ReasonThe FBI seemingly misled a federal magistrate judge to obtain a warrant that let it seize the contents of hundreds of safe deposit boxes. But a federal judge says the raid did not violate the box owners' Fourth Amendment rights.
Judge Gary Klausner ruled Thursday that attorneys representing several victims of the FBI's March 2021 raid of U.S. Private Vaults in Beverly Hills, California, have "failed to prove" that the FBI's inventory of the safe deposit boxes' contents was "an impermissible investigatory motive" intended to uncover additional crimes beyond those alleged in the warrant that allowed the raid.
As Reason has previously detailed, the warrant for the raid explicitly forbade law enforcement from seizing or searching the private property contained in the safe deposit boxes held at U.S. Private Vaults, which was the target of the FBI's investigation. Despite that, field agents cracked open the boxes and rifled through them—and even ran some of the contents past the noses of drug-sniffing dogs—in what the FBI claims were a necessary inventory of the property but looks more like a fishing expedition. Attorneys for the box owners noted that FBI agents admitted during depositions that they planned to forfeit cash and other valuables from the boxes, even though they did not include those plans in the warrant application.
