In a nutshell, the Amazon employee in the article was accused of taking kickbacks for commercial real estate transactions, Amazon filed a lawsuit and the FBI raided the house and froze assets. And over a year later, no criminal case has been filed and none of the real estate transactions were renegotiated or broken.
If the FBI is to the point of executing warrants, it's simply standard operating procedure to freeze all known assets.
I've had it bluntly explained to me by a federal prosecutor that they do it specifically so you cannot mount a legal defense due to your inability to hire a quality attorney.
The presence of frozen assets simply means federal law enforcement was engaging in an enforcement action, not anything exceptional due to the facts of the case.
>I've had it bluntly explained to me by a federal prosecutor that they do it specifically so you cannot mount a legal defense due to your inability to hire a quality attorney.
so it's standard procedure for the FBI to try to prevent you from adequately defending yourself, seems about right.
Similar to the way the FBI doesn't record interviews, because it affords them an advantage in court. Who are you going to believe when there is no audio or video, an FBI agent or someone accused of a crime.
Which is exactly what's happening right now in the Sussmann case (brought by Durham), he's being accused of something based on the memory of an FBI agent when a videotaped interview would have made it trivial to prove/disprove.
Vast majority of federal cases are plea deals. Frozen assets, stacked charges, potential for long jail time are all pressure designed to make you accept a deal
Yeah they don't really care about guilt or innocence once you're charged, all they care about is that 98% conviction rate. Cops/Prosecutors may have been decent people at some point but the modern versions do not care about guilt or innocence, only conviction rates and padding their careers with marks scratched in the wall.
Civil Asset Forfeiture is not freezing assets, it's seizing them with intent to forfeit them. The grand jury never returned a true bill on Nelson and expired before any charges were brought against anyone. This was a shakedown by the FBI of someone who probably didn't commit a crime but as near others who did commit a crime. Honestly, this whole thing should have been a contract dispute in civil court between AWS and Nelson given the information that has been released in court filings. Nelson's contract didn't prohibit moonlighting and as far as Amazon and the feds are concerned, neither have shown any evidence that Nelson took a kickback of any kind.
That's not 100% true any longer. I was helping to defend a drug dealer whose assets were frozen and we looked into it - there is federal case law now saying that you can use frozen assets to pay your defense attorney if the funds are not connected to criminal activity, which is an argument you can make:
But if they seize the assets through civil asset forfeiture, then they're not frozen, they're seized. And that's what happened here. When assets are frozen, they can also still be used to pay for reasonable lifestlye expenses such as housing, childcare, food, transportation, etc.
What's the difference between frozen and seized? Frozen would have to be a request to a bank, and the same "warrant" is used as it is to seize them, essentially. If they find your money under your mattress, then it isn't going to get "frozen" at all.
When assets are frozen as part of a criminal case, they can't be moved or released at all by the institute holding them. At the conclusion of the criminal case, if the defendant is not guilty or the case is dropped, then they're simply unfrozen. If the defendant is found guilty, then any fines and fees will be seized from them and the remaining amount unfrozen. At all times, those assets have not moved at all. Additionally, frozen assets can be authorized to be released to pay for a defense or living expenses by the court during the case and appeals.
When assets are forfeited, they're seized by the government and just tossed somewhere likely to get lost (tons of things get lost, damaged, and stolen when seized). If you even have the money left to hire a lawyer, you might be able to contest the forfeiture. But because the assets and not you are being charged, well they don't have to try very hard to let you know of the case. In almost all cases, the assets are forfeited summarily because people can't afford to get them back or they're notified too late to find an attorney and start the process of contesting the forfeiture. This process is colloquially known as theft.
> I've had it bluntly explained to me by a federal prosecutor that they do it specifically so you cannot mount a legal defense due to your inability to hire a quality attorney.
And that's exactly the problem, where is the right to a fair trial if you cannot hire a quality attorney? I guess it levels the playing field somewhat in preventing people with money from defending themselves the same way poor citizens are screwed over by the judicial system and not being able to get adequate representation...
>If the FBI is to the point of executing warrants, it's simply standard operating procedure to freeze all known assets.
>I've had it bluntly explained to me by a federal prosecutor that they do it specifically so you cannot mount a legal defense due to your inability to hire a quality attorney.
That this authoritarian tactic is standard operating procedure makes this whole affair worse and more sordid, not better. If we had a functioning legal system the 4th Amendment would protect people from government activities like this.
The tricky part is that some of the money could be associated with a crime, but not all of it. It seems like there should be some effort made in advance of the trial to figure that out and only freeze an estimated amount that is contested initially. A final figure can be determined at the trial. The part that is not frozen can be used to pay living expenses and for a lawyer. You could even have a trustee or something supervising it there is some uncertainty.
>And over a year later, no criminal case has been filed
Just so people know, this is a blip of time in the legal world; financial fraud takes time to document. People need to go in, recover all of the relevant ESI, categorize it, then process it. Interviews with relevant stakeholders need to be undertaken - some of them who will have tight schedules, or be abroad, etc. I've been involved in fraud cases that take half a decade to hit the courts, then another decade to get through them.
As long as there's no statute of limitations style deadlines about to lapse and there's no risk that the assets being recovered are being wasted, there's little harm in spending pre-claim time on due diligence work prior to triggering court filing timelines.
The harm here refers to whether or not there's a need for interim injunctions to prevent the liquidation or concealment of assets in order to avoid being solvent at the time of judgement. My comment doesn't state anything about asset forfeiture, just the timelines associated with fraud investigations.
And during that timeline, the not-yet-charged family is flat broke because of a logically tenuous action against their assets. An action they were legally unable to contest in a layman’s definition of a reasonable timeframe (like when their next mortgage payment is due).
It’s not your legally narrow definition of harm, or the court’s definition of an unreasonable timeframe… yet it’s undeniably harmful to an innocent family.
We’re still doing that part - innocent until proven guilty - right?
>because of a logically tenuous action against their assets
Generally speaking, in order to get intrusive injunctive relief of this level, you need to have a VERY good record.
Without the ability to freeze assets, someone can defraud you then use the proceeds of fraud itself to fund a legal defense while hiding assets. Or draw out the case and take a decade long vacation in Ibiza on your dime.
Which happens. A lot.
The court isn't going to get it right 100% of the time, but it does the vast majority of times when it comes to these cases - evidentiary standards are so high that people regularly write off MILLIONS of dollars in fraud losses because of how hard these remedies are to get.
Without a desire to understand how the system works on your end, it's impossible on my end to explain WHY these rules exist.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2021-03-15/the-st...
In a nutshell, the Amazon employee in the article was accused of taking kickbacks for commercial real estate transactions, Amazon filed a lawsuit and the FBI raided the house and froze assets. And over a year later, no criminal case has been filed and none of the real estate transactions were renegotiated or broken.