Opinion ID: 220729
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: $15,900 Indian Township Housing Authority

Text: Parisi claims that the district court erred in including $15,900 based on transfers from the Indian Township Housing Authority. The district court, Parisi argues, explicitly conceded that Parisi was not involved in these transfers but went ahead and included them in the restitution order anyway. Our review is for abuse of discretion. Parisi claims that the district court found that Parisi had nothing to do with the transfers from the Housing Authority. It is not clear from the record whether or not the district court made such a finding. The portion of the sentencing transcript on which Parisi relies shows that the parties were disputing another matterParisi's contention that the PSR should reflect that he never transferred money to accounts outside the tribal government's control. The court overruled Parisi's objection, and stated that it takes into account the parenthetical added to paragraph 26, and with that addition believes the paragraph to be accurate. [32] However, while the referenced parenthetical does include Parisi's insistence that he had nothing to do with the Housing Authority transfers, no actual discussion of that claim is reflected in the sentencing transcript, as the discussion instead was focused on the issue of his responsibility for transferring money to non-tribal accounts. Also bearing on our analysis here is the fact that many of these transfers from the Housing Authority's funds appear to have been undertaken exclusively by Newell for his own purposese.g., a donation for the marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Tammy Newell, unspecified loans in small amounts, compensation to Newell himself for mileage, and medical assistance to Tribe members whose relationship to Newell and/or Parisi is unexplained. In the absence of an explicit ruling by the district court, we are left uncertain whether the district court viewed these transfers as not within the scope of the (tacit) agreement between Newell and Parisi, but mistakenly did not deduct them from the overall restitution order, or if the court concluded that they were, appearances notwithstanding, indeed part of the overall conspiracy. Particularly in light of the extensive number of transactions involved, and the factual complexity of the case, both possibilities seem equally plausible. Because of the ambiguity in the record, we remand the restitution order to the district court to clarify its disposition of the $15,900 Indian Township Housing Authority transfers.