The FBI and DEA have found themselves on murky Constitutional ground. On Wednesday, April 7th, the agencies raided U.S. Private Vaults in Beverly Hills, seizing the anonymous boxes of their hundreds of customers.
U.S. Private Vaults has been indicted on conspiracy to distribute drugs, launder money, and structure cash transactions to dodge currency reporting rules. Boxes filled with fentanyl and oxycontin, as well as over $1 million in cash and weapons were also discovered in the raid. However, there was no evidence to reasonably suspect any of their customers had committed a crime. Five box holders have taken legal action claiming their Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure was violated. Anonymous vaults are legal, and now customers are put in a position where they must reveal their identities to retrieve their possessions from the DEA and FBI, potentially violating their Fifth Amendment right to be free from self-incrimination.
U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner refused a customers’ emergency request to stop prosecutors from using the contents of seized boxes as evidence, and to allow customers to repossess their belongings without revealing their identities was blocked. However, the verbiage of the ruling did not exclude the possibility that customers’ Fourth Amendment rights were violated because of the breadth of the warrant. No customers have been charged, but damage has already been done.
Even if customers opt to reveal their identities to reclaim their belongings, this is proving difficult because it is hard to link identities to undocumented items such as cash, gold, silver, and family heirloom jewelry.
Anonymous private vault holders maintain a reasonable expectation of privacy. The question remains – were legitimate customers of a business clandestinely involved in criminal activity forced to forfeit their rights? Much of this answer is in the sealed search warrant, but much of it also rests in what precedent this sets for future agency raids.
