The FBI Seized This Woman's Life Savings—Without Telling Her Why

Almost four years ago to the day, the FBI entered U.S. Private Vaults (USPV), a storage business in Beverly Hills, and raided the safe-deposit boxes there, pocketing tens of millions of dollars in cash, valuables, and personal items. Among those owners was Linda Martin, from whom agents took $40,200—her life savings—despite that she had not been charged with a crime.

Those charges would never come. Although USPV itself was ultimately indicted in federal court, the government had no case against unknowing customers like Martin, in a scheme that attorneys have compared to seizing property from individual apartment units because the tenants’ landlord was suspected of criminal wrongdoing. At USPV, the agency confiscated over $100 million in valuables from a slew of such people via civil forfeiture, the legal process that allows the government to take people’s property without having to prove its owners committed any crime.

The FBI was found to have exceeded the terms of its warrant and to have violated the Fourth Amendment. But it still refused to give back Martin’s life savings. She had opted not to store it in a bank account, she says, because she was saving it for a house and did not want to be tempted to spend it. Her bank, meanwhile, did not have a safe-deposit box available, prompting her to turn to USPV.

About two years post-seizure, the bureau returned Martin’s money—shortly after she filed a nationwide class-action lawsuit. But while the bureau may have hoped that would persuade her to drop it, she has continued with her suit, which was back in court last week and seeks a ruling that will prevent the FBI from proceeding with others as it did with her.

At the core of her argument is the notice the federal government sent alerting her to the fact that agents had seized her property. The problem: It didn’t give her a reason.

Martin’s claim, her appellant brief notes, “is that when the FBI attempts to forfeit someone’s property, due process requires that it say why, citing specific facts and laws.” Instead, the notice she received listed hundreds of possible federal crimes that would justify a seizure, though it didn’t provide Martin’s supposed connection to those offenses. “By sending notices that initiate and, often, consummate property’s forfeiture—all without ever saying what exactly the FBI thinks justifies the forfeiture,” her brief says, “the FBI deprives owners of crucial information they need to protect their rights.”

Those notices, which Martin alleges violate the Fifth Amendment, are standard practice for the bureau. And they have already drawn the ire of a federal judge, who in 2021 ordered the agency to halt its seizure from hundreds of USPV safe-deposit boxes because the “anemic” notices provided “no factual basis for the seizure.”

That ruling, however, applied only to those USPV plaintiffs. Martin would like to see it apply nationwide. “Without specific notice, property owners can’t understand what this is all about, and therefore can’t do any investigation or get meaningful advice from attorneys,” says Robert Frommer, an attorney with the Institute for Justice, which is representing Martin. “Owners must decide whether to fight against the federal government, default, or plead for mercy, all without knowing why the FBI is doing this to them. It’s therefore little surprise that 93% of federal forfeitures never get to a court, meaning the FBI gets to keep the money without ever telling anyone why they should be allowed to.” The hearing last week was on a jurisdictional issue and has yet to be evaluated on the merits.

From the outset, the USPV raid was defined by illegal activity—on the part of federal law enforcement. The warrant, which agents misled a judge to obtain, explicitly forbade them from engaging in a “criminal search or seizure” of the content of the safe-deposit boxes; they violated that condition (and the Constitution) and did it anyway. Agents seized a litany of valuables, from cash to personal items—a baptismal certificate, a marriage certificate, a birth certificate—to gold coins. (In the latter case, the FBI could not find 63 of those coins, belonging to Don Mellein, worth over $100,000. Oops!)

But Martin’s suit raises another issue, which strikes at the root: If the government cannot articulate why agents are taking someone’s life savings, then perhaps they shouldn’t be taking it.

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