{"id":5362,"date":"2012-11-13T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-11-13T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/institutionalinvestorsecuritiesblog.blawgcloud.com\/2012\/11\/federal_sentencing_judges_cann"},"modified":"2022-04-28T15:52:29","modified_gmt":"2022-04-28T20:52:29","slug":"federal-sentencing-judges-cann","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.investorlawyers.com\/blog\/federal-sentencing-judges-cann\/","title":{"rendered":"Federal Sentencing Judges Cannot Later Reopen Fraud Cases to Add Restitution, Rules Fifth Circuit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit says that federal sentencing judges who initially withhold restitution in complex or large <a href=\"https:\/\/www.securities-fraud-attorneys.com\/\">fraud cases <\/a>because the amounts are too hard to calculate cannot choose to later open up the case and add that in should the government later come up with more information. The appeals court was not convinced by a district judge\u2019s dependence on the US Supreme Court\u2019s ruling in <em>Dolan v. United States <\/em>allowing sentencing judges to go back and include restitution after the 90-day post-sentencing deadline. <\/p>\n<p>In this case, <em>United States v. Murray<\/em>, the defendants were convicted for mail fraud, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.securities-fraud-attorneys.com\/\">securities fraud <\/a>and other offenses stemming from a financial scam involving hundreds of investors and high valued collateralized loans. Rather than investing the victims\u2019 funds in the loans, the defendants used the funds for their personal spending, made other investments, and also made good on the high returns that were promised to earlier investors.  For purposes of determining sentencing, the district court calculated that the investors lost $84 million. <\/p>\n<p>Yet during sentencing the sentencing judge and the federal probation department invoked a Mandatory Victims Restitution Act provision that lets the judge refuse to order restitution in cases where there are too many victims to determine exactly how many there are that it makes restitution \u201cimpracticable\u201d or if figuring out certain complex issues of fact related to amount or cause of the losses would prolong or complicate the sentencing process to a point that this burden overrides the need to provide any victim with restitution.  A few months after these defendants received their sentences, even though federal law places limits on when a district court can reopen or amend a sentence, prosecutors convinced the judge to open up the sentencing and conduct a hearing on information from hundreds of victim impact statements. <\/p>\n<p>Following the hearing, the judge found that denying the investors restitution for their losses because the government had a hard time figuring out how much harm they suffered is a violation of MVRA\u2019s main purpose, which is to make sure compensation where owed is given. She told the defendants they now had to pay restitution of millions of dollars.<\/p>\n<p>Now, however, Fifth Circuit has said that in the event that a district court invokes  \u00a73663A(c)(3), \u00a73663A(a)(1)\u2019s provision that the court shall order for restitution to be made by the defendant to the victim is not applicable, which means that a district court cannot open a final sentence judgment. The fifth circuit said that while the sentencing judge in Dolan gave herself the option to revisit the matter of restitution in the future, the sentencing judge in US v. Murray did not.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/docs.justia.com\/cases\/federal\/appellate-courts\/ca5\/11-20622\/11-20622-2012-10-30.pdf\">United States v. Murray<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Dolan v. United States <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.cornell.edu\/uscode\/text\/18\/3663A\">Mandatory Victims Restitution Act<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\n<strong>More Blog Posts:<\/strong><br \/>\nSenate Democrats Want Volcker Rule\u2019s \u201cJP Morgan Loophole\u201d Allowing Portfolio Hedging Blocked, Institutional Investor Securities Blog, May 22, 2012<\/p>\n<p>Moody\u2019s, Fitch, and Standard and Poor\u2019s Were Exercising Their 1st Amendment Rights When They Gave Inaccurate Subprime Ratings to SIVs, Says Court, Institutional Investor Securities Blog, December 30, 2010<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.investorlawyers.com\/blog\/2012\/11\/texas_securities_roundup_provi\">Texas Securities RoundUp: Provident Royalties CEO Pleads Guilty in $485M Ponzi Scam and District Court Upholds $100K Arbitration Award in Adviser Fee Dispute<\/a>, Stockbroker fraud Blog, November 10, 2012 <\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.investorlawyers.com\/blog\/federal-sentencing-judges-cann\/#more-5362\" class=\"more-link\">Continue Reading \u203a<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit says that federal sentencing judges who initially withhold restitution in complex or large fraud cases because the amounts are too hard to calculate cannot choose to later open up the case and add that in should the government later come up with more information. The appeals [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3741],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-securities-fraud"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Federal Sentencing Judges Cannot Later Reopen Fraud Cases to Add Restitution, Rules Fifth Circuit &#8212; Investor Lawyers Blog &#8212; November 13, 2012<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit says that federal sentencing judges who initially withhold restitution in complex or large fraud cases &#8212; November 13, 2012\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.investorlawyers.com\/blog\/federal-sentencing-judges-cann\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"Federal Sentencing Judges Cannot Later Reopen Fraud Cases to Add Restitution, Rules Fifth Circuit &#8212; 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