Two Americans claim the FBI lost or stole their property after seizing it through a “shady” process.
“All we know is that their property was in the box and was safe before the FBI broke into the box,” Joe Gay, an attorney with the nonprofit law firm Institute of Justice, told Fox News. “When the FBI broke into that box, we honestly didn’t know what happened.”
“We don’t know if they lost it. We don’t know if someone picked it up and left,” he continued. “We have no way of knowing.”
The Justice Institute filed two lawsuits Friday on behalf of clients who had property seized from their safety deposit boxes in a March 2021 FBI raid on US Private Vaults, a Beverly Hills-based company.
After winning in court, and the FBI agreeing to return their property, both Don Mellein and the Jeni Pearsons find some of their property missing and suspect a random raid or the sticky fingers of the FBI to blame.
“There’s really no explanation,” Pearsons said. “I think you have to assume that it’s the simplest explanation, and I think, unfortunately, the simplest explanation is that they take it or lose it.”
The FBI has no record of the missing coins, as they were not listed on the property receipt for the contents of Mellein’s box. AFP via Getty Images
Mellein, a 79-year-old civil servant, keeps cash and 110 gold coins worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in his box to keep his finances safe.
He invested in precious metals with the proceeds after he and his wife sold their Malibu home in 2002.
Don Mellein and Jeni Pearsons are taking the government to court after both say the FBI lost, or stole their property after seizing it through a “shady” process. Institute of justice
The Pearsons and her husband Michael Storc also rented a safety deposit box in 2017 as financial protection, keeping around $20,000 in silver and $2,000 in cash.
Neither Mellein nor Pearson has been charged with a crime.
The FBI investigated the US Private Vault, which was closed following the raid and eventually pleaded guilty to conspiracy to launder drug money.
After the FBI seized their property along with 1,400 other clients, Mellein and the Pearsons received notices stating the FBI wanted to keep their property through a process known as civil forfeiture.
Jeni Pearsons said the FBI had “no explanation” for where the $2,000 seized from her safe went. Institute of justice
Pearsons said he had never heard of civil forfeiture before.
But after doing some research, he found that one of the options for reclaiming the items presented on the notice essentially gave the FBI all the right to decide what to do with the property.
“It’s very dishonest and shady though,” he told Fox News. “It is the most non-transparent process. It’s not something you would do if your intention was to find out who these items belonged to.”
The FBI did not respond to Fox News’ request for comment.
The FBI seized about $86 million in cash from hundreds of safety deposit boxes at US Private Vaults in a March 2021 raid. Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
The Pearsons partnered with the Justice Institute to fight for his property, while Mellein hired a lawyer and spent $40,000 to reclaim his belongings. They both win, but when they go to the agency’s Los Angeles office to claim their property, they realize some of their belongings are missing.
Mellein was given cash from his box, but none of his 110 gold coins.
The FBI apparently had no record of the missing coins because they were not listed on the property receipt of the box’s contents.
When pressed for a copy of the video inventory of the box, the FBI said that in its rush to process so much property, it had abandoned its initial plan to record the process, instead completing inventory paperwork, according to the Institute of Justice.
“What we’re learning is that their incentive to strip everything they can find trumps their obligation to protect their property,” Gay, the Institute for Justice attorney, told Fox News.
Don Mellein, 79, kept cash and 110 gold coins worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in his box to keep his finances safe. Institute of justice
He said the search became “busy” and “frizzy” as agents rushed to seize assets that ended up being worth nearly $86 million.
“They crammed dozens of agents into this vault, and they spent the next week rummaging through boxes, looking for cash, looking for property to seize,” Gay said.
He said the FBI inventory lists items such as “miscellaneous coins” or “miscellaneous items” that are “very useless” for the intended purpose of protecting the owner’s property.
Mellein sued the government to force the return of the coins in August 2021.
A few months later, the government found and returned 47 of them but told Melleine she must drop her claim and file a lawsuit with the FBI to track down the remaining 63.
In March 2023, after filing his claim, the FBI told Mellein that it had investigated itself and that there was no evidence that it had done anything wrong or negligent, according to the Institute of Justice.
The Jeni Pearsons, who worked with the Justice Institute to fight for her property, rented a safety deposit box in 2017 as financial protection, keeping about $20,000 in silver and $2,000 in cash. Institute of justice
“The FBI had no reason to go through my boxes and they were negligent in losing my savings,” Mellein said in a press release. “For months I was told they didn’t have any of my coins before they finally found some of them.”
“I am disappointed to have to sue again to get back the property that should have been given back to me two years ago,” he added.
Likewise, when Pearson went to claim his property in 2021, he found $2,000 in cash from his box missing.
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“‘They never said, ‘oh, no, that’s not in the box.’ They didn’t return it,” the Pearsons told Fox News. “And they told us at the time that someone from the US Marshal’s office would call and talk to me about it, and then nobody ever called.”
“Maybe the way the FBI and law enforcement are going about this is sloppy work,” he added. “Or there was never any intention of returning it, so it really didn’t matter because they thought they just had to keep everything. So to them, there is a pile.”
Gay said regardless of how the property was lost, the lack or legal action for the owner is wrong.
“We don’t know for sure how the property got lost, we just know it got lost,” he said. “And whether it’s negligence, whether it’s something worse, the government shouldn’t be able to rely on its own poor record keeping to avoid responsibility for the loss of their property.”
The Justice Institute’s lawsuit is not only intended to recover Mellein and Pearson’s property, but also to give civil forfeiture victims the ability to challenge the agency if their property is lost.
“We fundamentally oppose the notion that people should have no recourse against the government when the government takes their property,” Gay said.
Both Mellein and Pearson said the most eye-opening part of the whole experience was feeling like law enforcement was tricked and lied to.
“When I was growing up, we trusted and respected law enforcement, especially the FBI,” Mellein said. “I’m not filing this suit just for me, I’m fighting for a better world where people can trust law enforcement to do the right thing. I fight to make law enforcement better.”
“I want to thank law enforcement for taking care of any crime situation that occurs and for making sure that my involvement with it is painless,” Pearsons said. “But instead, they really did steal.”
“They don’t have the ability to show me a video of them opening this and going through it to say, ‘Oh, no, look, look, it’s not here,'” he added. “It’s just so heartbreaking.”
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
