{"id":16981,"date":"2025-03-27T13:49:04","date_gmt":"2025-03-27T13:49:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=16981"},"modified":"2025-03-27T13:49:04","modified_gmt":"2025-03-27T13:49:04","slug":"the-fbi-seized-this-womans-life-savings-without-telling-her-why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=16981","title":{"rendered":"The FBI Seized This Woman&#8217;s Life Savings\u2014Without Telling Her Why"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>&#8220;Almost four years ago to the day, the FBI entered U.S. Private Vaults (USPV), a storage business in Beverly Hills, and raided the safe-deposit boxes there, pocketing tens of millions of dollars in cash, valuables, and personal items. Among those owners was Linda Martin, from whom agents took $40,200\u2014her life savings\u2014despite that she had not been charged with a crime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Those charges would never come. Although USPV itself was ultimately indicted in federal court, the government had no case against unknowing customers like Martin, in a scheme that attorneys have compared to seizing property from individual apartment units because the tenants&#8217; landlord was suspected of criminal wrongdoing. At USPV, the agency confiscated over $100 million in valuables from a slew of such people via civil forfeiture, the legal process that allows the government to take people&#8217;s property without having to prove its owners committed any crime.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/reason.com\/2025\/03\/20\/the-fbi-seized-this-womans-life-savings-without-telling-her-why\">https:\/\/reason.com\/2025\/03\/20\/the-fbi-seized-this-womans-life-savings-without-telling-her-why<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Almost four years ago to the day, the FBI entered U.S. Private Vaults (USPV), a storage business in Beverly Hills, and raided the safe-deposit boxes there, pocketing tens of millions of dollars in cash, valuables, and personal items. Among those owners was Linda Martin, from whom agents took $40,200\u2014her life savings\u2014despite that she had not been charged with a crime.<\/p>\n<p>Those charges would never come. Although USPV itself was ultimately indicted in federal court, the government had no case against unknowing customers like Martin, in a scheme that attorneys have compared to seizing property from individual apartment units because the tenants&#8217; landlord was suspected of criminal wrongdoing. At USPV, the agency confiscated over $100 million in valuables from a slew of such people via civil forfeiture, the legal process that allows the government to take people&#8217;s property without having to prove its owners committed any crime.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/reason.com\/2025\/03\/20\/the-fbi-seized-this-womans-life-savings-without-telling-her-why\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[280,33],"class_list":["post-16981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-criminal-justice","tag-fbi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16981"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16981\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16982,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16981\/revisions\/16982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}