Opinion ID: 205321
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Pescatore's Challenge to the Accuracy of the PSR's $2,559,611.79 Loss Total

Text: As indicated above, 18 U.S.C. § 3664(f)(1)(A) required that the amount of each victim's loss be determined by the district court and included in the restitution order. Although the original judgment entered in November 2008 did not comply with this requirement, the amended Judgment appended the PSR Loss Chart that identified 80 chop shop victims in whose losses Pescatore was involved; those pages showed the precise amount of each victim's loss. Although the Loss Chart did not state an overall total of those items, the total is $2,559,611.79. Pescatore contends that the actual total amount of his victims' losses is less. Pescatore had received the February 21, 2008 PSR well in advance of his sentencing hearing on October 24, 2008. The record does not indicate that in connection with sentencing he made any objection whatever to the PSR's specification of victims or losses, or to the total loss figure$2,559,611.79 that was in fact stated elsewhere in the PSR. Further, in January 2009, when the government asked the court to amend the original judgment by appending specific pages of the PSR, Pescatore made no objection: He did not suggest that any individual or entity identified in those pages was not a victim in whose loss he was involved; he did not suggest that any loss amount shown on those pages was incorrect; he did not suggest that the loss amounts listed totaled less than $2,559,611.79. And when the amended Judgment was entered, Pescatore did not appeal. Pescatore's contention that his victims' losses total less than $2,559,611.79 was not advanced until he made his restoration/restitution motion, some nine months after the amended Judgment was filed. Given the lack of any timely objection to the correctness of the PSR Loss Chart's listing of Pescatore's individual victims, showing losses that total $2,559,611.79, Pescatore's contention that the Judgment is inaccurate because the appended PSR Loss Chart is inaccurate is reviewable only for plain error. See Fed. R.Crim.P. 52(b); United States v. Catoggio, 326 F.3d 323, 326 (2d Cir.2003); United States v. Coriaty, 300 F.3d 244, 252 (2d Cir.2002); United States v. Kinlock, 174 F.3d 297, 299 (2d Cir.1999). Under the standard set by the Supreme Court for the application of Rule 52(b), before an appellate court is allowed to correct an error that was not timely raised in the district court four conditions must be met. [T]here must be (1) `error,' (2) that is `plain,' and (3) that `affect[s] substantial rights'; and [i]f all three of those conditions are met, an appellate court may then exercise its discretion to notice a forfeited error, but only if (4) the error `seriously affect[s] the fairness, integrity, or public reputation of judicial proceedings.' Johnson v. United States, 520 U.S. 461, 467, 117 S.Ct. 1544, 137 L.Ed.2d 718 (1997) (quoting United States v. Olano, 507 U.S. 725, 732, 113 S.Ct. 1770, 123 L.Ed.2d 508 (1993)) (other internal quotation marks omitted). Pescatore's contention that the actual losses suffered by his chop shop victims are less than the $2,559,611.79 detailed in the PSR Loss Chart that was made part of the Judgment does not meet even the first threshold condition of the plain-error test. His restoration/restitution motion asserted that the aggregate amount of loss or restitution to the victims identified in the PSR is more than $1 million lower than Mr. Pescatore was ordered by the Court to pay (Memorandum of Law in Support of Defendant Michael Pescatore's Santobello Motions at 7 (emphasis in original)), but it proffered no facts to support that assertion. The motion did not challenge the PSR's identification of any particular victim; and it did not challenge the amount of any specific PSR-itemized loss. Rather, it claimed that that lower amount was revealed by [s]imple arithmetic ( id. at 7 n.5). Yet the motion did not proffer a precise amount by which Pescatore contended the PSR was in error. Nor was a precise figureor any evidence proffered at oral argument of the motion, despite the court's request for proof (Motion Tr. 12). Although Froccaro, Pescatore's attorney, stated that he used his calculator to determine that the loss amount in the PSR . . . added up to 1.8 ( id. at 22), Froccaro also said, I never agreed to the $1.8 million, ( id. at 21), and said he could not give the court a definite figure ( id. at 6). The district court thus ruledproperly that it could not uphold Pescatore's challenge to the accuracy of the PSR based on his vague and conclusory assertions ( see, e.g., Motion Tr. 22 (not on the representations you made here today)). Our own mathematical review confirms that the relevant victims' losses listed in the Loss Chart appended to the Judgment total $2,559,611.79. Although Pescatore's brief on appeal provides somewhat more enlightenment than was proffered to the district court as to the nature of his claim of arithmetic error, that claim improperly disregards the fact that in many instances his offense with respect to a particular vehicle caused losses to more than one victim. Given Pescatore's failure to proffer any evidence to show that the PSR Loss Chart is inaccurate, we cannot conclude that the amended Judgment's incorporation of the PSR's listing of losses totaling $2,559,611.79 is error, much less plain error.