Opinion ID: 2803536
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Loss and Restitution Calculations

Text: We review a sentence for procedural unreasonableness by focusing on whether the sentencing court followed all the necessary steps in deciding upon a sentence. United States v. Park, 758 F.3d 193, 197 (2d Cir. 2014). A sentencing decision is procedurally unreasonable when a district court “makes a mistake in its Guidelines calculation, does not consider the § 3553(a) factors, or rests its sentence on a clearly erroneous finding of fact.” United States v. Hsu, 669 F.3d 112, 120 (2d Cir. 2012) (internal quotation marks and ellipses omitted). We review a district court’s factual findings on loss for clear error and its conclusions of law de novo. See United States v. Carboni, 204 F.3d 39, 46 (2d Cir. 2000). While the “district court’s factual findings relating to loss must be established by a preponderance of the evidence, the court need not establish the loss with precision but rather need only make a reasonable estimate of the loss, given the available information.” United States v. Uddin, 551 F.3d 176, 180 (2d Cir. 2009) (internal citations and quotation marks omitted). Restitution orders are reviewed under the “extremely deferential abuse of discretion standard,” United States v. Grant, 235 F.3d 95, 99 (2d Cir. 2000) (internal quotation marks omitted), 4 while the factual findings underlying a restitution order are reviewed for clear error. See In re Rendón Galvis, 564 F.3d 170, 174-75 (2d Cir. 2009). Seabrook argues that the District Court erred in calculating the loss amount for purposes of the United States Sentencing Guidelines to be more than $400,000 and setting his restitution amount at $619,715.24. We discern no error—much less clear error—on the part of the District Court in reaching these amounts. The District Court found the record “devoid of evidence of work actually performed” on the City contracts that Seabrook fraudulently obtained for his network of nonprofits. J.A. 261. Building off that premise, the District Court’s loss formula—which subtracted certain losses attributable to other persons from the Presentence Report’s estimate of over $1 million in losses to the City—is perfectly reasonable, and, in fact, relatively conservative when considering the alternative: tallying up the total funds that made their way from City coffers to Seabrook’s sham organizations. Accordingly, Seabrook’s challenges to the loss and restitutions amounts fail.