeds." So no judge was involved in the decision to seize cash. It was an agent on the site who came up with supplemental instructions. There are a million reasons this should be illegal.