Congress Has a Real Chance to Fix One of the Most Commonly Abused Snares in the Criminal Justice System
Late last month, a unanimous federal appeals court slammed the FBI for violating the constitutional rights of hundreds of citizens. The case shows the need for Congress to act.
One of the FBI’s victims was Los Angeles County resident Joseph Ruiz. After hurting his back in a traffic accident, Ruiz received much-needed settlement money for food and physical therapy. To keep his cash safe, Ruiz stored it in a safe-deposit box in Beverly Hills.
All that was legal. But when Ruiz showed up on March 22, 2021, he found FBI agents swarming the premises. Their suspect was US Private Vaults, the company operating the facility, which later pleaded guilty to various crimes.
Despite the company supposedly being the target, the agents treated every customer like a criminal. Once inside the facility, agents broke open all the safe-deposit boxes and seized everything inside, including Ruiz’s $57,000.
After Ruiz asked for his money, agents accused him of trafficking drugs. They had no evidence and made no arrest. Yet they held on to his cash anyway. Suddenly destitute, Ruiz had to halt therapy and restrict his diet to staple foods purchased during the run-up to the COVID-19 lockdowns.
Other box renters suffered equally dire losses. Agents seized gold and cash from retired civil servant Don Mellein. They seized money for a new home from Los Angeles mother Linda Martin. Overall, the FBI seized more than $100 million in box renters’ assets without arresting, charging, or convicting any of them.
The FBI then attempted to permanently keep everything worth more than $5,000 using a law enforcement maneuver called civil forfeiture, which allows the government to take and keep property without a conviction.
In more than 90 percent of federal civil forfeiture cases, the government need not prove anything by any standard. Property owners must pay for their own defense, and some walk away because they cannot afford an attorney. Others try to represent themselves but get tangled up in paperwork, losing on technicalities without seeing a judge or jury.
Federal agencies bank on this.
They forfeited at least $45.7 billion during the 20 years from 2000 to 2019. Once the process ends, Congress allows them to keep 100 percent of the proceeds for themselves—meaning they can self-fund through aggressive enforcement.
The built-in financial incentive invites abuse. During deposition after the Beverly Hills raid, one federal agent said the quiet part aloud: The FBI set a $5,000 forfeiture threshold because the agency would not make money forfeiting lower amounts.
Ruiz eventually recovered his money. But he and other box renters brought a class-action lawsuit to challenge the raid. Our public interest law firm, the Institute for Justice, represents the class.
After years of litigation, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit issued its rebuke of the FBI on Jan. 23, holding that the agency violated the Fourth Amendment by breaking into the individual safe-deposit boxes.
Judge Milan Smith, writing for a unanimous three-judge panel, compared the FBI’s actions with the “limitless searches” that British officers inflicted prior to the American Revolution. “It was those very abuses of power, after all, that led to adoption of the Fourth Amendment in the first place,” Smith wrote.
The case shows how far law enforcement agencies will go when cash is on the line.
Before obtaining its warrant to raid US Private Vaults, the FBI promised that it would not conduct a “criminal search or seizure” of customers’ safe-deposit boxes. Yet the plan all along was to take and keep everything using civil forfeiture.
The court was not impressed. “A look at the record,” the ruling holds, “confirms that the search was criminal in nature.”
The FBI’s forfeiture attempt also violates the Fifth Amendment, which guarantees due process before the government deprives someone of “life, liberty, or property.” The money grab shows why Congress should pass House Resolution 1525, the Fifth Amendment Integrity Restoration Act.
This measure would overhaul federal civil forfeiture laws by ensuring court access for everyone, raising the government’s burden of proof, and adding safeguards for innocent third parties like the spouses and children of criminal suspects.
The FAIR Act would also direct civil forfeiture proceeds away from law enforcement agencies, ending the perverse incentive to police for profit. Until these changes happen, people like Ruiz will not be safe.
