Linda Martin thought she was responsible by putting her nest egg in a safe where she wouldn’t be tempted to touch it.
She never imagined that the FBI would seize her savings.
“They didn’t tell us why they took our money. They didn’t tell us what we did wrong,” Martin, 58, told Fox News. “We didn’t do anything wrong. We work and we saved our money because we tried to save and buy a house.”
Two years later, Martin still doesn’t know why her money was taken away or if she will ever get it back.
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“The FBI, they feel like they can get away with anything,” she said. “I just feel like it’s unfair.”
On March 22, 2021, the FBI seized the lockers of Martin and 1,400 other clients at US Private Vaults, a Beverly Hills-based company. The FBI took the $40,200 Linda was saving for a down payment on a house, in addition to another $86 million in cash and tens of millions more in gold, silver, jewelry and other valuables from other safe deposit box tenants.
Martin learned about the raid while watching the local news with her husband.
“I just couldn’t believe it,” said Martin. ‘I really didn’t believe it. I sat down to watch the news with him and the FBI raided our private safe.”
Several months later, she received a message saying that the FBI wanted to keep her money through a process known as civil forfeiture. Confused by the legal jargon, Martin chose to petition the agency, the first option listed on their post, not realizing that she had admitted that her property could be forfeited and, consequently, the FBI to determine if she could get her money. back.
Martin told Fox News that she has not received a determination.
She also said that, to her knowledge, no one who had their assets taken has been charged or even suspected of any crime. Rather, the FBI had been investigating US Private Vaults, which were closed after the raid and pleaded guilty to conspiracy to launder drug money.
Linda Martin is filing a class action lawsuit to recover her life savings seized from her safe by the FBI during a 2021 raid.
“Unfortunately, this is legal,” Bob Belden, attorney for the Justice Institute, told Fox News. “Civil forfeiture is a process in the United States that allows law enforcement officers to take property from people who have never been charged with a crime.”
Last week, Martin and the Institute for Justice filed an alleged nationwide class action lawsuit to help anyone who has had property repossessed by a government agency in the past six years and received a flawed notice of forfeiture.
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According to the FBI report Martin received, her savings were taken under administrative forfeiture, an action under the Tariff Act of 1930 that allows federal agencies to seize property without judicial intervention.
“It’s really a system where the agency is not just the prosecutor, the judge and the jury,” Belden said, “but also a governor or a president considering a pardon.”
He said that in these types of forfeitures, law enforcement only needs a probable reason that property is somehow related to a crime to seize it.
“Linda’s case is a really good example of how that norm is somewhat meaningless in real life,” he said.
The FBI filed for a seizure order against U.S. Private Vaults in March 2021, but both the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in the petition that agents would only “inventory” the properties of box tenants and that the warrant would “authorize the seizing the nests of the boxes themselves, not their contents,” said the Institute for Justice’s review of the court documents.
Using federal forfeiture data, the Institute for Justice calculated that Justice Department agencies brought in more than $8 billion through forfeitures from 2017 to 2021, of which the FBI earned $1.19 billion. (Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
The FBI and the United States Attorney’s Office failed to tell the judge that months earlier they planned to use civil forfeiture to seize all assets in client chests worth more than $5,000, the minimum monetary threshold. from the FBI for forfeiture, according to Justice Institute findings.
“They had developed probable cause in their own heads before they knew anything about the owner of a single box,” Belden told Fox News.
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An FBI spokeswoman previously said the agency seized large-scale lockers at US Private Vault “based on allegations of widespread criminal misconduct” and that the seizure was within the confines of their warrant. But Martin said she never got an explanation.
Moreover, according to Belden, government agencies benefit from these types of raids. After an agency submits seized property to the Justice Department’s Assets Forfeiture Fund, the money is then returned to the agency to pay for “expenses associated with accomplishing the legal forfeiture of the property,” it said. DOJ.
Belden said that just means more money in the bureau’s pocket.
“It’s a great incentive,” he told Fox News. “It is a great incentive to forfeit property.“
Using federal forfeiture data, the Institute for Justice calculated that Justice Department agencies brought in more than $8 billion through forfeitures from 2017 to 2021, of which the FBI earned $1.19 billion.
In a previous class action lawsuit brought by the Institute for Justice, a judge ruled in favor of a safe deposit box group and found that the notices of administrative forfeiture sent by the FBI did not provide enough information to plaintiffs about why and how their property was being stolen. confiscated. The judge ordered the FBI to return the property to those named in the lawsuit or send a more detailed administrative forfeiture notice. The FBI returned the property.
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“We’ve come to call this, ‘Take now, never delay forfeiture,'” Belden said.
The FBI seized an estimated $86 million in cash from hundreds of safe deposit boxes at US Private Vaults in a March 2021 raid. (Al Seib/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
“Linda has no idea what they think she did wrong,” Belden said. “It just illustrates what we think is happening to hundreds or thousands of people in other states across the country.”
Martin chose to file a class action lawsuit in hopes of recovering not only her property, but the property of anyone who has been subjected to administrative forfeiture.
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“I felt misled. I felt angry,” Martin told Fox News. “I’m not just arguing for myself, but for everyone, because there are a lot of people who don’t know what to do.”
“We’re just trying to get justice,” she added.
Neither the FBI nor the U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California responded to Fox News’ request for comment.
Click here to watch the full interview with Martin and Belden.
