By Robert Phillips
Deputy District Attorney (ret.)
Warrantless searches and seizure of anonymous safe deposit boxes violate the Fourth Amendment absent probable cause, and cannot be justified as an inventory search.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal recently decided the potentially interesting — even if a bit confusing — case of Snitko v. United States (9th Cir. Jan 23, 2024) F.4th [2024 U.S. App. LEXIS 1484].
This case involves an FBI investigation, assisted by the DEA and the United States Postal Inspection Service (or USPIS — I had to Google what this abbreviation stood for) of a Beverly Hills company named US Private Vaults (USPV).
It seems that USPV is (or perhaps, after this case, was) a business that rented out completely confidential safe deposit boxes (700 of them; consistently referred to by the court as the company’s “nests of safe deposit boxes”) to people who could— and would — remain anonymous. USPV’s customers were to keep all keys to the boxes. More significantly, USPV’s facility featured significant security measures, including iris-scan vault access, 24/7 electronic monitoring, 24/7 armed response, and a time lock on the vault itself. Protection of its customers’ anonymity was USPV’s main selling point, advertising on its website that clients could rent their safe deposit boxes anonymously, that the company didn’t even want to know who a prospective renter was, and that the company “would only cooperate with the government under court order.”
This piqued the interest of the FBI, concluding that what USPV was really doing was giving dope dealers somewhere to hide their proceeds and/or profits (or even their dope), and that as such, they were likely laundering illegal narcotics profits. The FBI, therefore, seeking a criminal indictment of USPV, put together an affidavit for a search warrant asking the trial court to allow them to seize and inventory the contents of all 700 of USPV’s safe deposit boxes.
Recognizing, however, that they likely lacked probable cause justifying such a warrant, particularly knowing that not all box renters would be involved in criminal activity, the FBI attempted to describe their requested warrant as seeking to conduct an “inventory search,” which doesn’t require probable cause. (Note: An “inventory search” is nothing new. When you impound a car, or take a person to jail, you conduct a warrantless inventory search of that car or of the arrestee, despite the lack of any probable cause to believe there is any evidence of a crime to be found.) These types of searches are conducted, in the case of an impounded car, to determining the car’s condition and contents at the time of impounding, to avoid later disputes or false claims (See Florida v. Wells (1990) 495 U.S. 1 [110 S.Ct. 1632; 109 L.Ed.2nd 1]), or, upon a person’s arrest, for safety reasons (see Illinois v. Lafayette (1983) 462 U.S. 640 [103 S.Ct. 2605; 77 L.Ed.2nd 65]).
With USPV described as the intended target, the FBI wrote two detailed documents. The first was called the “Operation Order Search Plan.” This described in excruciating detail the procedures to be used once a search warrant is issued, in seizing and inventorying the contents of the safe deposit boxes. The second document, entitled “Supplemental Instructions on Box Inventory,” went into further detail concerning the procedures to be used in the inventorying process.
With these documents included as a part of the sworn affidavit, the government eventually obtained a search warrant for the 700 safe deposit boxes. What I expected at this point was a discussion of USPV’s expected complaints about the legality of the searches, the seizure and the inventorying of their safe deposit boxes.
But that’s not what this case is all about.
Included in the above paperwork was a request for the court’s authorization to initiate “administrative” and then “criminal forfeiture proceedings,” seeking to have forfeited to the government any unclaimed contents of the searched safe deposit boxes. Paul and Jennifer Snitko were among plaintiffs who contested the forfeiture of the contents of their respective boxes.
Finally conceding that the searches of safe deposit boxes did not qualify as an inventory search (the preservation of property or the safety of others not being at issue), and that the FBI therefore had violated the plaintiffs’ Fourth Amendment rights, the government relented after the Snitkos and others filed this lawsuit and returned their property.
However, the Snitkos and other plaintiffs continued to press for equitable relief in the form of the destruction of records related to the seizure of their property, a remedy that for whatever reason the government was unwilling to do even though the Ninth Circuit has previously approved such a remedy. (See United States v. Comprehensive Drug Testing, Inc. (9th Cir. 2010) 621 F.3d 1162, 1172.)
Finally, after some 35 pages of confusing and contradictory analysis, the Ninth Circuit held that not only were the civil plaintiffs’ Fourth Amendment rights violated, but that the FBI was required “to sequester or destroy the records of its inventory search(es) pertaining to (the plaintiffs).”
No mention is made in this decision about USPV’s potential criminal liability for money laundering or other violations of law. Nor are we told whether USPV filed any lawsuits similar to this one. These issues, if they are issues, must await a future case decision.
In the meantime, this case, which isn’t nearly as interesting as I thought it might be when I first started reading it, is all we have to ponder.
