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Why your safe deposit box might not be as “safe” as you think

Stacy Cowley, business reporter for the New York Times, says a combination of negligence and lack of regulation has led to hundreds of people losing millions of dollars in valuables.

Close up of a man putting a will in to a bank safety deposit box circa 1950.
Close up of a man putting a will in to a bank safety deposit box circa 1950.
Keystone View/FPG/Getty Images

In years gone by, if you wanted to keep some of your valuables in a safe location, you might do it at your local bank, specifically in a safe deposit box in a vault. As more physical bank branches close their locations, safes are less common, but there are still a lot of people who use them.

However, the safe deposit box is no longer as “safe” as it once was. New York Times business reporter Stacy Cowley recently wrote about how a combination of oversight and lack of regulation has led to the disappearance of items worth millions of dollars from safe deposit boxes — and occasionally, as Cowley put it, deflection of responsibility by the banks that leased them.

Click the audio player above to hear the interview.

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