United States Court of Appeals

For the Eighth Circuit

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No. 18-1125

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United States of America

lllllllllllllllllllllPlaintiff - Appellee

v.

Nikolai Monastyrski

lllllllllllllllllllllDefendant - Appellant

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Appeal from United States District Court 

for the Southern District of Iowa - Davenport

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Submitted: September 28, 2018

Filed: November 8, 2018 

[Unpublished]

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Before SMITH, Chief Judge, MELLOY and STRAS, Circuit Judges.

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PER CURIAM.

Nikolai Monastyrski used shell companies and stolen identities to cheat the

states of Iowa, Illinois, and Pennsylvania out of hundreds of thousands of dollars in

unemployment-insurance benefits. Despite the multi-jurisdictional nature of his

operation, the fourteen counts of mail and wire fraud to which Monastyrski pleaded

guilty in this case involved only Iowa. He argues that the geographic limit of his
convictions also serves as the boundary line for his restitution obligations. The

district court disagreed and ordered Monastyrski to pay restitution to Illinois and

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Pennsylvania too. We affirm.

Defendants convicted of property crimes must “make restitution to the

victim[s] of the offense.” 18 U.S.C. § 3663A(a)(1), (c)(1)(A)(ii). When the existence

of a “scheme” is an element of the defendant’s crime, as it is here, the term “victim”

includes “any person directly harmed by the defendant’s criminal conduct in the

course of the scheme.” Id. § 3663A(a)(2); see also id. §§ 1341, 1343 (defining mail

and wire fraud asrequiring a “scheme or artifice to defraud” (emphasis added)). This

means that if Illinois and Pennsylvania suffered harm “in the course of” the same

fraudulent “scheme” as Iowa, the district court could award restitution to those two

states as well. Id. § 3663A(a)(2); see also United States v. Welsand, 23 F.3d 205, 207

(8th Cir. 1994) (applying an identical definition of “victim” in a different restitution

statute to a mail-fraud conviction). If, on the other hand, Monastyrski is correct that

he perpetrated “separate, albeitsimilar, schemes” against each state, then neither state

was entitled to restitution. 

To define the relevant “scheme,” “we look to the scope of the indictment.” 

United States v. Ramirez, 196 F.3d 895, 900 (8th Cir. 1999) (internal quotation marks

and citation omitted). If “the indictment details a broad scheme encompassing

transactions beyond those alleged in the counts of conviction,” a district court can

order restitution for all of the victims of the scheme, not just those harmed by the

specific conduct charged. United States v. Bush, 252 F.3d 959, 963 (8th Cir. 2001)

(internal quotation marks and citation omitted); see also, e.g., Welsand, 23 F.3d at

207 (upholding restitution for fraud occurring years before the first charged count,

because the indictment indicated it was part of the same scheme). We are faced with

The Honorable Rebecca Goodgame Ebinger, United States District Judge for

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the Southern District of Iowa.

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this precise situation: the indictment alleged a single broad “scheme and artifice to

defraud . . . the States of Iowa, Illinois, and Pennsylvania,” even though it provided

detail only on the transactions involving Iowa.

Labeling this a single “scheme” was hardly a stretch. According to the

undisputed facts, the operation looked largely the same across each ofthe three states. 

In fact, Monastyrski recycled some of the same fake companies and employees in

defrauding each state. And even though he defrauded the states one at a time, he was

constantly looking ahead to the next state by registering fake companies and filing

paperwork in one while actively defrauding another. Such preplanned, “interrelated”

conduct easily qualifies as a single ongoing scheme. Welsand, 23 F.3d at 207.

In short, Iowa, Illinois, and Pennsylvania were all victims of Monastyrski’s

scheme. Monastyrski must therefore repay all three. 

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