This is the best summary I could come up with:

The FBI overstepped its constitutional authority when agents searched hundreds of safe deposit boxes without warrants in 2021, a federal appeals court ruled.

The FBI seized millions of dollars in cash from the deposit boxes, plus a mix of jewelry, personal effects, and documents such as wills and prenuptial agreements.

In litigation filed in federal district court in May 2021, victims of the raid argued that the FBI’s search “flagrantly” violated their Fourth Amendment rights.

The court ruled that the FBI exceeded the bounds of a warrant obtained prior to the raid, which explicitly did not authorize any “criminal search or seizure” of the boxes’ actual contents.

The government had fought against destruction of the records for more than two years, and plaintiffs’ attorneys were surprised by the about-face, which they called an attempt to “sweep a massive constitutional violation under the rug.”

On Tuesday, the 9th Circuit issued the ruling the government feared, while also ordering the FBI to destroy records of the search, including copies in its evidence databases.

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