SCOTUS unanimously rejects defendant's effort to reduce restitution owing under MVRA

The Supreme Court handed down a unanimous ruling in a restitution case this morning. Here is how the opinion for the Court in Robers v. US, No. 12-9012 (S. Ct. May 4) (available here), gets started:

The Mandatory Victims Restitution Act of 1996 requires certain offenders to restore property lost by their victims as a result of the crime. 18 U. S. C. §3663A. A provision in the statue says that, when return of the property lost by the victim is “impossible, impracticable, or inadequate,” the offender must pay the victim “an amount equal to . . . the value of the property” less “the value (as of the date the property is returned) of any part of the property that is returned.”  § 3663A(b)(1)(B).  The question before us is whether “any part of the property” is “returned” when a victim takes title to collateral securing a loan that an offender fraudulently obtained from the victim.

We hold that it is not. In our view, the statutory phrase “any part of the property” refers only to the specific property lost by a victim, which, in the case of a fraudulently obtained loan, is the money lent.  Therefore, no “part of the property” is “returned” to the victim until the collateral is sold and the victim receives money from the sale. The import of our holding is that a sentencing court must reduce the restitution amount by the amount of money the victim received in selling the collateral, not the value of the collateral when the victim received it.