Robers v. United States (2013)
- Docket
- 12-9012
- Decided
- 2013-01-01
Summary
Question: Does a defendant who has fraudulently obtained a loan and thus owes restitution for the loan under the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act (MVRA) return "any part " of the loan money by surrendering title to a house that has fallen under foreclosure? Conclusion: No. Justice Stephen G. Breyer delivered the opinion of the unanimous Court. The Court held that the word “property” in the MVRA refers to the money lent by the banks and not to the houses the banks received as collateral for the fraudulent loans. Therefore, the district court properly calculated the restitution amount because the property (money) was not returned to the banks until the date on which the homes were actually sold. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a concurring opinion in which she emphasized that, in her view, the Court’s ruling applied only to cases in which the victim intended to sell the collateral but encountered a reasonable delay in doing so. She noted that, in other cases, a defendant might be able to show that a victim intended to hold onto the collateral as an investment rather than reduce it to cash right away and should consequently bear the loss of any decline in value. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg joined in the concurring opinion.