Opinion ID: 808490
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the value of the property on the date of sen-

Text: tencing, less the value (as of the date the property is returned) of any part of the property that is returned. 18 U.S.C. § 3663A(b)(1). 4 Robers agreed that the ultimate victim of the Inlet Shores fraud was American Portfiolio and that MGIC was the ultimate victim of the Grant Street fraud. 10 No. 10-3794 Robers argues that the plain language of the MVRA required the district court to reduce the restitution award by the value of the mortgaged real estate as of the date of foreclosure because that is the value “as of the date the property is returned.” He contends that it was legal error for the court to calculate the offsetting amount based on the eventual resale prices of the real estate because the houses were resold many months after the foreclosure actions gave title to the victim lenders. 5 And with the burst of the real estate bubble in the mid-2000s, Robers maintains that the houses sold for less, not based on his fraud, but for other unrelated reasons. The government responds that Robers’s argument misreads the MVRA and argues that under the plain language of the MVRA, the restitution award is only reduced at the time that the mortgaged collateral is sold because cash is the property that was taken and cash is only returned at that point in time. We agree with the government. More specifically, we hold that in calculating a restitution award where, as in this case, cash is the property taken, the restitution amount is reduced by the eventual cash proceeds recouped once any collateral securing the debt is sold. We reach this holding based on the plain language of the MVRA. The MVRA states that the restitution award is reduced by “the value (as of the date the property is 5 The Inlet Shores house was sold 31 months after foreclosure but it is unclear from the record when the Grant Street real estate was sold. No. 10-3794 11 returned) of any part of the property that is returned.” 18 U.S.C. § 3663A(b)(1)(B)(ii) (emphasis added). Read in the context of the statute, “the property” must mean the property originally taken from the victim. The applicable subsection of the MVRA first addresses the situation we have here—where there is “damage to or loss or destruction of property of a victim of the offense.” In this case the “loss” the victims suffered was a significant amount of cash. Next, it refers to the return of “the property to the owner.” 18 U.S.C. § 3663A(b)(1). In this case, since the property taken from the victims was cash, the two houses purchased with the cash were not the property taken from the lenders, but rather were collateral that secured the cash loans. The two cannot be equated. Cash is liquid. Real estate is not. The victimlender was defrauded out of cash and wants cash back; the victim does not want the houses and they do not, in any way, benefit from possessing title to the houses until they are converted into cash upon resale. Under the plain language of the statute, what matters is when at least part of the cash was returned to the vic- tims—not when the victims received title to the houses securing the loans. And the cash was returned to the victims only when the collateral houses securing the loans were eventually resold. Our interpretation of the MVRA gives the phrase “the property” a consistent meaning throughout the statute: It always means “the property stolen.” Robers’s interpretation, on the other hand, seeks to give the phrase “the property” a different meaning within the same statutory section. Under Robers’s interpretation 12 No. 10-3794 the property returned would be the collateral houses and their estimated value at the time the victim receives title. However, “[t]here is a natural presumption that identical words used in different parts of the same act are intended to have the same meaning.” Matter of Merchants Grain, Inc. By and Through Mahern, 93 F.3d 1347, 1356 (7th Cir. 1996) (quoting Atlantic Cleaners & Dyers, Inc. v. United States, 286 U.S. 427, 433 (1932)). The MVRA directs the court to offset the loss by “the value (as of the date the property is returned) of any part of the property that is returned.” Under Robers’s interpretation “any part” of the property returned would have to refer to the collateral house. Obviously part of a house cannot be returned. Nor can a house (or any part of a house) be the same as cash. It is only when “the property” means “the property stolen” (cash) that the “any part” language makes sense, because then it is possible to return only a part of the property. A house is not part of the cash. Thus, our reading both gives the phrase “the property” a consistent meaning throughout the MVRA and does not render the “any part” language of the statute superfluous or nonsensical.