FBI Faces Lawsuit: Allegations of “Lost” Gold Coins
A FBI faces Lawsuit is making headlines in the United States, and the reason is highly unusual for a law enforcement agency.
Two Americans claim that the FBI lost or stole their property after seizing it through a “shady” process involving a box containing valuable and rare coins.
“All we know is that their property was in a box and secure before the FBI broke into the box,” said Joe Gay, an attorney from the non-profit law firm Institute for Justice, in an interview with Fox News.
The Institute for Justice filed two lawsuits on Friday on behalf of clients whose properties were confiscated from their safe deposit boxes.
The incidents allegedly occurred during an FBI raid in March 2021 at US Private Vaults, a company based in Beverly Hills.
The lawsuit against the FBI is based on the fact that something was missing from their returned property.
Both Don Mellein and Jeni Pearsons discovered that some of their belongings had disappeared. They suspect it was due to the FBI’s chaotic raid or sticky fingers.
Mellein, a retired 79-year-old official, had kept cash and 110 gold coins worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in his box to safeguard his financial security.
He invested in precious metals with the proceeds after he and his wife sold their Malibu home in 2002.
Pearsons and her husband Michael Storc also rented a safe deposit box in 2017 for financial security. According to the FBI lawsuit, they stored around $20,000 in silver and $2,000 in cash.
The FBI raids against US Private Vaults aimed to uncover financial wrongdoing, and eventually, the couple pleaded guilty to conspiracy to launder drug money.
After the FBI confiscated their property, along with that of 1,400 other clients, Mellein and Pearsons received notice that the FBI wanted to retain their property through a process known as civil forfeiture.
“It was very deceptive and even shady,” said Pearsons in an interview with Fox News.
FBI Faces Lawsuit: “Lost” Gold Coins
Pearsons partnered with the Institute for Justice to fight for her property, while Mellein hired a lawyer and spent $40,000 to reclaim his items.
Both prevailed, but when they went to the agency’s office in Los Angeles to claim their property, they realized that some of their items were missing.
Mellein received the cash from his box but none of his 110 gold coins.
The FBI seemed to have no record of the lost coins, as they were not listed on the property receipt for the box’s contents.
When pressed to provide a copy of the video inventory of the box, the FBI stated that, in their rush to process so much property, they had abandoned their initial plan to film the process and had instead completed paperwork for the inventory, according to the Institute for Justice.
“What we learned was that their incentive to lose everything they found outweighed their obligations to safeguard your property,” said Joe Gay, the Institute for Justice attorney, to Fox News. This element is crucial in the lawsuit against the FBI.
He noted that the search became “hectic” and “frantic” as agents hurried to confiscate assets worth nearly $86 million.
In March 2023, after filing their complaint, the FBI informed Mellein that they had investigated themselves and found no evidence of wrongdoing or negligence, according to the Institute for Justice.
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