FBI hit with lawsuit after allegedly losing valuable rare coins during raid
“There’s literally been no explanation,” Pearsons said. “I think you have to assume that it’s the simplest explanation, and I think, unfortunately, the simplest explanation is they took it or lost it.”
The nonprofit law firm Institute for Justice has filed two lawsuits on behalf of clients who allege that the FBI failed to return valuable rare coins and other property it took during a March 2021 FBI raid on the Beverly Hills–based U.S. Private Vaults.
“We don’t know for sure how the property disappeared, we just know it disappeared,” Joe Gay, an attorney with the Institute for Justice, said on Friday. “And whether it’s negligence, whether it’s something worse, the government shouldn’t be able to rely on its own shoddy recordkeeping to avoid responsibility for losing their property.”
Don Mellein had sued the government in 2021 to get the coins back, which he estimates are worth hundreds of thousands. So far, only 47 out of 110 have been returned so he decided to sue again.
“The FBI had no reason to go through my box and they were careless in losing my savings,” Mellein said. “For months I was told they didn’t have any of my coins before they eventually found some of them.”
https://justthenews.com/government/federal-agencies/fbi-hit-lawsuit-after-allegedly-losing-valuable-rare-coins-during-raid