Good day all. One of the things that most people aren’t aware of, and get really angry about when they learn of it, is asset forfeiture. Basically, law enforcement will take someone’s property claiming it was ill gotten gains. In many cases, no criminal charges are filed against the people that are hit with this.
This policy was started under the “War on Drugs,” and is, regardless of what the courts might say, not what the founders of this country intended when they wrote the constitution. In many cases, totally innocent people have essentially been robbed of their life savings.
Recently, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, (And coups, looting and lies), got a warrant to raid a safe deposit box company in Beverly Hills, Kalifornistan. The judge who issued the warrant flat out stated IN THE WARRANT, that the agents were not allowed to break into the boxes. They did so anyway and took over $86 million dollars in cash, jewels and other valuables. Here are the details from the New York Post:
The FBI wants to keep $86 million in cash and millions more in jewelry and other valuables seized in a raid on a Beverly Hills, California, safe deposit box business, even though a judge specifically said the contents of the boxes weren’t up for grabs.
Prosecutors claim it’s fair to make the renters of the 369 safe deposit boxes forfeit their valuables, because they were engaged in criminal activity, the Los Angeles Times reported. But there’s no evidence to support the allegation.
Of course there’s no evidence. The reason there is no evidence is because the box holders even knew that the company was involved in any illegal activities. That doesn’t matter to the U.S. Attorneys or the FBI. They stole the money fair and square and they intend to keep it.
The box holders and their lawyers say the FBI is trampling on the rights of people who were unaware the business, U.S. Private Vaults, was charged in a sealed indictment with conspiring to sell drugs and launder money.
I wonder if the Fu**ing Bunch of Incompetents understands that the purpose of setting up a legitimate business is to cover and hid their actual criminal profits behind honest people who have no idea what’s going on. This was something that the judge who issued the warrant was thinking about when he specifically wrote into the document that the federal agents were FORBIDDEN from accessing the boxes.
The warrant that US Magistrate Steve Kim signed on March 17 giving permission for the FBI to raid the business even said, “This warrant does not authorize a criminal search or seizure of the contents of the safety deposit boxes.”
The basic answer by the FBI to this can be summed up thus:
If the FBI wanted to search the boxes, it needed to meet the standard for a warrant of probable cause that evidence of a crime would be found. But agents rifled through about 800 boxes anyway, filming their searches and bagging the property as evidence even when the holders were unknown and not suspected of crimes.
I wonder, what part of the word NO don’t these thieves understand? Yes, thieves. What else would you call someone who broke into your secure environment without permission and stole your belongings?
The government “can’t take stuff without evidence in the hopes that you’re going to get it later,” Benjamin Gluck, an attorney who represents box holders suing the government to retrieve their property, told the Times. “The Fourth Amendment and the forfeiture laws require the opposite — that you have the evidence first, and then you can take property.”
Haven’t you heard? The Constitution does not apply to the FBI, They can do whatever they want, whenever they want to to whomever they chose to.
We have some basis to believe that the items are related to criminal activity,” Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the FBI’s LA office, told the Times.
Then you should have gotten another warrant listing the boxes you wanted to open and the evidence that they were involved in a crime. You know, actual police work.
The contents of about 75 of the 800 boxes initially seized have already been returned, and at least 175 more will be given back, Mrozek said. The feds haven’t figured out who owns what was stored in many of the others.
How about returning them to the boxes you opened? Or did you basically blast them open, rendering them unusable? Now the indictment which led to the warrant was against the owners, and they were, apparently, real criminals. The people that the FBI robbed? Not so much.
But box owners like Joseph Ruiz, who kept $57,000 in cash from two legal settlements there because he doesn’t trust banks, say the government is stealing their money.
“I’m made out to be a criminal, and I didn’t do anything,” said Ruiz, the son of a retired Los Angeles police officer, told the paper. “I’m a law-abiding citizen.”
Ruiz has joined one of 11 lawsuits filed by box owners seeking the return of their property.
In my honest opinion, in addition to the lawsuit, I would go to the Beverly Hills Police Department and file criminal complaints against the agents involved in the raid and the U.S. Attorneys who let them go ahead and break into the safe deposit boxes without a warrant. The fact that the Magistrate/Judge flat out told the FBI that they were not permitted to open the boxes should be enough to blow any qualified immunity right out of the water.
I would love to see a local police raid on the FBI offices and federal agents dragged out in handcuffs. I can see the Department of Justice trying to get the charges dropped under the qualified immunity and color of authority stuff they love throwing in people’s faces, but that pesky little paragraph in the warrant saying that they did NOT have permission to access the boxes is going to cost them. Preferably their freedom, but a nice embarrassing judgment against the DoJ might suffice. Naw, lock them up and throw away the key. It’s time to make examples of some of these Feds.
Thatisall
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