Opinion ID: 733247
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Salary Loss

Text: 31 Burns argues that he never intended the Government to suffer the loss of his salary and in fact the Government suffered no such loss. Burns maintains that, despite his attendance at Harvard, he nevertheless fulfilled all of his obligations to Northeast to the satisfaction of the Northeast board, and that Northeast, in turn, met all of the requirements of its contract with National. Burns therefore concludes that the district court should have recognized that the amount of lost salary was zero. 32 The district court acknowledged that evaluation of the loss posed a more complex and difficult problem than the other sentencing issues. The district court also correctly noted that a plausible argument could be made that the loss consists of all the EPA grant money received by Northeast, because the grant money would not have been paid if Burns had fully disclosed his Harvard attendance. Instead of adopting this approach, however, the district court calculated the loss in a manner much more favorable to Burns. 33 The district court recognized, and the government concedes, that while the evidence established that Burns did not work fulltime for Northeast, he did do some work for Northeast while he attended Harvard. As such, some, but not all of Burns' salary was lost. The district court, therefore, calculated the salary loss by determining the number of hours Burns devoted to actual participation in the Harvard program and multiplying that figure by a reasonable estimation of his hourly rate. Based on this calculation, the district court arrived at the $8,723 figure for lost salary. 34 The Guidelines note that in a fraud case, the loss need not be determined with precision. The court need only make a reasonable estimate of the loss, given the available information. Guidelines § 2F1.1, cmt. n. 8; United States v. Stanley, 54 F.3d 103, 106 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 116 S.Ct. 238, 133 L.Ed.2d 166 (1995). The district court reasonably relied on evidence of Burns' salary and the time he spent in class in making its determination. We certainly cannot say that the district court's finding on salary loss was clearly erroneous.