“All my items had disappeared,” Jenny Morsch tells Inside Edition.
Many people turn to banks to store valuables in safe deposit boxes. They may seem like the safest place to store priceless possessions, but that may not always be the case.
Florida school teacher Jenny Morsch did all her banking at Chase, including keeping a safe deposit box at a branch in Orlando. One day, Morsch went to open her box but says the key would not fit. When the bank drilled it open, she says all of her cash and priceless possessions were gone.
“All my items had disappeared,” Morsch tells Inside Edition.
More than $100,000 in cash, jewelry, and gold coins were missing and what was left was an empty box. The school teacher says the bank denied losing anything.
“I knew in my heart I was right and no matter what I said, they didn’t believe me. They were adamant about their records and I was adamant that they were wrong,” Morsch says.
Morsch sued Chase Bank but the judge dismissed the case.
“When you’re working against a huge cooperation like that, and I don’t have access to the documents that might lead to them realizing that what I’m saying is true, it was once again devastating,” Morsch says.
Three years later, Morsch saw one of her long-lost items, a $10,000 diamond necklace, on TV.
“I saw my diamond necklace go across the TV screen and I literally was shaking. I’m like, ‘That’s my necklace, they have my necklace,’” Morsch says.
The image was featured during a news segment about an auction being held by the state of Florida’s Unclaimed Property Division. The next day, Morsch rushed over with photos proving it was hers.
“I don’t think it took more than 10 minutes or so and they said, ‘We have your items and we believe we have all of your items,’ and I just broke down crying,” she says. Morsch was reunited with most of her belongings.
Documents suggest Chase shipped Morsch’s items to the state in 2012, mistaking her box as abandoned.
Morsch’s attorney, Andres Beregovich, says the bank withheld that information during the lawsuit.
“It does not take a legal scholar to realize that Chase concealed the truth in order to gain their benefit to win. They duped Jenny Morsch. They duped her legal team. They duped the courts. All for their own benefit,” Beregovich tells Inside Edition.
“It’s totally unnecessary what they put me through. And it’s still little me against Goliath,” Morsch says.
Beregovich says the incident raises a large consumer protection issue.
“Do the bank customers understand how safe, or unsafe, the system really is,” Beregovich says.
Morsch recovered her cash, jewelry, and gold coins but says a cherished letter is still missing. She sued Chase Bank, but the judge dismissed the case. She is appealing.
“When you can’t trust the bank, behind a locked vault, in a safety deposit box, it makes you feel very vulnerable, and needless to say I don’t bank there anymore,” Morsch says.
Chase denies her allegations and denies any wrongdoing.
In another case, when Jeni Pearsons and her husband saw all of the items they stored at U.S. Private Vaults seized by the government through no fault of their own.
When Pearsons was looking to store her $25,000 silver collection and $2,000 in cash, she turned to U.S. Private Vaults in Beverly Hills, California.
“My husband researched it and we went and visited it and did a little tour,” Pearsons tells Inside Edition. “It felt like a reasonable place where you would put something of value to store it.”
In 2021, the FBI raided the facility while investigating U.S. Private Vaults for money laundering. Authorities seized $86 million in cash and a fortune in valuable belongings from more than 1,000 customers, including Pearsons.
“The whole reason that we put this money, that we put these coins and this cash in this safe deposit box in the first place is because we were afraid it might be stolen. So the idea that then the FBI comes along and steals it from this box is staggering. It boggles my mind,” Pearsons says.
Pearsons says it took seven months for the FBI to return her silver, but they did not give back her cash.
“They just rooted through, took everything, and tried to keep it,” Pearsons says.
In January, a court ruled the FBI violated the customers of U.S. Private Vaults' constitutional rights by searching their boxes. The FBI did not respond to Inside Edition’s request for comment. In 2022, U.S. Private Vaults pled guilty to conspiracy to launder drug money.
