“This argument is misguided,” Klausner said Friday in an order denying the prosecutor’s request. Andrew Brown, the prosecutor in charge of the investigation, asked Klausner to dismiss a suit brought by Charles Coe, the pseudonym of a box holder seeking the return of more than $914,000 in cash.īrown said Coe was “a wealthy person living in the United States who has the means to hire a large law firm to do his bidding and spend well over a thousand dollars a year to store items anonymously at USPV.” “We call on the FBI to give up its $85-million cash grab and give people their stuff back,” Frommer said. Ruiz’s attorney, Robert Frommer, said it shouldn’t take a class action suit “to get the FBI to respect the 4th Amendment.” “If they can just straight-up step on our Constitution and wipe their feet on it, they just can’t be trusted.”Ī previous Klausner ruling blocked the government’s forfeiture of cash, gold and silver belonging to four box holders, including Ruiz, who sued the government. “I can’t really get my hopes up too high,” Ruiz said by telephone. Ruiz, 47, is skeptical that the FBI will return his money. “This warrant does not authorize a criminal search or seizure of the contents of the safety deposit boxes,” Kim said in his March 17 authorization. The FBI could seize the boxes, Kim decided, but had to return the contents to the owners. When FBI agents and prosecutors initially asked for permission to rip all of the safe deposit boxes out of the store’s walls, U.S. attorney’s office, who declined to comment. Private Vaults were criminals, but have declined to specify crimes they allegedly committed.Īn FBI spokeswoman referred questions to Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S.
attorney’s office in Los Angeles claimed that most of the people who stored valuables anonymously in safe deposit boxes at U.S. Private Vaults are suing the FBI over its attempt to confiscate gold and silver, jewelry and $86 million in cash from safe deposit boxes. Poliak could not be reached for comment.Ĭalifornia FBI wants to keep fortune in cash, gold, jewels from Beverly Hills raid. The statement was first disclosed Monday by the Daily Beast. But the only customers identified by prosecutors so far are a Drug Enforcement Administration agent working undercover and some unnamed government informants.Īn April court statement by a postal inspector detailed suspected laundering of drug trafficking money by one of the company’s owners, Michael Poliak, but he has not been charged publicly with any crime. Private Vaults on charges of conspiring with its customers to sell drugs, launder money and structure financial transactions to dodge detection by the government. In March, a federal grand jury indicted U.S. Klausner said it was “troubling” that Ruiz had declared in a sworn statement that he “desperately” needed the money for food and medicine because he was living off canned foods that he had stockpiled during the pandemic. The government “has failed to provide any justification” for holding the cash, Klausner wrote. Klausner found that “the facts and the law clearly favor” Ruiz in his claim that the government violated his rights by seizing and refusing to return the money.
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