When FBI agents stormed US Private Vaults in Los Angeles in March 2021, they claimed they were only after the business. Their warrant even explicitly forbade the criminal search or seizure of customers’ safe deposit boxes. But the FBI broke that promise, prying open more than 800 boxes and scouring through their contents. 

Inside, agents found over $100 million in cash, gold, and jewelry. Though the FBI didn’t know who owned what, or if any renter had done anything wrong, it had already decided to try to forfeit everything worth more than $5,000. Why? Because that was the FBI’s internal threshold to ensure they made enough on the forfeiture to make it “worth the paperwork.”

The Snitko Case: Stopping the Search

Paul and Jennifer Snitko got caught in the dragnet. They, along with Jeni Pearsons, Joseph Ruiz, and other brave clients, joined with IJ to file a class action challenging the raid. We quickly uncovered that, months before the warrant, the FBI had secretly decided to take and forfeit customers’ property—and concealed that plan from the court.

The 9th Circuit’s ruling in Snitko v. United States was scathing. The court held that the FBI violated the Fourth Amendment by conducting the kind of general searches the Founders sought to forbid. It ordered the government to destroy all the records it gained from its illegal rummaging, vindicating the rights of our clients and hundreds of other innocent renters.

The Notice Victories: Exposing “Take Now, Explain Never”

The FBI’s transgressions didn’t end with the raid. Rather than return property as promised, the FBI sent nearly identical forfeiture notices to over 400 box renters, including Jeni and Joseph. But those notices didn’t say what specific facts or law justified keeping renters’ property forever. 

Leaving people in the dark like that violates due process. And a federal court agreed, stopping the FBI from forfeiting Jeni’s and Joseph’s property with “anemic notices” that failed to “identify the specific factual and legal basis” for the forfeiture as the Constitution requires. 

Unfortunately, the D.C. Circuit rejected our broader class action on a court-created procedural issue.

The Missing Valuables: Making The FBI Pay

The raid had another ugly consequence: Valuables went missing. For Jeni Pearsons and Michael Storc, $2,000 vanished. Don Mellein’s retirement nest egg—63 gold coins, worth more than $150,000—never made it back.

The FBI initially denied responsibility, invoking a patchwork of immunities to claim it couldn’t be sued. But the court rejected that shell game, holding that when the government seizes property, saying “we lost it” is no reason to shut the courthouse doors. After that ruling, the FBI repaid Jeni and Michael. But it held fast with Don.

So we kept fighting. And in discovery, we learned the FBI’s mishandling of property was so bad that Don’s coins sat for months in a general evidence locker rather than a secure vault. Once the court ordered the FBI to report similar situations where property went “missing,” the FBI repaid Don the full market value of his coins—and told the court it was giving up largely because IJ had litigated with “unusual intensity.” (The same intensity we bring to every IJ case!)

Why It Matters

The U.S. Private Vaults saga is one of the starkest examples of how civil forfeiture’s perverse incentives can turn law enforcement into lawbreakers. IJ’s work halted the largest mass forfeiture in American history. And our victories over the FBI set national precedent ensuring that:

Federal agencies cannot use a limited warrant as a blank check to search whatever they want.

The government must give property owners clear, factual notice before attempting forfeiture.

Agencies can be held financially accountable when they lose or steal seized property.

The message to other federal agencies couldn’t be more clear: IJ will keep challenging the doctrines and incentives that make these abuses possible until every American is secure in their property. And we will continue to do so with “unusual intensity.”

Rob Frommer is an IJ senior attorney.