6 ms·

I can't find source now, but I'd read before that they didn't properly inventory the items, and so now some large amount of it can't be traced back to owners.

hanniabu 3y ago
Of course. Best way to rob a bank is to be an officer of the law.
- pwillia7 3y ago
  [flagged]
cogman10 3y ago
It's more complicated than that. The reason for the raid in the first place was because the FBI suspected (correctly) that the owners of this lockbox company knowingly facilitated money laundering. The company was setup to maintain privacy. By it's nature, who owned what was ambiguous. There was none or no identifying information. What's at issue is if the FBI could use the contents of these boxes to further prosecute previously unknown crimes. The lower court said yes, the upper court no. The initial taking was legal, it's how the property was handled after the fact that ran afowl the law.
- pclmulqdq 3y ago
  There's the whole civil asset forfeiture angle to this: they may have been ostensibly planning to have people defend their deposit box in court, only to get charged with a litany of crimes related to its contents. They didn't keep any of the articles separate, though, which makes me think this was just a legal robbery.
  - kevin_thibedeau 3y ago
    Definitely a case of malicious non-compliance. The police love to ignore their oath when they face no repercussions.
    - data_monkey 3y ago
      I hate everything about our anarcho-tyranical state.
      - anonym29 3y ago
        A 'state' in the sense of a government is the antithesis of anarcho-anything.
        logicchains 3y ago
        Anarcho-tyranny means a government that doesn't enforce any of the laws that protect people, only enforces laws that protect itself. So it's like the absence of a government in the sense that a government is supposed to be tasked with protecting people's life and property.
        anonym29 3y ago
        Well that's objectively poor phrasing, then. 'Anarcho-' as a prefix refers to Anarchy, which refers to a society being in a state of not having authorities. You could argue that having authorities that abuse their authority to self-serving ends renders that authority illegitimate, but by the admission of Anarcho-tyranny's own proponents (as a theory), they still recognize the existence of these "authorities", and just contest the governance decisions made by those authorities. That's certainly a bad government, but to call it anarcho-anything is just downright confusing.
        GauntletWizard 3y ago
        > Anarchy > a state of disorder due to absence or nonrecognition of authority or other controlling systems Emphasis mine. The Government failing to recognize it's own laws and founding principles absolutely qualifies as anarchy. Anarchy as a state(1) of disorder predates Anarchy as a form of government for a state(2).
        3y ago
  - justinclift 3y ago
    Yeah, that sounds dodgy as all heck. So if someone had (say) $1000 in cash in there, they'd be told to pick out the bank notes or something. At which point it's just gambling as to whether any particular bank note is going to get you arrested or not due to it having a bad history.
    - exhilaration 3y ago
      Related story: 4 or 5 years ago my brother got held up on the street in Baltimore in a daytime robbery. The cops drove by 30 seconds later, my brother pointed out the guy, and they caught him right away. My brother was told he could only get his money back if he could provide the serial numbers for the cash he had stolen. Of course he couldn't do that.
      - CogitoCogito 3y ago
        Were there witnesses or video or some other proof independent of your brother’s claims?
      - boeingUH60 3y ago
        I smell BS in this story..
        treyfitty 3y ago
        Baltimore police is known to be corrupt, what’s BS about the police officers citing unreasonable demands for proof in an attempt to pocket the money?
      - chaps 3y ago
        Hah. Yeah. Maybe 10y ago I was robbed. The investigator who took my case, a month later, asked me if I had anything to drink that night. I said, yeah, one beer about 7hr earlier. He said that because I drank that night that would close the investigation and that was that.
      - FireBeyond 3y ago
        You may want to watch The Wire, which was problematic enough. But then, nearly two decades later We Own This City (based on the non-fiction book of the same name) which breaks down a lot of the endemic corruption in Baltimore PD.
  - pjc50 3y ago
    Civil forfeiture has turned into legalized robbery in the US. This is just an exceptionally egregious example, and you can see why people don't trust the FBI when things like this happen.
- adolph 3y ago
  > By it's nature, who owned what was ambiguous. There was none or no identifying information. Why are you lying or making up stuff? Even the raiding party's memo doesn't claim that: The memo states that “[e]ach inventory [would] likely include the following”: the USPV box door with its lock, a form with emergency contact information, the physical deposit box, and the box’s contents. Opinion by Judge Milan D. Smith, Jr.: https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2024/01/23/22-56050.pdf https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2024/01/23/2...
  - k1t 3y ago
    Saying "By it's nature, who owned what was ambiguous. There was none or no identifying information." seems reasonable given what was reported. In an indictment against U.S. Private Vaults, Inc., the U.S. attorney for Los Angeles accused the company of marketing itself deliberately to attract criminals, saying it brazenly promoted itself as a place customers could store valuables with confidence that tax authorities would be hard-pressed to learn their identities or what was stored in their locked boxes. To access the facility, customers needed no identification; it took just an eye and hand scan to unlock the door. “We don’t even want to know your name,” it advertised, according to prosecutors. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-04-02/fbi-beverly-hills-vault-search-seizure https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-04-02/fbi-beve...
    - beaeglebeached 3y ago
      It was ambiguous to the owner. Not necessarily the FBI. My understanding was the identifying info may placed by the customer inside the box, with the agreement being the box would not be opened by the hosts except under defined exceptions.
    - refurb 3y ago
      So basically anything that protects the customers privacy is automatically “deliberately to attract criminals”? That’s a problem.
- matheusmoreira 3y ago
  > The reason for the raid in the first place was because the FBI suspected (correctly) that the owners of this lockbox company knowingly facilitated money laundering. Not a good enough reason to violate people's rights.
  - beaeglebeached 3y ago
    Every single gas station near the US major border knowingly 100% facilitate money laundering, and knowingly engage in a business where there is no doubt they are both taking and generating the proceeds by selling their gas. Their gas pumps should be seized for investigation.
    - matt-attack 3y ago
      How does a gas station facilitate money laundering?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- phpisthebest 3y ago
  >>The initial taking was legal, it's how the property was handled after the fact that ran afowl the law. That is not the ruling at all The FBI lied to the court system, and was never authorized to take the boxes at all, they were only authorized to secure them and identify the owners of the property to enable returning to those owners That was all the original warrant authorized Then after they executed that warrant, they then initiated (illegally) "inventory" procedures far beyond what was authorized by the court (warrant) and once inventoried further initiated (illegally) forfeiture proceedings of the property. The original warrant only authorized the FBI to "take" aka seize property belonging to the company itself for the purposes of their criminal case everything beyond that was actually specifically barred in the actual warrant, which the FBI ignored and did what ever the hell they wanted anyway. It was further reveled that was their plan all along and they deceived the court from day 1.
  - newZWhoDis 3y ago
    So when are all the agents involved getting charged? I already know the answer, but still…

hanniabu 3y ago

Of course. Best way to rob a bank is to be an officer of the law.

pwillia7 3y ago
[flagged]

cogman10 3y ago

It's more complicated than that. The reason for the raid in the first place was because the FBI suspected (correctly) that the owners of this lockbox company knowingly facilitated money laundering. The company was setup to maintain privacy. By it's nature, who owned what was ambiguous. There was none or no identifying information. What's at issue is if the FBI could use the contents of these boxes to further prosecute previously unknown crimes. The lower court said yes, the upper court no. The initial taking was legal, it's how the property was handled after the fact that ran afowl the law.

pclmulqdq 3y ago
There's the whole civil asset forfeiture angle to this: they may have been ostensibly planning to have people defend their deposit box in court, only to get charged with a litany of crimes related to its contents. They didn't keep any of the articles separate, though, which makes me think this was just a legal robbery.
- kevin_thibedeau 3y ago
  Definitely a case of malicious non-compliance. The police love to ignore their oath when they face no repercussions.
  - data_monkey 3y ago
    I hate everything about our anarcho-tyranical state.
    - anonym29 3y ago
      A 'state' in the sense of a government is the antithesis of anarcho-anything.
      - logicchains 3y ago
        Anarcho-tyranny means a government that doesn't enforce any of the laws that protect people, only enforces laws that protect itself. So it's like the absence of a government in the sense that a government is supposed to be tasked with protecting people's life and property.
        anonym29 3y ago
        Well that's objectively poor phrasing, then. 'Anarcho-' as a prefix refers to Anarchy, which refers to a society being in a state of not having authorities. You could argue that having authorities that abuse their authority to self-serving ends renders that authority illegitimate, but by the admission of Anarcho-tyranny's own proponents (as a theory), they still recognize the existence of these "authorities", and just contest the governance decisions made by those authorities. That's certainly a bad government, but to call it anarcho-anything is just downright confusing.
        GauntletWizard 3y ago
        > Anarchy > a state of disorder due to absence or nonrecognition of authority or other controlling systems Emphasis mine. The Government failing to recognize it's own laws and founding principles absolutely qualifies as anarchy. Anarchy as a state(1) of disorder predates Anarchy as a form of government for a state(2).
        3y ago
- justinclift 3y ago
  Yeah, that sounds dodgy as all heck. So if someone had (say) $1000 in cash in there, they'd be told to pick out the bank notes or something. At which point it's just gambling as to whether any particular bank note is going to get you arrested or not due to it having a bad history.
  - exhilaration 3y ago
    Related story: 4 or 5 years ago my brother got held up on the street in Baltimore in a daytime robbery. The cops drove by 30 seconds later, my brother pointed out the guy, and they caught him right away. My brother was told he could only get his money back if he could provide the serial numbers for the cash he had stolen. Of course he couldn't do that.
    - CogitoCogito 3y ago
      Were there witnesses or video or some other proof independent of your brother’s claims?
    - boeingUH60 3y ago
      I smell BS in this story..
      - treyfitty 3y ago
        Baltimore police is known to be corrupt, what’s BS about the police officers citing unreasonable demands for proof in an attempt to pocket the money?
    - chaps 3y ago
      Hah. Yeah. Maybe 10y ago I was robbed. The investigator who took my case, a month later, asked me if I had anything to drink that night. I said, yeah, one beer about 7hr earlier. He said that because I drank that night that would close the investigation and that was that.
    - FireBeyond 3y ago
      You may want to watch The Wire, which was problematic enough. But then, nearly two decades later We Own This City (based on the non-fiction book of the same name) which breaks down a lot of the endemic corruption in Baltimore PD.
- pjc50 3y ago
  Civil forfeiture has turned into legalized robbery in the US. This is just an exceptionally egregious example, and you can see why people don't trust the FBI when things like this happen.
adolph 3y ago
> By it's nature, who owned what was ambiguous. There was none or no identifying information. Why are you lying or making up stuff? Even the raiding party's memo doesn't claim that: The memo states that “[e]ach inventory [would] likely include the following”: the USPV box door with its lock, a form with emergency contact information, the physical deposit box, and the box’s contents. Opinion by Judge Milan D. Smith, Jr.: https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2024/01/23/22-56050.pdf https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2024/01/23/2...
- k1t 3y ago
  Saying "By it's nature, who owned what was ambiguous. There was none or no identifying information." seems reasonable given what was reported. In an indictment against U.S. Private Vaults, Inc., the U.S. attorney for Los Angeles accused the company of marketing itself deliberately to attract criminals, saying it brazenly promoted itself as a place customers could store valuables with confidence that tax authorities would be hard-pressed to learn their identities or what was stored in their locked boxes. To access the facility, customers needed no identification; it took just an eye and hand scan to unlock the door. “We don’t even want to know your name,” it advertised, according to prosecutors. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-04-02/fbi-beverly-hills-vault-search-seizure https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-04-02/fbi-beve...
  - beaeglebeached 3y ago
    It was ambiguous to the owner. Not necessarily the FBI. My understanding was the identifying info may placed by the customer inside the box, with the agreement being the box would not be opened by the hosts except under defined exceptions.
  - refurb 3y ago
    So basically anything that protects the customers privacy is automatically “deliberately to attract criminals”? That’s a problem.
matheusmoreira 3y ago
> The reason for the raid in the first place was because the FBI suspected (correctly) that the owners of this lockbox company knowingly facilitated money laundering. Not a good enough reason to violate people's rights.
- beaeglebeached 3y ago
  Every single gas station near the US major border knowingly 100% facilitate money laundering, and knowingly engage in a business where there is no doubt they are both taking and generating the proceeds by selling their gas. Their gas pumps should be seized for investigation.
  - matt-attack 3y ago
    How does a gas station facilitate money laundering?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
phpisthebest 3y ago
>>The initial taking was legal, it's how the property was handled after the fact that ran afowl the law. That is not the ruling at all The FBI lied to the court system, and was never authorized to take the boxes at all, they were only authorized to secure them and identify the owners of the property to enable returning to those owners That was all the original warrant authorized Then after they executed that warrant, they then initiated (illegally) "inventory" procedures far beyond what was authorized by the court (warrant) and once inventoried further initiated (illegally) forfeiture proceedings of the property. The original warrant only authorized the FBI to "take" aka seize property belonging to the company itself for the purposes of their criminal case everything beyond that was actually specifically barred in the actual warrant, which the FBI ignored and did what ever the hell they wanted anyway. It was further reveled that was their plan all along and they deceived the court from day 1.
- newZWhoDis 3y ago
  So when are all the agents involved getting charged? I already know the answer, but still…