Every once in a while you see reports of law enforcement teams swooping down on some business or institution and seizing their records. They cart out boxes and boxes of files, and computer hard drives and so on. My question is: how does this impact the functioning of the business?
I would think the business needs these records and computers, which is why they have them in the first place. They need to know who they owe money to, and who owes them, how much money they have in their accounts, they need to know how to make various filings etc. etc., and these are exactly the things that law enforcement is interested in.
Does the FBI (& similar entities) make copies of everything before they seize them? It’s hard to imagine that they do, considering the volume of material that you see them carting out. So one would have to assume it would impact the business, and you wonder how they cope with it (and why the law is allowed to do this, to a firm that might be completely innocent).
[As it happens, my wife has a friend who is an accountant in a company that was just raided in this exact manner, so I intend to get her take on it sooner or later. But my wife doesn’t have daily contact with this woman, and calling her up just to get the scoop about the raid might be indelicate.]
No, they don’t make copies. It’s not their concern whether seizing records allow a business to remain open or not.
Federal and state governments and many large businesses have contingency plans for events like this – not necessarily the seizure of, but the unexpected loss of records, equipment, and/or facilities. There is a small industry and profession dedicated to the issue called Continuity Of Operations Planning (COOP).
I don’t know about the US, but at least here in Pakistan they are supposed to make backups for electronic stuff and copies of paper stuff and give it to you.
Small business owner here … all my financial transactions are done through my bank, so that they have an exact duplicate of all these transactions. If the FBI comes in and takes all my records, it’s a simple matter to get my bank to print it all out for me, or buy a new computer and download the information.
Mine is a very small business, recreating all the other documentation from memory is doable, not to mention angry customers calling and such.
I don’t engage in criminal activity, so theoretically LE will not have probable cause to seize my records. That’s not perfect proof against such, but so far so good …
It’s entirely possible that the IRS is acting irrationally, but… I would imagine by the time they throw a delinquent parent in jail, it’s because they have demonstrated a lack of intention to pay anything whatsoever.
Similarly, when they seize records - they are beyond the audit stage, the issue is (criminal?) wrongdoing to the point where the co0mpany would have a good reason to prune their own records if given time and opportunity.
Also, a lot of these items are historical - you can run for several weeks typically without 2014’s tax returns and sales receipts. Plus, as others have said - by the time you are a big enough company that it takes a truck to carry away all your file cabinets - hopefully you have a survival plan that includes taking a copy of data offsite.
I was an employee at a place where the FBI was doing an investigation. In this case my employer was the victim, though it was possible that an employee or employees may have been the culprit(s) or at least in collusion.
In that case they were as polite as could be but it was still disruptive. We just had to make do as best we could. There were certain resources and/or rooms completely off-limits temporarily. As an IT person there were certain job duties I couldn’t perform temporarily. You just do what you can.
I can see a business seriously suffering or even going out of business under those circumstances, especially if they were already struggling. But the FBI needs to do their job so there’s not much you can do about it.
True but … often deadbeat dads have falsified tax returns and/or are getting paid under the table to avoid garnishment. That is where the IRS might get involved.
Your but is invalid; in your example, the IRS is not going after the guy for unpaid child support, they’re going after him for tax evasion and/or filing false returns, which is a different crime.
Nope, sometimes deadbeats are jailed because they purposely avoid getting a real job in order to avoid paying child support, aka deadbeats. I know of a guy who made a living for himself by buying junk at yard sales and wherever and then taking it to a flea markets and consignment auctions where other deadbeat dads sold stuff for cash. Pretty sure he sold drugs too. When they took him to jail he had over 3 grand in his pocket, used it as a down payment on his back child support and still took him to jail. He kind of pissed them off.