Wednesday, June 18, 2003

Valuing for sentencing purposes false statements made to a financial institution

In Elliott v. U.S., the Fourth Circuit in an opinion by Judge King joined by Senior Judge Hamilton and District Court Judge Payne from the E.D. Va. held, among other things, that in putting a dollar value for purposes of calculating the sentence of the defendant on her charges of making false statements to a financial institution, the measure of the loss was not limited to the loss of the financial institution (which was 0) but also included the loss of the individual bank customer on whose account the forged checks were drawn, in the face amount of the checks.

(Of course, I'm wondering whether the victim had a claim against the bank for honoring those forged checks.)

No comments: