Opinion ID: 220729
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Who were the victims?

Text: Parisi argues that to the extent there were any victims, they were the [tribal] programs which did not have use of the funds. The federal agencies to whom Parisi is required to make restitution are not victims of his conduct, he claims, because even if the federal government's funds were not utilized as intended, the federal government turned over the right to possess those funds when it transferred the funds to the Tribe. The restitution order is governed by the Mandatory Victim Restitution Act, codified at 18 U.S.C. § 3663. As it happens, the statute includes a definition of victim: a person directly and proximately harmed as a result of the commission of an offense for which restitution may be ordered including, in the case of an offense that involves as an element a scheme, conspiracy, or pattern of criminal activity, any person directly harmed by the defendant's criminal conduct in the course of the scheme, conspiracy, or pattern. 18 U.S.C. § 3663(a)(2). We have noted, as Parisi concedes, that governmental entities may, without dispute, be considered victims under the MVRA. United States v. Janosko, 642 F.3d 40, 41 (1st Cir.2011). What, then, is the basis of Parisi's claim that the agencies were not victims of his conduct? The closest he comes to pressing the point is his assertion, noted above, that the agencies lost any right to possess the relevant funds once they were granted to the Tribe. But this contention misses the point entirely. If the federal agencies were harmed, it was not by losing possession of the fundsthese were, after all, grants but rather by not having the funds go to the designated programs. [25] For Parisi to have so much as a shadow of a claim that the federal agencies were not his victims, he would have to show why that kind of frustrated expectation is not a cognizable harm under the MVRA. [26] But he nowhere makes any such allegation. We therefore consider the claim waived, and do not address it. Parisi spends a good deal of his discussion of restitution claiming that a restitution order would work a fundamental unfairness. Parisi claims that misuse of federal grant money was standard practice at the Tribe long before he arrived on the scene, and that the tribal council was well aware of this fact. Parisi claims that the tribal council acknowledged, in a May 2004 meeting, both that they were seriously overspending their budget and that federal SAMHSA grant money was being siphoned off to pay their own salaries. In short, Parisi's claim is that the tribal council was entirely aware of and complicit in Newell's financial shenanigans, and that he should not be made to compensate the Tribe for the financial consequences of decisions of the tribal political leadership, including the governor and tribal council members, particularly when he, as a tribal outsider, had no say in making these decisions. This is an argument about whether or not what he did ought to be considered a crime, or perhaps whether it is fair to punish him while not punishing the other allegedly complicit parties. It does not appear to be an argument about whether there was error in calculating the restitution order. Parisi had an opportunity to present this argument to a jury of his peers. We will not reopen the matter now.