WE'RE BEING SEARCHED!
If Government Agents Arrive,
Follow These Steps:
- Ask for identification of the agent-in-charge and the prosecutor. Get business cards.
- Contact your company’s inside or outside counsel. Ask the agents to talk to your counsel.
- Request the agents not begin the search until counsel can be present.
- Read the search warrant to learn what areas may be searched and what may be seized.
- You are not required to assist, but don’t interfere and don’t hide or destroy anything.
- Don’t volunteer information about your company or employees.
- Don’t consent to a search of any location or documents not identified in the warrant.
- If possible, send employees home.
- Advise employees it’s their choice whether to be interviewed by the agents.
- Employees can require that any interview occur at another time, with a lawyer present.
- Don’t talk to the media unprepared. Tell employees to keep the search confidential.
- Before the agents leave, ask for a detailed inventory of items seized.
- Inventory and photograph all areas searched as soon as the search is over.
- Identify all persons who had contact with the agents.
