Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca9-09-30246/USCOURTS-ca9-09-30246-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Becky Nadine Hunter
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.

BECKY NADINE HUNTER, AKA

Rebekah A. Hunter, AKA Rebecca

A. Hunter, AKA Ann R. Hunter, No. 09-30246

AKA Rebekah A. Smith, AKA

D.C. No. Becky Nadine Smith, AKA  CR-4-00002-RRB Rebekah Nadine Carden, AKA

Rebekah Nadine Smith, AKA OPINION

Rebecca A. Bennett, AKA

Rebekah An nadine Bennett

Hunter, AKA Rebekah Ann

Hunter, AKA Rebekah Nadine

Pratt, AKA Rebecca Smith,

Defendant-Appellant. 

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Alaska

Ralph R. Beistline, District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted

March 9, 2010—Seattle, Washington

Filed August 20, 2010

Before: Raymond C. Fisher and Marsha S. Berzon,

Circuit Judges, and G. Murray Snow, District Judge.*

*The Honorable G. Murray Snow, District Judge for the District of Arizona, sitting by designation. 

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Opinion by Judge Snow

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COUNSEL

Karen L. Loeffler, United States Attorney’s Office, Anchorage, Alaska, for the plaintiff-appellee.

Terrence Kellogg, Seattle, Washington, for the defendantappellant. 

OPINION

MURRAY SNOW, District Judge:

Defendant-Appellant Becky Nadine Hunter (“Hunter”)

appeals the district court’s order awarding restitution to two

of her former employers. We have jurisdiction pursuant to 28

U.S.C. § 1291, and we affirm.1

BACKGROUND

On June 19, 2009, Hunter was sentenced for committing

various federal crimes, including five counts of mail fraud in

violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1341. Hunter’s mail fraud convictions arose from a series of false documents she mailed for the

purpose of obtaining employment as a nurse. 

1

In a concurrently-filed memorandum disposition, we address the other

issues raised by Hunter on appeal. 

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Hunter moved to Alaska in 1998, where she stole the identity of a registered nurse and used it to obtain a nursing

license. She used the fake license, along with a false employment history, address, and identity to obtain employment as

a nurse. She was then hired as a school nurse by Fairbanks

North Star Borough School District in September 1998. During her employment with North Star Borough, Hunter was

paid a total of $12,558 in wages and benefits. After North Star

Borough discovered Hunter’s false identity and fired her,

Hunter used a similar set of false documents to obtain a nursing position with the United States Department of Labor. During her employment as a nurse with the Department of Labor,

Hunter was paid $5,457.

In 2004, Hunter was arrested after an FBI investigation

uncovered additional fraudulent conduct. Following a successful appeal of her original sentence, see United States v.

Hunter, 286 F. App’x 482, 483 (9th Cir. 2008), Hunter was

resentenced to ninety-six months incarceration and ordered to

pay $12,558 in restitution to North Star Borough and $5,547

in restitution to the Department of Labor. 

DISCUSSION

Hunter challenges the restitution to Northstar Borough and

the Department of Labor on the basis that these employers

will receive windfalls if she is required to repay wages for

work she actually performed. We disagree. 

[1] The Mandatory Victims Restitution Act (“MVRA”)

requires courts to order restitution to victims of certain criminal offenses, such as mail fraud. See 18 U.S.C. § 3663A(c).

The “purpose of restitution” under the MVRA, however, is

not to punish the defendant, but to “make the victim[ ] whole”

again by restoring to him or her the value of the losses suffered as a result of the defendant’s crime. United States v.

Crandall, 525 F.3d 907, 916 (9th Cir. 2008) (quoting United

States v. Gordon, 393 F.3d 1044, 1052 n. 6 (9th Cir. 2004)).

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The amount of restitution, therefore, “is limited to the victim’s actual losses.” United States v. Bussell, 504 F.3d 956,

964 (9th Cir. 2007); see also Crandall, 525 F.3d at 916.

“[A]ctual loss for restitution purposes is determined by comparing what actually happened with what would have happened if the defendant had acted lawfully.” Bussell, 504 F.3d

at 964 (quotations and brackets omitted). We review the district court’s application of the MVRA and its conclusion that

Hunter’s employers were victims of her crimes de novo.

United States v. De La Fuente, 353 F.3d 766, 771 (9th Cir.

2003). Factual findings made in support of the restitution

order are reviewed for clear error. Id. at 772.

[2] The district court had a clear legal and factual basis for

ordering restitution to North Star Borough and the Department of Labor. Hunter was convicted of mail fraud under 18

U.S.C. § 1341. Accordingly, the district court was required to

impose restitution for the amount of loss sustained by each

victim directly and proximately harmed as a result of that

offense. See 18 U.S.C. § 3663A(a)(2), (c)(1); see also United

States v. Johnson, 297 F.3d 845, 872 (9th Cir. 2002) (noting

that “an order of restitution to victims is mandatory” in cases

involving mail fraud). Both Northstar Borough and the

Department of Labor were directly and proximately harmed

by Hunter’s mail fraud because they paid for the services of

a licensed nurse that were never received. See Bussell, 504

F.3d at 964. If Hunter had not mailed false documents reflecting fictitious nursing credentials, she could not legally have

been employed in positions that required a valid nursing

license, and a qualified licensed nurse could have been

employed instead. See id. 

The factual circumstances presented here are similar to

those in the Sixth Circuit’s decision in United States v.

Kaminski, 501 F.3d 655 (6th Cir. 2007). In Kaminski, a criminal defendant was ordered to pay restitution to consumers

who had purchased drugs, believing that the drugs were FDA

approved. Id. at 669. Though the defendant argued that these

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consumers did not suffer any harm because there was no evidence that the drugs were ineffective or otherwise detrimental, the Sixth Circuit disagreed. Id. at 670. Instead, the court

held that “the ‘economic harm to consumers’ ” is that “consumers who are deceived in this manner do not get what they

pay for.” Id. (citing United States v. Universal Mgmt. Servs.,

191 F.3d 750, 763 (6th Cir. 1999), cert. denied, 530 U.S.

1274 (2000)). Like the consumers in Kaminski who paid for

a product that they never received, Northstar and the Department of Labor paid for nursing services that Hunter was not

qualified to perform, and so did not get what they paid for.

See id.

[3] We reject Hunter’s assertion that the district court’s

restitution order should have deducted the value of services

provided to these employers that did not require her to hold

a nursing license. In this regard, the application notes to

§ 2B1.1 of the United States Sentencing Guidelines

(U.S.S.G.), although not directly applicable, are instructive: 

In a case involving a scheme in which . . . services

were fraudulently rendered to the victim by persons

falsely posing as licensed professionals . . . loss shall

include the amount paid for the . . . services . . .

transferred, rendered, or misrepresented, with no

credit provided for the value of those . . . services.

U.S.S.G. § 2B1.1, App. Note 3(f)(v). This provision of the

Guidelines is not specific to the calculation of restitution

awards, and calculating loss under the guidelines is not necessarily identical to loss calculation for purposes of restitution:

Loss under the Guidelines includes actual or intended loss,

while loss for restitution purposes covers only actual loss. See

United States v. Allen, 529 F.3d 390, 396 (7th Cir. 2008); see

also Crandall, 525 F.3d at 916 (noting the potential for different outcomes because loss under the Guidelines serves a punitive purpose, while restitution is limited to actual losses);

Bussell, 504 F.3d at 964 (observing that a restitution award

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should account for “actual loss”). But where, as here, the

issue is absence of a legally required license for work performed, any distinction between intended and actual loss has

no pertinence. Compare Allen, 529 F.3d at 397 (declining to

rely on § 2B1.1, App. Note 3(f)(v) where the defendant represented himself as an expert, but “the profession in which he

was scheming was not a licensed one”). Given that symmetry

for present purposes, the § 2B1.1 application note supports

the conclusion that the loss in this case requires no deduction

for the value of work that Hunter performed when she was

falsely acting as a nurse, or equivalently that the work Hunter

performed had no legal value for purposes of calculating the

victims’ losses.

This conclusion accords with traditional principles of contract law. When an individual fails to comply with licensing

requirements aimed at protecting health and safety rather than

merely raising revenue, that individual can maintain “no

action for the promised compensation or for quantum meruit.”

See 15 Corbin on Contracts § 88.4 (revised ed. 2003); 2 Farnsworth on Contracts § 5.6 (3d ed. 2004). This rule reflects the

public policy concern that providing compensation to unlicensed individuals practicing in these fields might encourage

fraud or undermine public health and safety. See 15 Corbin on

Contracts § 88.4. 

During Hunter’s sentencing and at trial, the government

presented evidence that North Star Borough and the Department of Labor lost $12,558 and $5,457 respectively in wages

paid to Hunter. If Hunter had not acted unlawfully, her victims would not have paid any of these wages, or would have

paid them for valuable services from a real, qualified nurse.

See id. It is clear that the district court relied on this evidence

in reaching its conclusion as to the amount of restitution. See

United States v. Peterson, 538 F.3d 1064, 1077-78 (9th Cir.

2008) (upholding the amount of the district court’s restitution

order where the factual basis supporting the amount of restitution was clear from the record). 

AFFIRMED.

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