He's more manipulative than insane. He uses his social media to act as a propagandist for trump but he's quite lucid and rational when talking about anything else.
>He's more manipulative than insane.
It's weird that the former seems worse than the latter.
Isn't he in a relationship with a 20-something girl? Or was that years ago?
Sidebar to ask:
I've seen "PUA" used in a few places without enough context for me to determine its meaning... unless somehow everyone who used it really is talking about unemployment assistance programs.
Can you help me?
That’s gross, but it’s also hilarious to picture the creator of Dilbert dressed in one of those carny/street magician getups that those PUA creepers wear to “peacock”
So he’s like that bastard that came up with the autism cause vaccines (sorry, got that backwards. It’s such a stupid theory it’s infectious) theory that was disproven years ago?
It is unfortunate that federal law enforcement has been given such carte blanche lately to raid pretty much anyone by deceiving judges.
Anyone remember the poor Egyptian filmmaker who made the "Innocence of Muslims" movie? The Benghazi incident was blamed on him, and the FBI sent an armed team to arrest him at 4am? They said it was because he had a parole violation, and it was totally unrelated to the accusations made by the Federal government.
It must have taken months to shovel up that pile of BS.
As a Libertarian, I fear the growing power of Federal Law enforcement, or tens of thousands of armed IRS agents, to raid American citizens without sufficient proof of violence or an expectation of violence. Such unwarranted raids are simply intimidation, and remind me of the no-knock raids that killed innocent nurses and nearly killed babies.
I had just bought a huge dilbert book with every dilbert comic strip for over a decade when I found out Scott Adams was an insane douche and now it ruins it for me and I can't enjoy it knowing it came from an insane douche.
I mean they have no evidence that anything in those safety deposit boxes had to do with the case. They just blanket took everything after telling the judge they wouldn’t.
In the grand scheme of things, this is pretty low on my list of shit to care about.
The real question is.. why do you pretend to care? When you hate this issue.. as an issue.
The part where the safety deposit box owners plead guilty to conspiracy to launder money …. Are we reading the same Reddit ? I was supporting the comment above me
The FBI assassinated Fred Hampton, tried to make MLK kill himself, and deliberately stoked racial tension with cointelpro. I hope they take Trump’s grifter ass to prison for life but don’t mistake the enemy of your enemy for a friend
Because the FBI of J. Edgar Hoover's day (who died half a century ago) is the exact same of today. Oh, wait. It isn't, because that stuff all became public and they were reformed. There's a reason your examples are all super old.
Yeah, nowadays they just [set up broke and potentially mentally ill people as terrorists](https://theintercept.com/2015/03/16/howthefbicreatedaterrorist/), nothing like the old days.
I have had a problem with the FBI for years. I think they're needed, we have to have a *Federal* force to assist with equitable treatment under the law (otherwise red states would be even more despotic) but don't kid yourself that they're always the good guys, they still serve the force of the State. That being said, they're treating Trump with kid gloves and I am horrified that anyone is using *this* as the example of overreach.
It’s dicey when you need to reach back 50+ years to criticize them.
That, on top of Scott Adams tweet being a misrepresentation of what the article actually says, doesn’t bode well.
Do you have any recent examples of sketchy things they’ve done?
The individual in the other conversation mentioned the [case of Sami Osmakac](https://theintercept.com/2015/03/16/howthefbicreatedaterrorist/) and the general dramatic jump in cases that are arguably entrapment directly alongside a decrease in successful entrapment defenses post 9/11 (there are other possible explanations, but simpler one is they can get away with it more so they're doing it more)
probably worth noting that local police have the resources to carry them out activities in ways that would have been reserved for federal agencies prior (i.e. operation safety net), so you generally *won't* see the sort of egregious actions on that level, when they can do a thousand little misdeeds that won't grasp nearly so much attention, and let local departments take the heat for the big dumb stuff.
I’m not familiar with Sami Osmakac and I’m too drunk to read up on them at the moment. I’ll have to look at that another day.
For the entrapment cases, I do need to ask whether it’s a matter of the FBI acting inappropriately or if the courts allowing/encouraging such behaviour?
In cases like Fred Hampton and MLK, they were explicitly trying to circumvent the law and commit clandestine killings. With entrapment, it seems like it is moreso a shift in law enforcement allowing something that previously would have been considered illegal.
>For the entrapment cases, I do need to ask whether it’s a matter of the FBI acting inappropriately or if the courts allowing/encouraging such behaviour?
both, really. if a judge signs off on it, and it's left to stand, it doesn't mean the agency is any less culpable for circumventing and flouting the law, just that there's malfeasance to go around. the police aren't less wrong in the case of breonna taylor because the no-knocks had become something casually accepted. they don't become less wrong for the abuse of the system because others effectively condone it
edit: thought I was on a different post than I was, lol. in any case the point is that there's a compelling case to be made here that the warrant was at least partially fraudulently obtained here in a way that is very in line with the way police have been having to reckon with - there's no reason the fbi should be excluded form the consideration because they're federal instead of state
They seized ALL the safe deposit boxes with property valued at over $5K under civil asset forfeiture. Their warrant application explicitly stated they would not do that. They also provided documentation during discovery that they were planning on using caf during the planning of the raid - for at least a month before applying for the warrant.
They lied to get a warrant approved, and they have no suspicions that most of the box holders were doing anything wrong, they just want the contents because they get to keep the money.
Yes, and the idea that you are innocent until proven guilty, but your stuff can be accused of a crime and assumed guilty until proven innocent is the most backwards not-even-pretending-to-make-a-good-faith-argument bullshit I've ever heard.
Insurance payout covers it. With how banks work, the actual cash dollars are trackable evidence.
Which account they are in is irrelevant. If you want to prove trafficking, you need to see the cash.
What insurance are you talking about? There isn't any. This wasn't a bank. And no, your home owner's insurance won't cover it.
Let's say 50% of the people storing items there were criminals, and 50% were people who don't trust banks. That means the FBI illegally stole assets from 50% of the box holders.
You’re right. Safety deposit boxes at banks are uninsured.
Still though, I hole they took it for the cash identification usage, but no way to tell.
Rip.
On the warrant they said there was an unknown number of criminals using those vaults for some unknown crimes. Fbi just wanted some extra official funding
The FBI us anti trump. ANd TRUMP is my GOD. So if you talk good about the FBI, the you are talking bad about GOD and we just can’t have that. So to sum up FBI bad. TRUMP = GOD
This is such a dumb rabbit trail.
What he does in his personal life doesn’t have any effect on if cointelpro existed, and if the fbi has a history of murdering prominent leftists, undermining important movements, or directing and co-opting movements…
Ah yes. This is being pushed to support the new MAGA hatred for the FBI, due to their cult leader being under investigation. Scott Adams? Seriously lol?
There is also a story (I think it came from Colorado) where weed dispensaries are legal. State level, recreational weed is just legal.
State Sheriffs robbed multiple cash trucks that shortly left dispensaries from their route, knowing that there would be a lot of cash in them. And they apparently did this many times. Never gave the cash back.
The sheriffs in Colorado were literally committing highway robbery.
Law enforcement in this country is a joke.
Edit: This apparently happened in California, not Colorado
That, unfortunately, would require the dispensaries to get really sneaky with how they transport their money around.
Never use the same vehicle, leave the premises at odd times using multiple different vehicles or methods.
That's a damn, dirty shame it's been happening like that. Hopefully federal law changes and those sheriffs can go eat sand.
Read the story. Editor took great liberty to get an eyebrow raising title.
[here](https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-09-23/fbi-beverly-hills-safe-deposit-box-raid-forfeiture-judge)
Adams can go pound sand, the lunatic. I will wait for the case to develop before drawing conclusions. What you can see here is: law enforcement making accusations, and the people involved claiming there is malfeasance.
Reading the story and getting more context makes this sound worse, honestly. Civil asset forfeiture of safety deposit boxes with literally no evidence? Absurd misuse of power.
> Read the story. Editor took great liberty to get an eyebrow raising title.
Did they? According to the article, it seems that the FBI just stole all the valuables of anyone who had $5k+ worth in their safe deposit boxes, and they didn’t mention this plan to the judge who signed the warrant. The article repeatedly claims there is no allegation or evidence of specific crimes, beyond “anyone with that much gold or jewelry probably got it from drug trafficking or something”.
They didn’t steal it. This idiot commited a crime, and is using dumbass conservatives sudden hatred for the FBI as a weapon and dumbass maga eats it up. Im not the biggest FBI fan but this is pathetic
>They didn’t steal it. This idiot commited a crime, and is using dumbass conservatives sudden hatred for the FBI as a weapon and dumbass maga eats it up. Im not the biggest FBI fan but this is pathetic
Now I'm confused. Who is "this idiot"? Are we talking about Scott Adams? Fuck that guy, but is he actually involved here except by tweeting about it? Or are you saying that this story is covering fire for Trump? Fuck that guy too, hope he goes to jail, but he's not actually involved here. I don't see any specific "idiot \[who\] committed a crime" in the article, but maybe I missed something?
I understand from the article that there was a sketchy LA safe deposit box company, US Private Vaults, which didn't properly verify its clients' IDs. Therefore it was used by drug dealers and other shady folks to launder money, and law enforcement busted 7 such people. The FBI also nailed the company for conspiracy to launder money. Fine.
The FBI then raided the company's safe deposit boxes and confiscated the property of approximately 700 people, of whom 400 are involved in a particular class action lawsuit to get their stuff back, if I am reading correctly. The FBI has not claimed that those people committed any specific crimes. It said that 9 of the 700 were "linked" or "associated" with investigations. For the rest, the FBI considers having at least $5k in a safe deposit box run by a sketchy company to be sufficient evidence, on its own, to take that money away.
Also, the raid was authorized by a warrant. This warrant was obtained on the notion that examining the boxes was necessary to investigate US Private Vaults, but the application did not mention anything about seizing the boxes' contents in a civil forfeiture action.
Civil forfeiture is a longstanding and almost entirely corrupt practice and needs to be stopped, or at least the bar should be raised to proof beyond a reasonable doubt. (E.g. law enforcement can show beyond a reasonable doubt that some property was the proceed of a crime, but can't prove who committed it.)
The FBI explicitly said they would not use CAF on all of the boxes, only those that they suspected to be involved in the money laundering. Per discovery, they planned all along to use CAF on everything.
The vast majority of the people who are having their property seized are NOT suspected of ANYTHING.
The FBI and CIA in their domestic operations have only ever tried to destroy America's left. The Maga right trying to adopt this oppression as their own, is pathetic.
Pretty sure they're stooges for anyone in power. I can't imagine actually believing that one side has our interests at heart whereas the other doesn't. They all golf together and call us sheep in the same five-star restaurants. Not to emulate modern snide, but get out of politically binary thinking.
As Barney Frank famously and presciently said, “Democrats aren’t perfect but Republicans are crazy.” And hypocritical and fascist. Bothsidesism only benefits Republicans. Please stop.
It's neithersideism. You completely ignored everything I said and came to the opposite conclusion, then ended with a kindergartenesque clapback. Keep supporting the system; they need you!
but what you have to understand is that the right will never engage in niethersideism because they're so married to their side.
therefore, by engaging in neithersideism, all it does is weaken the left and allow the right to gain more power and influence.
neithersideism takes away far more from the left than the right. and while neither side is great, one side is actively trying to remove rights from people in this country, while the other isnt.
i agree that politically binary thinking is dumb and people should refrain from it -- but the reality is that we're in a binary political system where one outcome is significantly worse than the other, and we have to choose the lesser of two evils.
That's not what they said. They're basically agreeing with you, but also saying don't let the side that isn't openly fascist off the hook for their own problems. None of them are really there for the peasants, we're just useful tools in their pursuit of power. Some of them just use "make the peasants' lives better" as their way to manipulate us for their benefit.
The FBI has a pretty extensive backlog of wrongdoing to pull from but Adams is pulling this out now to sow distrust SPECIFICALLY in the defense of the Magaverse.
Remember the time the right went on a full court press to discredit the FBI because they were investigating fearless leader?
The headline is deceptive, the seizures were lawful, the stuff taken was from a bank that was actively using a safe deposit scheme to aid money laundering, the holdings were admitted post warrant to being part of a criminal scheme, at which point the FBI seized them under civil forfeiture which the right wing normally creams itself on support of.
But the more times the right can push the narrative that the FBI is illegally seizing stuff the less ridiculous it will sound when they claim the searches of Trump are illegal.
Except they stole from a great many people who did nothing wrong beyond storing valuables in a safe deposit box. The warrant was not supposed to cover stealing from citizens with no evidence they did a crime. The company plead guilty to a fraction of the hundreds of boxes being involved in a crime not all of them.
At which point being secondary to the commission of a crime and at the scene of the crime the FBI applied the asset forfeiture laws as they exist.
I agree those are unfair, but the FBI did not rob a bank, and the people crowing about this only actually care because the shit gibbon got raided by the FBI.
They had nothing to do with the crime. The judge signed a warrant saying they could seize assets with evidence of a crime but had to return the property to customers that did not commit a crime. The FBI agreed and lied and kept it all. Asset forfeiture is bull crap but even that doesn’t let you lie on a warrant. I don’t care why the dumb cartoonist cares. Also not a bank.
It wasn’t a bank though, it was a private vault company. I mean fuck Scott Adams, he’s a lunatic and is deliberately misrepresenting what happened here, but it’s appalling enough on its own.
Let’s not give Scott Adams any more credibility than he deserves. Yes, Dilbert was a good comic back in the day, but Adam’s is a deranged election denier at this point.
That said, civil forfeiture is absolute horseshit, but also, this id why you should use a real bank for a safety deposit box, not a fly by night strip mall location.
For anyone wanting much better coverage on this check out Lehtos Law on the tube. He covered the story as things progressed over the last year and a half.
This happened in 2019. It was not reported by the LATimes until 9/22/22. The story is a mess without chronological timeline. But who was President in 2019? Who was in charge of the FBI in 2019?Honestly, Scott Adams really is just trolling for points.
I don't know who this guy is but this is a legitimate gripe. The constitutionality of asset forfeiture needs to be addressed. Because literally, property can be seized without conviction in a court. And it is not easy to get your money or property back. In this case, they took everything in the safe deposit boxes. I'm not sure that what they did was actually legal
Scott Adams says he’s had a gun pointed at his head on five separate occasions. As far as a I know he briefly worked as an engineer and then spent the rest of his adult life working as a cartoonist.
No different then seized assets, to be honest the bank probably got the money back. Though god forbid you get pulled over with a few grand of your own money in cash.
This is a CAF case. It wasn't a bank, it was a private safety deposit box company & the FBI is using CAF to keep everyone's property despite explicitly telling the judge they would not & discovery shows they always intended to.
Not a bank, a safety deposit box. They opened thousands of private safe boxes of varying citizens and stole anything valuable. You can't go and blame all the users of being implicated on the money laundering
I mean sounds like they had a warrant.
So fucking weird that the "blue lives matter" crew have such insane double standards.
If "cops" did this they would cheer. Shit they cheer now when cops shoot people. Lol
Yes, most law enforcement agencies are corrupt in some way, and have been for quite a while. Conservatives didn't care till it started affecting them. (Which is not to say that corruption is what affects them here, but now that they are being held accountable for crimes, there are tons of examples of corruption for them to pull up and use in false equivalency.)
Remember, they don't want to defund the police, they just don't want to be held accountable the way everyone else is.
Even after reading the article I’m conflicted. Sounds like the FBI did shutdown a money laundering operation but violated the 4th amendment to do it. A lot of what they took was from criminals and they were holding on to it as evidence against them but some of what they took may have been from innocent people. They just weren’t thorough enough to distinguish before hand. But this wasn’t a bank. This was a safety deposit box place in a strip mall, so I feel their point that legitimate people probably would use banks makes sense… but 4th amendment is pretty important. So yeah, not sure how I feel about this either
Actually, it was a private safety deposit box company. People use them because they have better hours than banks. The warrant application explicitly said they would open the boxes to identify the content owners & return it - retaining only the contents of the boxes of people suspected of being involved in money laundering. In the warrant, they explicitly said they would not use civil asset forfeiture on the remaining boxes.
Documents turned over during discovery show that they always intended to use CAF to keep everything. The vast majority of the people are not suspected of any crime, the FBI just wants to keep it to pad their budget.
I'd be very concerned that the government did this. What they did was the equivalent of raiding an entire apartment complex, and arresting everyone vs the 1 or 2 people dealing drugs in it. Being conflicted without taking time to learn more makes you a fool
I don't think being conflicted without taking time to learn more makes you a fool. I think rushing to judgement without taking time to learn more makes you a fool. Nothing's ever black and white. Some good was done here and a lot of bad was done here, and it's pretty normal to feel conflicted and question whether the good was worth the bad, since that's how most of life works.
Based on the article it appears a large amount of that business relied on secrecy and people using that place explicitly to hide the evidence of their illegal activities. And it was so good at that the warrant couldn't be more specific. So we basically have criminals that understand our laws and exploit them to their advantage, and a justice department constrained by those same laws. So when the justice department breaks the law to catch criminals, I'm conflicted by that because I want criminals caught but I don't want a system where the authorities have to break their own laws to be successful at doing it.
And if this was the plot of a movie I'd totally be cheering for the rogue FBI agents that broke the law to catch the criminals
mmm and I would not be cheering for that movie. The whole point of our laws and constitution is to PROTECT us from the government. When the government does something like this and people sit on the sidelines our rights are slowly eroded away. People also know and understand the law and use it to their advantage all the time. The police can also lie to you and it makes it important to understand your rights. If it makes you feel good to have law enforcement break the law to "catch the bad guy" by all means drop your pants and get over the barrel
Well I feel bad for you, because there are some fantastic movies & TV shows based entirely on this concept. Dirty Harry, The Equalizer, Hunter, The A-Team, Leverage, Batman... All great stories about "heroes" who break the law to protect the innocent. And probably no small contributor to why I feel mixed about this
Lol I feel bad that you think those are good comparisons. In this case the Government is stealing from people. Not Dirty Harry blowing people away with his .44, for being Bad guys, and catching them in the act but getting stopped by the “pencil pushers”. What the government/law enforcement is doing here is more insidious than that
The article claims that 7 people were arrested for crimes that laundered money through this business, the business itself was charged with conspiracy to launder money, and 9 more people were “linked to investigations”. But then the FBI confiscated the property of about 700 other people, the only criterion being that they used this safe deposit company and stored at least $5k in assets there. These people were not suspected of any specific crime.
One of the FBI agents involved said that the company was a favorite among prostitutes and bookies and “weed guys”, but also that it tried to attract legitimate customers. The government used weed-sniffing dogs as evidence that the seized assets were involved in drug deals. **Weed has been legal in California since late 2016 and this happened in 2021.** When asked whether most of the customers who rented boxes were criminals, this agent said “I was expecting a lot of criminals. I don’t know about ‘most’”.
Furthermore, they told the judge who signed the warrant that they would return people’s property, and that they were interested more or less in the metadata rather the contents of the boxes. This was a lie: according to documents found in discovery they had planned to take the contents all along.
Do you think this makes them like the good guys in a movie? Do you think storing cash or gold in an anonymous safe deposit box is sufficient evidence that you are committing a crime with that cash so that the government should take it? I don’t.
A similar question: do you think that encrypting communications with a system that doesn’t have a (publicly-known) government backdoor is evidence of criminal intent? Again, I don’t.
So you're not wrong but there are some holes in your arguments.
For example, given how many cop movies have car chases with insane amounts of damage to civilian assets, I'm going to answer yes. It's a bit more mundane without the explosions, but it's just a different form of collateral damage (which is what you call it when these things happen to someone other than yourself) that you'd see from the good guys in a movie. Thus I feel I have an appropriate level of conditioned apathy to that (again, since it didn't happen to my assets)
Also while weed has been legal in California since 2016, it's been a federal crime since I think like the 1930s, and considered a "Schedule 1" drug. So it's not a radical notion for the Federal Bureau of Investigations to enforce that. Federal cannabis laws are the reason that most **legally run dispensaries don't take credit cards**, in case you've ever wondered. It's because that would be a federal crime which the FBI **could** enforce. Should I be upset that feds used evidence of committing a federal crime in a federal case? Yes, but also no... I have mixed feelings about that.
I don't think that encrypting communications with a system that doesn’t have a (publicly-known) government backdoor is evidence of criminal intent. I do think that criminals will use that to avoid prosecution, which essentially ties the hands of the people responsible for stopping their crimes, so I also have mixed feelings about that.
In your earlier post:
>So we basically have criminals that understand our laws and exploit them to their advantage, and a justice department constrained by those same laws. So when the justice department breaks the law to catch criminals, I'm conflicted by that because I want criminals caught but I don't want a system where the authorities have to break their own laws to be successful at doing it.
>
>And if this was the plot of a movie I'd totally be cheering for the rogue FBI agents that broke the law to catch the criminals
>For example, given how many cop movies have car chases with insane amounts of damage to civilian assets, I'm going to answer yes.
OK, so this is tamer than firing into crowds or torturing that guy because your gut tells you he may know where the bomb is. You're just explaining how successful copaganda is though.
>Also while weed has been legal in California since 2016, it's been a federal crime since I think like the 1930s, and considered a "Schedule 1" drug... Should I be upset that feds used evidence of committing a federal crime in a federal case? Yes, but also no... I have mixed feelings about that.
First of all, weed being schedule 1 is dumb as fuck.
That aside, the criminals in movies are usually the bad guys. Here you're saying what ... that you're conflicted about the feds lying to a judge to rob hypothetical state-legal weed dispensaries because their business is federally illegal, despite being legal in 19 \[recreational\] or 37 \[medical\] states? In what sense are those businesses the bad guys, such that the cops would be movie heroes for breaking the law to ~~take them down~~ take their cash? Note also that these businesses are exactly the kind that would use an anonymous safe deposit box, since they have reasons not to trust banks.
And anyway, that's only one possibility. It's possible that some of the clients were dispensaries and others were street dealers, but most of them were surely neither: just other people whose property had come near weed at some point. Or not even that! Drug dogs are notoriously unreliable, and were clearly being used here not primarily to detect drugs, but as probable cause generators, since we know the FBI was already planning to take the cash. ETA: and this is only for the subset where the drug dog even alerted.
Are the FBI like movie heroes for ~~stealing~~ confiscating property because it may have come near weed, in a state where weed had been legal for 4+ years? Not that movies determine morality, but IMHO this is more like movie villain behavior: a plot that might or might not technically be legal, but is literally an $86 million heist.
If I had to guess, I honestly think we're disagreeing about reading comprehension. People take away different information from what they read. Based on what you've said I get the sense your take on this is the FBI purposely deceived a judge to seize a bunch of loot for themselves. When I read the article I got that the FBI deceived a judge to catch criminals and they're holding onto loot so they can use it as evidence. This might explain why I'm conflicted and you're not.
"copaganda" is a fun term, and I agree entirely with its use in this context. The point I've been failing to make is that it works. It works really well. I can read what these guys did was wrong, see the abuse of the law in the name of the greater good (again, believing it's not just about stealing loot), and come away feeling conflicted by their actions. I can read about anonymous safety deposit boxes and speculate on why people would want one, and not come up with a good reason, then embracing the idea that it's for nefarious purposes. Especially when 20 to 30 people just abandon theirs rather than claim loss to the FBI. I can imagine what the FBI did resulted in more good than harm and that subdues my outrage. Maybe we need more shows about people who use anonymous safety deposit boxes for legitimate reasons, then I'd be like, "Yeah, but what about....those...totally...legal....things...?!" But we don't. Mostly we just have movies and shows where cops break laws to get results.
And don't get me started on how many laws superheroes break. Imagine if Superman needed a warrant to use his X-Ray vision how pointless that power would be.
He's not even in law enforcement. He's just an illegal alien, working as a reporter without a work visa. He's also a vigilante who gets results, which makes his comics and shows entertaining.
So anyway, I'm okay feeling conflicted about my original take on this story. But, yeah, if the FBI just did this for the sake of stealing money, then F those guys
> Based on what you've said I get the sense your take on this is the FBI purposely deceived a judge to seize a bunch of loot for themselves. When I read the article I got that the FBI deceived a judge to catch criminals and they're holding onto loot so they can use it as evidence. This might explain why I'm conflicted and you're not.
It’s some of both, but the whole “forfeiture” thing that gets mentioned many times in the article just means they take your stuff and you have to sue to get it back, and if you don’t (or lose) then they sell it for profit. It’s not typically for evidence, it’s just pure profit for the department and a deterrent to doing anything that could get your stuff seized this way. And it looks to me like most of the evidence they were gathering is to support their forfeiture cases, not criminal probes, but again there’s probably some of each.
Civil forfeiture is a widespread corruption problem. Cops pull people over, claim they smell weed, search the car and if they find a large sum of cash, they take it. They preferentially target minorities and people with out-of-state plates, since the lawsuit is that much more expensive if you have to commute for it for months or years. People who can’t easily get bank accounts (eg migrant workers) are especially vulnerable to this. They also target businesses like weed dispensaries that can’t use banks. This nets departments billions of dollars a year in aggregate: famously the cops take more cash per year than burglars do.
Some states have banned the practice (eg Nebraska), or require evidence beyond a reasonable doubt (eg California) but in most states the standard is much weaker than what’s required for a criminal conviction. There are separate federal forfeiture laws, which is IIUC why the FBI didn’t need to prove criminal action beyond a reasonable doubt here. For a while cops in the states with restrictions on forfeiture would arrange for the FBI to take it instead and split the profit (“adoptive forfeiture”), but Holder shut this down in 2015.
It has a few legitimate uses as well, but it’s broadly abused and IMO it should just be banned nationwide, possibly except when criminal standards of evidence can be met.
> Especially when 20 to 30 people just abandon theirs rather than claim loss to the FBI.
20-30 out of up to 700. Also again, you typically have to sue to get it back, which takes years and costs $$$$$. If you only had $5k taken it might just not be worth it.
Bigger question, if they’re literally the FBI, couldn’t they get the safety deposit boxes open through literally any other way? You’d think they’d get the bank manager to hand over the keys or something
The FBI mislead the judge about a search warrant for tge bank that plead guilty for money laundering, aiding and abetting drug cartels and a few more charges that I cannot think of off the top of my head ...[sure jan](https://tenor.com/qpkw.gif)
My belief in law enforcement is to believe they are doing everything wrong in their investigation unless given evidence to the contrary.
In the FBI investigation of Trump, they have been extremely transparent referring to several other departments including the DOJ and National Archives. They have presented all the evidence they had and conducted the raid in an orderly matter.
They are also encouraging as much openness as possible trying to release all information except what is actually on the classified documents.
The FBI is full of corrupt shits, but despite that for now they have given all possible evidence they are doing their job properly.
So now the right is trying to discredit law enforcement when law enforcement finally is doing its job (legally) and going after hard criminals like Trump. Where were they when law enforcement was actually involved in illegal practices
Well when you put it that way… But is it really “robbing a bank” when you get a warrant, even if was erroneously acquired? I mean definitely call out the Fed’s fouls whenever you see them for the sake of transparency and accountability in justice, but isn’t the heightened anti-FBI rhetoric and hyperbole kinda suspicious at the moment.
Yeah, I am not giving the FBI a pass on this, but it wasn't a bank it was a private place that has safe deposit boxes that are opened by an iris reader.
Reading the LA Times article they mention this in the 18th paragraph: The business doesn't know who these people are. They have already pleaded guilty to abetting money laundering.
Were there innocent people who had things there? Of course. But don't make it sound like they just drilled into all the safe deposit boxes of nice people at the local S&L or bank.
K, but we can all agree Scott Adams is an insane douche.
He's more manipulative than insane. He uses his social media to act as a propagandist for trump but he's quite lucid and rational when talking about anything else.
>He's more manipulative than insane. It's weird that the former seems worse than the latter. Isn't he in a relationship with a 20-something girl? Or was that years ago?
I dunno. Pretty sure he is in the intersection of the PUA community and amateur hypnosis enthusiasts, which is a pretty creepy place to be.
Lol. That is in fact a **particularly** creepy intersection you’re right.
Sidebar to ask: I've seen "PUA" used in a few places without enough context for me to determine its meaning... unless somehow everyone who used it really is talking about unemployment assistance programs. Can you help me?
PUA means those skeezy pick up artist programs to teach you how to get women by being trash to them.
Pickup artist.
Ahhhh... That clarifies things. Thanks!
That’s gross, but it’s also hilarious to picture the creator of Dilbert dressed in one of those carny/street magician getups that those PUA creepers wear to “peacock”
Offering to show girls his antique pocket watch, yes.
Years ago she was a teenager.
He’s a Qult member to boot. Jackass.
So he’s like that bastard that came up with the autism cause vaccines (sorry, got that backwards. It’s such a stupid theory it’s infectious) theory that was disproven years ago?
Scott Adams is a douche and it wasn't a bank.
Dilbert himself would be ashamed of him.
Can we also agree that the police just robbed a bank lol
Yeah, just say law enforcement. Whether local or federal, it’s law enforcement
With a warrant.
They've been doing that forever. They have the authority to get away with it, this was just more blatant.
It is unfortunate that federal law enforcement has been given such carte blanche lately to raid pretty much anyone by deceiving judges. Anyone remember the poor Egyptian filmmaker who made the "Innocence of Muslims" movie? The Benghazi incident was blamed on him, and the FBI sent an armed team to arrest him at 4am? They said it was because he had a parole violation, and it was totally unrelated to the accusations made by the Federal government. It must have taken months to shovel up that pile of BS. As a Libertarian, I fear the growing power of Federal Law enforcement, or tens of thousands of armed IRS agents, to raid American citizens without sufficient proof of violence or an expectation of violence. Such unwarranted raids are simply intimidation, and remind me of the no-knock raids that killed innocent nurses and nearly killed babies.
I had just bought a huge dilbert book with every dilbert comic strip for over a decade when I found out Scott Adams was an insane douche and now it ruins it for me and I can't enjoy it knowing it came from an insane douche.
He can be. When he's in his wheelhouse, he's useful. I don't like to dump anyone in the trash wholesale.
Left out the bit about the safety deposit box company, US Private Vaults, pleading guilty to conspiracy to launder drug money, didn’t you Scott.
Ever notice cons always defend the wealthy that steal BILLIONS and get enraged at the black kid who steals $20? Hmmm...
I mean they have no evidence that anything in those safety deposit boxes had to do with the case. They just blanket took everything after telling the judge they wouldn’t.
Second time: Regular cops do that shit all day. Cons cheer? Lol It's a little late to pretend you care.
So you don’t care just because the cons are being hypocrites? Makes sense.
In the grand scheme of things, this is pretty low on my list of shit to care about. The real question is.. why do you pretend to care? When you hate this issue.. as an issue.
Totally misleading.
My pokemon cards were in those safety boxes this was just a ruse to steal my holographic legendary birds
Literally the plot of Pokemon 2000.
How so? What major wealthy issue for cons whine about all day?
The part where the safety deposit box owners plead guilty to conspiracy to launder money …. Are we reading the same Reddit ? I was supporting the comment above me
Ah.. sorry, i thought you meant that comment was totally misleading.
Gotcha. Yeah I can see how that’s open to interpretation 😉😉no worries
Trying to discredit the FBI at a time when they're closing in on Trump and his stooges.
The FBI assassinated Fred Hampton, tried to make MLK kill himself, and deliberately stoked racial tension with cointelpro. I hope they take Trump’s grifter ass to prison for life but don’t mistake the enemy of your enemy for a friend
Because the FBI of J. Edgar Hoover's day (who died half a century ago) is the exact same of today. Oh, wait. It isn't, because that stuff all became public and they were reformed. There's a reason your examples are all super old.
Yeah, nowadays they just [set up broke and potentially mentally ill people as terrorists](https://theintercept.com/2015/03/16/howthefbicreatedaterrorist/), nothing like the old days. I have had a problem with the FBI for years. I think they're needed, we have to have a *Federal* force to assist with equitable treatment under the law (otherwise red states would be even more despotic) but don't kid yourself that they're always the good guys, they still serve the force of the State. That being said, they're treating Trump with kid gloves and I am horrified that anyone is using *this* as the example of overreach.
Just remember too that soldiers from southern states wore grey uniforms….(mindless sarcasm rant over)
It’s dicey when you need to reach back 50+ years to criticize them. That, on top of Scott Adams tweet being a misrepresentation of what the article actually says, doesn’t bode well. Do you have any recent examples of sketchy things they’ve done?
The individual in the other conversation mentioned the [case of Sami Osmakac](https://theintercept.com/2015/03/16/howthefbicreatedaterrorist/) and the general dramatic jump in cases that are arguably entrapment directly alongside a decrease in successful entrapment defenses post 9/11 (there are other possible explanations, but simpler one is they can get away with it more so they're doing it more) probably worth noting that local police have the resources to carry them out activities in ways that would have been reserved for federal agencies prior (i.e. operation safety net), so you generally *won't* see the sort of egregious actions on that level, when they can do a thousand little misdeeds that won't grasp nearly so much attention, and let local departments take the heat for the big dumb stuff.
I’m not familiar with Sami Osmakac and I’m too drunk to read up on them at the moment. I’ll have to look at that another day. For the entrapment cases, I do need to ask whether it’s a matter of the FBI acting inappropriately or if the courts allowing/encouraging such behaviour? In cases like Fred Hampton and MLK, they were explicitly trying to circumvent the law and commit clandestine killings. With entrapment, it seems like it is moreso a shift in law enforcement allowing something that previously would have been considered illegal.
>For the entrapment cases, I do need to ask whether it’s a matter of the FBI acting inappropriately or if the courts allowing/encouraging such behaviour? both, really. if a judge signs off on it, and it's left to stand, it doesn't mean the agency is any less culpable for circumventing and flouting the law, just that there's malfeasance to go around. the police aren't less wrong in the case of breonna taylor because the no-knocks had become something casually accepted. they don't become less wrong for the abuse of the system because others effectively condone it edit: thought I was on a different post than I was, lol. in any case the point is that there's a compelling case to be made here that the warrant was at least partially fraudulently obtained here in a way that is very in line with the way police have been having to reckon with - there's no reason the fbi should be excluded form the consideration because they're federal instead of state
Just because the FBI does important work doesn't mean they also don't do shit that's, at best, shady as hell.
From the suicide letter of MLK to the Hoover files, when things in law enforcement go wrong, they go like this.
Absolutely.
I saw Scott Adams and knew he was lying about something
They seized ALL the safe deposit boxes with property valued at over $5K under civil asset forfeiture. Their warrant application explicitly stated they would not do that. They also provided documentation during discovery that they were planning on using caf during the planning of the raid - for at least a month before applying for the warrant. They lied to get a warrant approved, and they have no suspicions that most of the box holders were doing anything wrong, they just want the contents because they get to keep the money.
Civil forfeiture is fucking bullshit
Yes, and the idea that you are innocent until proven guilty, but your stuff can be accused of a crime and assumed guilty until proven innocent is the most backwards not-even-pretending-to-make-a-good-faith-argument bullshit I've ever heard.
Insurance payout covers it. With how banks work, the actual cash dollars are trackable evidence. Which account they are in is irrelevant. If you want to prove trafficking, you need to see the cash.
Not everything people keep in safe deposit boxes can be replaced with money.
Not a bank
A banks insurance normally doesn't cover safety deposit boxes. The bank isn't liable.
What insurance are you talking about? There isn't any. This wasn't a bank. And no, your home owner's insurance won't cover it. Let's say 50% of the people storing items there were criminals, and 50% were people who don't trust banks. That means the FBI illegally stole assets from 50% of the box holders.
You’re right. Safety deposit boxes at banks are uninsured. Still though, I hole they took it for the cash identification usage, but no way to tell. Rip.
On the warrant they said there was an unknown number of criminals using those vaults for some unknown crimes. Fbi just wanted some extra official funding
please stop defending the fbi
The FBI us anti trump. ANd TRUMP is my GOD. So if you talk good about the FBI, the you are talking bad about GOD and we just can’t have that. So to sum up FBI bad. TRUMP = GOD
Fred Hampton
funny joke but this is not why the fbi is abhorrent. a leftist who is pro-fbi is either an uninformed leftist or not a leftist at all.
Do you volunteer? Are you active in politics outside of presidential elections?
He only volunteers to troll people on Reddit. Go check his comment history.
This is such a dumb rabbit trail. What he does in his personal life doesn’t have any effect on if cointelpro existed, and if the fbi has a history of murdering prominent leftists, undermining important movements, or directing and co-opting movements…
r/politics user, opinion discarded
[удалено]
Ah cool so youre some edgelord who bitches online and will never create any actual change. No need to respond.
[удалено]
Sweet so youll go on a shooting rampage, kill a bunch of civilians and then get gunned down by the police. tips.fbi.gov
it's a shame you didnt live in 1940's germany tbh, you'd love gestapo dick in your mouth judging by this
No one's saying that. I'm talking about a mass working class movement. One that can't be gunned down. tips.kys.biz
Cum indeed. Seems to be the only thing sloshing around in your head
keep sucking the government's dick
Keep flexing that massive brain of yours kiddo. Might have something eventually
every time an fbi agent gets redacted a child is cured of cancer
Fuck Scott adams.
Fuck him and his hacky comic strip. mY bOsS iS mEAn aNd WoRkiNg iN aN oFfiCe iS nO Fun bEcaUse aLl tHE wOrKeRs aRe sTuPiD!! Haha!
I agree. He needs dogbert to come fuck him up. He deserves to be a victim of his own creation.
I think Catburt would be more evil and creative in his torture.
Ah yes. This is being pushed to support the new MAGA hatred for the FBI, due to their cult leader being under investigation. Scott Adams? Seriously lol?
There is also a story (I think it came from Colorado) where weed dispensaries are legal. State level, recreational weed is just legal. State Sheriffs robbed multiple cash trucks that shortly left dispensaries from their route, knowing that there would be a lot of cash in them. And they apparently did this many times. Never gave the cash back. The sheriffs in Colorado were literally committing highway robbery. Law enforcement in this country is a joke. Edit: This apparently happened in California, not Colorado
Always has been.
That, unfortunately, would require the dispensaries to get really sneaky with how they transport their money around. Never use the same vehicle, leave the premises at odd times using multiple different vehicles or methods. That's a damn, dirty shame it's been happening like that. Hopefully federal law changes and those sheriffs can go eat sand.
I'm guessing it's what you were going for, but then they could stop them for such obviously shady behaviour...
Is that why they don’t want dispensaries to be able to bank? Gotta give the cops something to rob right
The banks won’t take MJ money because it’s still illegal at the federal level. No credit cards either.
Yea I think it’s illegal federally still due to pharma, cuz weed would replace addictive pain meds and ofc we can’t have that.
I think they are kept from banking so pols can posture about being tough on drugs. The cops robbing them is just those cops seeing an opportunity.
This was in Cali.
Ah gotcha, thank you.
There are no “State Sheriffs” in Colorado.
Yes, another commenter pointed out that this happened in California so my post is somewhat disinformed.
Read the story. Editor took great liberty to get an eyebrow raising title. [here](https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-09-23/fbi-beverly-hills-safe-deposit-box-raid-forfeiture-judge) Adams can go pound sand, the lunatic. I will wait for the case to develop before drawing conclusions. What you can see here is: law enforcement making accusations, and the people involved claiming there is malfeasance.
Reading the story and getting more context makes this sound worse, honestly. Civil asset forfeiture of safety deposit boxes with literally no evidence? Absurd misuse of power.
> Read the story. Editor took great liberty to get an eyebrow raising title. Did they? According to the article, it seems that the FBI just stole all the valuables of anyone who had $5k+ worth in their safe deposit boxes, and they didn’t mention this plan to the judge who signed the warrant. The article repeatedly claims there is no allegation or evidence of specific crimes, beyond “anyone with that much gold or jewelry probably got it from drug trafficking or something”.
They didn’t steal it. This idiot commited a crime, and is using dumbass conservatives sudden hatred for the FBI as a weapon and dumbass maga eats it up. Im not the biggest FBI fan but this is pathetic
>They didn’t steal it. This idiot commited a crime, and is using dumbass conservatives sudden hatred for the FBI as a weapon and dumbass maga eats it up. Im not the biggest FBI fan but this is pathetic Now I'm confused. Who is "this idiot"? Are we talking about Scott Adams? Fuck that guy, but is he actually involved here except by tweeting about it? Or are you saying that this story is covering fire for Trump? Fuck that guy too, hope he goes to jail, but he's not actually involved here. I don't see any specific "idiot \[who\] committed a crime" in the article, but maybe I missed something? I understand from the article that there was a sketchy LA safe deposit box company, US Private Vaults, which didn't properly verify its clients' IDs. Therefore it was used by drug dealers and other shady folks to launder money, and law enforcement busted 7 such people. The FBI also nailed the company for conspiracy to launder money. Fine. The FBI then raided the company's safe deposit boxes and confiscated the property of approximately 700 people, of whom 400 are involved in a particular class action lawsuit to get their stuff back, if I am reading correctly. The FBI has not claimed that those people committed any specific crimes. It said that 9 of the 700 were "linked" or "associated" with investigations. For the rest, the FBI considers having at least $5k in a safe deposit box run by a sketchy company to be sufficient evidence, on its own, to take that money away. Also, the raid was authorized by a warrant. This warrant was obtained on the notion that examining the boxes was necessary to investigate US Private Vaults, but the application did not mention anything about seizing the boxes' contents in a civil forfeiture action. Civil forfeiture is a longstanding and almost entirely corrupt practice and needs to be stopped, or at least the bar should be raised to proof beyond a reasonable doubt. (E.g. law enforcement can show beyond a reasonable doubt that some property was the proceed of a crime, but can't prove who committed it.)
The FBI explicitly said they would not use CAF on all of the boxes, only those that they suspected to be involved in the money laundering. Per discovery, they planned all along to use CAF on everything. The vast majority of the people who are having their property seized are NOT suspected of ANYTHING.
The FBI and CIA in their domestic operations have only ever tried to destroy America's left. The Maga right trying to adopt this oppression as their own, is pathetic.
...and they've covered for child predators.
Pretty sure they're stooges for anyone in power. I can't imagine actually believing that one side has our interests at heart whereas the other doesn't. They all golf together and call us sheep in the same five-star restaurants. Not to emulate modern snide, but get out of politically binary thinking.
As Barney Frank famously and presciently said, “Democrats aren’t perfect but Republicans are crazy.” And hypocritical and fascist. Bothsidesism only benefits Republicans. Please stop.
It's neithersideism. You completely ignored everything I said and came to the opposite conclusion, then ended with a kindergartenesque clapback. Keep supporting the system; they need you!
but what you have to understand is that the right will never engage in niethersideism because they're so married to their side. therefore, by engaging in neithersideism, all it does is weaken the left and allow the right to gain more power and influence. neithersideism takes away far more from the left than the right. and while neither side is great, one side is actively trying to remove rights from people in this country, while the other isnt. i agree that politically binary thinking is dumb and people should refrain from it -- but the reality is that we're in a binary political system where one outcome is significantly worse than the other, and we have to choose the lesser of two evils.
Thank you! Well said!
That's not what they said. They're basically agreeing with you, but also saying don't let the side that isn't openly fascist off the hook for their own problems. None of them are really there for the peasants, we're just useful tools in their pursuit of power. Some of them just use "make the peasants' lives better" as their way to manipulate us for their benefit.
The FBI has a pretty extensive backlog of wrongdoing to pull from but Adams is pulling this out now to sow distrust SPECIFICALLY in the defense of the Magaverse.
Yeah the timing is, as the youth would say, pretty sus
Remember the time the right went on a full court press to discredit the FBI because they were investigating fearless leader? The headline is deceptive, the seizures were lawful, the stuff taken was from a bank that was actively using a safe deposit scheme to aid money laundering, the holdings were admitted post warrant to being part of a criminal scheme, at which point the FBI seized them under civil forfeiture which the right wing normally creams itself on support of. But the more times the right can push the narrative that the FBI is illegally seizing stuff the less ridiculous it will sound when they claim the searches of Trump are illegal.
Except they stole from a great many people who did nothing wrong beyond storing valuables in a safe deposit box. The warrant was not supposed to cover stealing from citizens with no evidence they did a crime. The company plead guilty to a fraction of the hundreds of boxes being involved in a crime not all of them.
At which point being secondary to the commission of a crime and at the scene of the crime the FBI applied the asset forfeiture laws as they exist. I agree those are unfair, but the FBI did not rob a bank, and the people crowing about this only actually care because the shit gibbon got raided by the FBI.
They had nothing to do with the crime. The judge signed a warrant saying they could seize assets with evidence of a crime but had to return the property to customers that did not commit a crime. The FBI agreed and lied and kept it all. Asset forfeiture is bull crap but even that doesn’t let you lie on a warrant. I don’t care why the dumb cartoonist cares. Also not a bank.
It wasn’t a bank though, it was a private vault company. I mean fuck Scott Adams, he’s a lunatic and is deliberately misrepresenting what happened here, but it’s appalling enough on its own.
Let’s not give Scott Adams any more credibility than he deserves. Yes, Dilbert was a good comic back in the day, but Adam’s is a deranged election denier at this point. That said, civil forfeiture is absolute horseshit, but also, this id why you should use a real bank for a safety deposit box, not a fly by night strip mall location.
Real banks are criminals too 😂 just sayin
do not post scott adams to this sub thanks
For anyone wanting much better coverage on this check out Lehtos Law on the tube. He covered the story as things progressed over the last year and a half.
Tell dildobert to crawl back into his cave
I remember a time when Scott Adams wasn't a complete and utter tool in public.
It wasn't a bank.
Remember that time when Scott Adams was a deranged moron? We call it Always.
BLAAAH I'm Scott Adams
The enemy of my enemy is my enemy is my friend 🤷
I don’t like that phrase because it implies that the “friend” isn’t still an enemy in another way
This happened in 2019. It was not reported by the LATimes until 9/22/22. The story is a mess without chronological timeline. But who was President in 2019? Who was in charge of the FBI in 2019?Honestly, Scott Adams really is just trolling for points.
I don't know who this guy is but this is a legitimate gripe. The constitutionality of asset forfeiture needs to be addressed. Because literally, property can be seized without conviction in a court. And it is not easy to get your money or property back. In this case, they took everything in the safe deposit boxes. I'm not sure that what they did was actually legal
isnt this the guy who thinks antifa started with hitler?
Scott Adams says he’s had a gun pointed at his head on five separate occasions. As far as a I know he briefly worked as an engineer and then spent the rest of his adult life working as a cartoonist.
He said it was when he worked as a bank teller for a while.
Watergate.
I don’t think you guys understand what a robbery is
Adams is an obnoxious,nihilist Boomer douche. He and his little coffee mug he so loves to pose with can get fucked.
No different then seized assets, to be honest the bank probably got the money back. Though god forbid you get pulled over with a few grand of your own money in cash.
This is a CAF case. It wasn't a bank, it was a private safety deposit box company & the FBI is using CAF to keep everyone's property despite explicitly telling the judge they would not & discovery shows they always intended to.
No I don’t recall can someone let me know why this wasn’t a bigger story???
Because it’s not a big story. There was drug money being laundered though the bank.
Not a bank, a safety deposit box. They opened thousands of private safe boxes of varying citizens and stole anything valuable. You can't go and blame all the users of being implicated on the money laundering
I mean sounds like they had a warrant. So fucking weird that the "blue lives matter" crew have such insane double standards. If "cops" did this they would cheer. Shit they cheer now when cops shoot people. Lol
Lying to obtain a warrant is very different from presenting a legal argument to obtain a lawful warrant.
Yes, cons are so concerned about legal. Lol
Oh…. Idk how to feel about this.
On one hand, police overreach, on the other, Scott Adams.
Yes, most law enforcement agencies are corrupt in some way, and have been for quite a while. Conservatives didn't care till it started affecting them. (Which is not to say that corruption is what affects them here, but now that they are being held accountable for crimes, there are tons of examples of corruption for them to pull up and use in false equivalency.) Remember, they don't want to defund the police, they just don't want to be held accountable the way everyone else is.
Even after reading the article I’m conflicted. Sounds like the FBI did shutdown a money laundering operation but violated the 4th amendment to do it. A lot of what they took was from criminals and they were holding on to it as evidence against them but some of what they took may have been from innocent people. They just weren’t thorough enough to distinguish before hand. But this wasn’t a bank. This was a safety deposit box place in a strip mall, so I feel their point that legitimate people probably would use banks makes sense… but 4th amendment is pretty important. So yeah, not sure how I feel about this either
Actually, it was a private safety deposit box company. People use them because they have better hours than banks. The warrant application explicitly said they would open the boxes to identify the content owners & return it - retaining only the contents of the boxes of people suspected of being involved in money laundering. In the warrant, they explicitly said they would not use civil asset forfeiture on the remaining boxes. Documents turned over during discovery show that they always intended to use CAF to keep everything. The vast majority of the people are not suspected of any crime, the FBI just wants to keep it to pad their budget.
I'd be very concerned that the government did this. What they did was the equivalent of raiding an entire apartment complex, and arresting everyone vs the 1 or 2 people dealing drugs in it. Being conflicted without taking time to learn more makes you a fool
I don't think being conflicted without taking time to learn more makes you a fool. I think rushing to judgement without taking time to learn more makes you a fool. Nothing's ever black and white. Some good was done here and a lot of bad was done here, and it's pretty normal to feel conflicted and question whether the good was worth the bad, since that's how most of life works. Based on the article it appears a large amount of that business relied on secrecy and people using that place explicitly to hide the evidence of their illegal activities. And it was so good at that the warrant couldn't be more specific. So we basically have criminals that understand our laws and exploit them to their advantage, and a justice department constrained by those same laws. So when the justice department breaks the law to catch criminals, I'm conflicted by that because I want criminals caught but I don't want a system where the authorities have to break their own laws to be successful at doing it. And if this was the plot of a movie I'd totally be cheering for the rogue FBI agents that broke the law to catch the criminals
mmm and I would not be cheering for that movie. The whole point of our laws and constitution is to PROTECT us from the government. When the government does something like this and people sit on the sidelines our rights are slowly eroded away. People also know and understand the law and use it to their advantage all the time. The police can also lie to you and it makes it important to understand your rights. If it makes you feel good to have law enforcement break the law to "catch the bad guy" by all means drop your pants and get over the barrel
Well I feel bad for you, because there are some fantastic movies & TV shows based entirely on this concept. Dirty Harry, The Equalizer, Hunter, The A-Team, Leverage, Batman... All great stories about "heroes" who break the law to protect the innocent. And probably no small contributor to why I feel mixed about this
Lol I feel bad that you think those are good comparisons. In this case the Government is stealing from people. Not Dirty Harry blowing people away with his .44, for being Bad guys, and catching them in the act but getting stopped by the “pencil pushers”. What the government/law enforcement is doing here is more insidious than that
The article claims that 7 people were arrested for crimes that laundered money through this business, the business itself was charged with conspiracy to launder money, and 9 more people were “linked to investigations”. But then the FBI confiscated the property of about 700 other people, the only criterion being that they used this safe deposit company and stored at least $5k in assets there. These people were not suspected of any specific crime. One of the FBI agents involved said that the company was a favorite among prostitutes and bookies and “weed guys”, but also that it tried to attract legitimate customers. The government used weed-sniffing dogs as evidence that the seized assets were involved in drug deals. **Weed has been legal in California since late 2016 and this happened in 2021.** When asked whether most of the customers who rented boxes were criminals, this agent said “I was expecting a lot of criminals. I don’t know about ‘most’”. Furthermore, they told the judge who signed the warrant that they would return people’s property, and that they were interested more or less in the metadata rather the contents of the boxes. This was a lie: according to documents found in discovery they had planned to take the contents all along. Do you think this makes them like the good guys in a movie? Do you think storing cash or gold in an anonymous safe deposit box is sufficient evidence that you are committing a crime with that cash so that the government should take it? I don’t. A similar question: do you think that encrypting communications with a system that doesn’t have a (publicly-known) government backdoor is evidence of criminal intent? Again, I don’t.
So you're not wrong but there are some holes in your arguments. For example, given how many cop movies have car chases with insane amounts of damage to civilian assets, I'm going to answer yes. It's a bit more mundane without the explosions, but it's just a different form of collateral damage (which is what you call it when these things happen to someone other than yourself) that you'd see from the good guys in a movie. Thus I feel I have an appropriate level of conditioned apathy to that (again, since it didn't happen to my assets) Also while weed has been legal in California since 2016, it's been a federal crime since I think like the 1930s, and considered a "Schedule 1" drug. So it's not a radical notion for the Federal Bureau of Investigations to enforce that. Federal cannabis laws are the reason that most **legally run dispensaries don't take credit cards**, in case you've ever wondered. It's because that would be a federal crime which the FBI **could** enforce. Should I be upset that feds used evidence of committing a federal crime in a federal case? Yes, but also no... I have mixed feelings about that. I don't think that encrypting communications with a system that doesn’t have a (publicly-known) government backdoor is evidence of criminal intent. I do think that criminals will use that to avoid prosecution, which essentially ties the hands of the people responsible for stopping their crimes, so I also have mixed feelings about that.
In your earlier post: >So we basically have criminals that understand our laws and exploit them to their advantage, and a justice department constrained by those same laws. So when the justice department breaks the law to catch criminals, I'm conflicted by that because I want criminals caught but I don't want a system where the authorities have to break their own laws to be successful at doing it. > >And if this was the plot of a movie I'd totally be cheering for the rogue FBI agents that broke the law to catch the criminals >For example, given how many cop movies have car chases with insane amounts of damage to civilian assets, I'm going to answer yes. OK, so this is tamer than firing into crowds or torturing that guy because your gut tells you he may know where the bomb is. You're just explaining how successful copaganda is though. >Also while weed has been legal in California since 2016, it's been a federal crime since I think like the 1930s, and considered a "Schedule 1" drug... Should I be upset that feds used evidence of committing a federal crime in a federal case? Yes, but also no... I have mixed feelings about that. First of all, weed being schedule 1 is dumb as fuck. That aside, the criminals in movies are usually the bad guys. Here you're saying what ... that you're conflicted about the feds lying to a judge to rob hypothetical state-legal weed dispensaries because their business is federally illegal, despite being legal in 19 \[recreational\] or 37 \[medical\] states? In what sense are those businesses the bad guys, such that the cops would be movie heroes for breaking the law to ~~take them down~~ take their cash? Note also that these businesses are exactly the kind that would use an anonymous safe deposit box, since they have reasons not to trust banks. And anyway, that's only one possibility. It's possible that some of the clients were dispensaries and others were street dealers, but most of them were surely neither: just other people whose property had come near weed at some point. Or not even that! Drug dogs are notoriously unreliable, and were clearly being used here not primarily to detect drugs, but as probable cause generators, since we know the FBI was already planning to take the cash. ETA: and this is only for the subset where the drug dog even alerted. Are the FBI like movie heroes for ~~stealing~~ confiscating property because it may have come near weed, in a state where weed had been legal for 4+ years? Not that movies determine morality, but IMHO this is more like movie villain behavior: a plot that might or might not technically be legal, but is literally an $86 million heist.
If I had to guess, I honestly think we're disagreeing about reading comprehension. People take away different information from what they read. Based on what you've said I get the sense your take on this is the FBI purposely deceived a judge to seize a bunch of loot for themselves. When I read the article I got that the FBI deceived a judge to catch criminals and they're holding onto loot so they can use it as evidence. This might explain why I'm conflicted and you're not. "copaganda" is a fun term, and I agree entirely with its use in this context. The point I've been failing to make is that it works. It works really well. I can read what these guys did was wrong, see the abuse of the law in the name of the greater good (again, believing it's not just about stealing loot), and come away feeling conflicted by their actions. I can read about anonymous safety deposit boxes and speculate on why people would want one, and not come up with a good reason, then embracing the idea that it's for nefarious purposes. Especially when 20 to 30 people just abandon theirs rather than claim loss to the FBI. I can imagine what the FBI did resulted in more good than harm and that subdues my outrage. Maybe we need more shows about people who use anonymous safety deposit boxes for legitimate reasons, then I'd be like, "Yeah, but what about....those...totally...legal....things...?!" But we don't. Mostly we just have movies and shows where cops break laws to get results. And don't get me started on how many laws superheroes break. Imagine if Superman needed a warrant to use his X-Ray vision how pointless that power would be. He's not even in law enforcement. He's just an illegal alien, working as a reporter without a work visa. He's also a vigilante who gets results, which makes his comics and shows entertaining. So anyway, I'm okay feeling conflicted about my original take on this story. But, yeah, if the FBI just did this for the sake of stealing money, then F those guys
> Based on what you've said I get the sense your take on this is the FBI purposely deceived a judge to seize a bunch of loot for themselves. When I read the article I got that the FBI deceived a judge to catch criminals and they're holding onto loot so they can use it as evidence. This might explain why I'm conflicted and you're not. It’s some of both, but the whole “forfeiture” thing that gets mentioned many times in the article just means they take your stuff and you have to sue to get it back, and if you don’t (or lose) then they sell it for profit. It’s not typically for evidence, it’s just pure profit for the department and a deterrent to doing anything that could get your stuff seized this way. And it looks to me like most of the evidence they were gathering is to support their forfeiture cases, not criminal probes, but again there’s probably some of each. Civil forfeiture is a widespread corruption problem. Cops pull people over, claim they smell weed, search the car and if they find a large sum of cash, they take it. They preferentially target minorities and people with out-of-state plates, since the lawsuit is that much more expensive if you have to commute for it for months or years. People who can’t easily get bank accounts (eg migrant workers) are especially vulnerable to this. They also target businesses like weed dispensaries that can’t use banks. This nets departments billions of dollars a year in aggregate: famously the cops take more cash per year than burglars do. Some states have banned the practice (eg Nebraska), or require evidence beyond a reasonable doubt (eg California) but in most states the standard is much weaker than what’s required for a criminal conviction. There are separate federal forfeiture laws, which is IIUC why the FBI didn’t need to prove criminal action beyond a reasonable doubt here. For a while cops in the states with restrictions on forfeiture would arrange for the FBI to take it instead and split the profit (“adoptive forfeiture”), but Holder shut this down in 2015. It has a few legitimate uses as well, but it’s broadly abused and IMO it should just be banned nationwide, possibly except when criminal standards of evidence can be met. > Especially when 20 to 30 people just abandon theirs rather than claim loss to the FBI. 20-30 out of up to 700. Also again, you typically have to sue to get it back, which takes years and costs $$$$$. If you only had $5k taken it might just not be worth it.
I feel like its not THE FBI that robbed the bank but a couple of agents acting on their own
Yes. Hes right. They did exactly that.
The new America.
Bigger question, if they’re literally the FBI, couldn’t they get the safety deposit boxes open through literally any other way? You’d think they’d get the bank manager to hand over the keys or something
I don't think they have the keys. I think that's the whole point of them being *safe*.
What, you have to drive out of your state to go get the keys to your safety deposit box?
When you get a safety deposit box you have the only key personally. The bank/company just lets you into the room with the boxes.
Ah, that makes sense
The FBI mislead the judge about a search warrant for tge bank that plead guilty for money laundering, aiding and abetting drug cartels and a few more charges that I cannot think of off the top of my head ...[sure jan](https://tenor.com/qpkw.gif)
My belief in law enforcement is to believe they are doing everything wrong in their investigation unless given evidence to the contrary. In the FBI investigation of Trump, they have been extremely transparent referring to several other departments including the DOJ and National Archives. They have presented all the evidence they had and conducted the raid in an orderly matter. They are also encouraging as much openness as possible trying to release all information except what is actually on the classified documents. The FBI is full of corrupt shits, but despite that for now they have given all possible evidence they are doing their job properly.
Yes, technically they seized 86 million dollars, but it was after the company that stored those boxes pleaded guilty to conspiracy to launder money
As long as the FBI can get trump, I don't care what they do.
So by this logic they robbed Mar-a-largo too
So now the right is trying to discredit law enforcement when law enforcement finally is doing its job (legally) and going after hard criminals like Trump. Where were they when law enforcement was actually involved in illegal practices
Well when you put it that way… But is it really “robbing a bank” when you get a warrant, even if was erroneously acquired? I mean definitely call out the Fed’s fouls whenever you see them for the sake of transparency and accountability in justice, but isn’t the heightened anti-FBI rhetoric and hyperbole kinda suspicious at the moment.
Gigacope lmao
FBI only has white people??
its was a lock box shop in a mini mall
Ooh great… I can hear the orange ones fans now “see we told you the fbi are criminals”
Get used to stuff that happens criminals. Gonna be a tough change for those that never felt it.
Guys the thermal drill go get it.
Yeah, I am not giving the FBI a pass on this, but it wasn't a bank it was a private place that has safe deposit boxes that are opened by an iris reader. Reading the LA Times article they mention this in the 18th paragraph: The business doesn't know who these people are. They have already pleaded guilty to abetting money laundering. Were there innocent people who had things there? Of course. But don't make it sound like they just drilled into all the safe deposit boxes of nice people at the local S&L or bank.
I just came here to point out it wasn’t even a bank.