Victims of the FBI's constitutionally dubious raid say they've been told to come forward and identify themselves if they want their stuff back.
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Dagny discovered that the FBI had seized the contents of her safe deposit box — about $100,000 in gold and silver coins, some family heirlooms like a diamond necklace inherited from her late grandmother, and an engagement ring she'd promised to pass down to her daughter — almost by accident.
She'd been asked by a friend to recommend a convenient and secure location for keeping some valuables. Dagny searched Yelp to find the phone number for U.S. Private Vaults, a Beverly Hills facility where she'd rented a safe deposit box since 2017. That's when she saw the bad news.
"Permanently closed."
After a brief moment of panic, some phone calls, and several days, Dagny and her husband Howard (pseudonyms used at their request to maintain privacy during ongoing legal proceedings) figured out what happened. On March 22, the FBI had raided U.S. Private Vaults.
The federal agents were armed with a warrant allowing them to seize property belonging to the company as part of a criminal investigation — and even though the warrant explicitly exempted the safe deposit boxes in the company's vaults, they were taken too. More than 800 were seized.Howard tells Reason there was no attempt made by the FBI to contact him, his wife, or their heirs — despite the fact that contact information was taped to the top of their box. Six weeks later, the couple is still waiting for their property to be returned. (Both individuals are supporters of Reason Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes this website.)
The FBI and federal prosecutors have "no authority to continue holding the possessions of some 800 bystanders who are not alleged to have been involved in whatever USPV may have done wrong," Benjamin Gluck, a California attorney who is representing several of the people caught up in the FBI's raid of U.S. Private Vaults, tells
Reason.Legal efforts to force the FBI to return the items seized during the March 22 raid have so far been unsuccessful, but at least five lawsuits are pending in federal court.
Comment: As O'Keefe points out in the video above, the Times piece stops short of actually accusing Project Veritas of taking part in the operation, hedging with "Although several Project Veritas operatives were involved in the plot, it is unclear whether the group directed it." It could be nothing but a smear aimed at a non-profit that's poised to sue the pants off them.
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