United States v. Irene Michelle FikeUnited States v. Irene Michelle Fike
Decided and Filed: June 10, 2025
Before: GILMAN, DAVIS, and MATHIS, Circuit Judges.
COUNSEL
ON BRIEF: Rachel D. Yavelak, Russell Baldani, BALDANI LAW GROUP, Lexington, Kentucky, for Appellant. John M. Spires, Charles P. Wisdom, Jr., UNITED STATES ATTORNEY‘S OFFICE, Lexington, Kentucky, for Appellee.
OPINION
DAVIS, Circuit Judge. Irene Michelle Fike appeals from the district court‘s restitution award to the victim that Fike defrauded. She asks that we vacate the district court‘s inclusion of prejudgment interest in that award. Fike argues that the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act of 1996,
I.
From 2016 to 2021, Fike worked at an accounting firm, where she performed bookkeeping tasks for one of the firm‘s clients, J.M. and J.M.‘s family. When Fike left the firm in 2021, J.M. hired her as an independent contractor, entrusting her to pay bills, update financial records, and complete other bookkeeping tasks. Fike exploited her position, first at the accounting firm and then as an independent contractor, to defraud J.M. Fike used her access to J.M.‘s financial accounts at Morgan Stanley and WinFirst Financial to pay Fike‘s personal credit card bills. She also used J.M.‘s financial information and means of identification to buy items from online retailers, such as, Kohls and Amazon. To conceal her fraud and avoid arousing the family‘s suspicions, Fike misrepresented J.M.‘s expenditures and debits in financial reports. Fike continued her fraudulent conduct even after she stopped working for J.M. around February 2022. Between April 2018 and September 2022, Fike defrauded J.M. of $363,657.67.
In 2024, Fike pleaded guilty to a two-count information charging her with wire fraud, in violation of
We review the propriety of a restitution order de novo and the amount of restitution awarded under the abuse-of-discretion standard. United States v. Church, 731 F.3d 530, 535 (6th Cir. 2013). “Because federal courts have no inherent power to award restitution, restitution orders
II.
The parties agree that Fike pleaded guilty to a fraud offense with an “identifiable victim,” J.M., who suffered a “pecuniary loss,” triggering the MVRA‘s requirement that the district court award restitution. See
A. Awarding Interest under the MVRA
When a fraud offense results in a victim‘s loss of property, as it did here, the defendant must either “return the property to the owner,” or, if the property‘s return is impossible or inadequate, “pay an amount equal to” the greater of “the value of the property on the date of the damage, loss, or destruction” or “the value of the property on the date of sentencing.”
Fike argues that, under the MVRA, her return of J.M.‘s stolen property—the $363,657.67 negotiated in the plea agreement—was the most restitution that the district court could order. The MVRA does not explicitly state that interest is part of “the value of the property,” Fike says, and no published Sixth Circuit case has held that the MVRA permits interest as part of restitution. (ECF 21, Appellant Br., 13). Fike recognizes that, under certain circumstances, interest technically could be considered a form of “lost income” under
As an initial matter, we have not categorically ruled out the recovery of interest as part of restitution. To the contrary, we have acknowledged in an unpublished opinion that the MVRA does not exclude interest from a restitution award because “[r]estitution does not need to equal the loss amount.” United States v. Cox, 665 F. App‘x 457, 462 (6th Cir. 2016) (“Restitution is calculated under
A clear majority of our sister circuits have interpreted the MVRA and its predecessor, the Victim and Witness Protection Act of 1982 (“VWPA”), to permit an award of prejudgment interest when it more fully compensates the victim‘s loss. See, e.g., United States v. Gordon, 393 F.3d 1044, 1059 (9th Cir. 2004), abrogated on other grounds by Lagos v. United States, 584 U.S. 577 (2018) (“A number of other circuits have likewise held that restitution under the MVRA or the VWPA may include prejudgment interest. . . . Prejudgment interest reflects the victim‘s loss due to h[er] inability to use the money for a productive purpose, and is therefore necessary to make the victim whole.” (internal quotation marks and citation omitted)); United States v. Qurashi, 634 F.3d 699, 704 (2d Cir. 2011) (“We hold that the MVRA allows a sentencing court to award prejudgment interest in a criminal restitution order to ensure compensation ‘in the full amount of each victim‘s losses.’” (quoting
We agree with our sister circuits. The Second Circuit, for example, rightly concludes that the MVRA explicitly recognizes “that a victim‘s losses may change in value between the date of the loss and the date of sentencing.” Qurashi, 634 F.3d at 703; see
This reading of the MVRA aligns not only with that of our sister circuits, but also with our longstanding approach to awarding interest in other contexts. See, e.g., Mann, 814 F.2d at 307 (awarding prejudgment interest as part of restitution award under Ohio law to make victim whole); W. Hills Farms, LLC v. ClassicStar Farms, Inc., 727 F.3d 473, 495 (6th Cir. 2013) (affirming award of prejudgment
The district court did not abuse its discretion in finding that prejudgment interest more fully compensated J.M.‘s losses. Fike argues that her return of the principal adequately redresses J.M.‘s injury and that the government has not proven otherwise. The government counters that J.M.‘s lost “ability to invest that money or otherwise put it to productive use” is “the exact kind of loss that an award of interest is intended to alleviate because simply repaying the principal stolen would not adequately restore the victim.” (ECF 23, Appellee Br., 8). We agree. When Fike stole $363,657.67 from J.M. between 2018 and 2022, she severed J.M.‘s ability to earn interest on those funds. Because of the time value of money, the funds’ value at sentencing had decreased from their value at the time of the fraud. So the district court was justified in finding the return of the principal inadequate. Awarding interest enabled the district court to “render full compensation for the use and wrongful detention of [J.M.‘s] money” over the intervening years. Mann, 814 F.2d at 307 (citation omitted).1
B. The District Court‘s Interest Calculation
Fike also argues that the district court‘s interest calculation was “speculative at best” because it credited J.M.‘s declaration of losses without considering any other evidence. (ECF 21, Appellant Br., 7). According to Fike, the declaration was unreliable and provided “no foundation” for the amount requested. (Id.). We disagree.
Restitution awards must reflect the victim‘s “actual loss,” and the government bears the burden of proving that loss by a preponderance of the evidence. United States v. Kilpatrick, 798 F.3d 365, 388 (6th Cir. 2015);
restitution award to the amount specified in the presentence report. Id. at 298. Nor was it bound by the negotiated amount in the plea agreement, which stated that its recommendation, including the provision that “restitution is $363,657.67,” “does not bind the Court.” (Plea Agreement, R. 7, PageID 20–21). See United States v. Elson, 577 F.3d 713, 722 (6th Cir. 2009), abrogated on other grounds by Lagos, 584 U.S. 577.
The district court offered sufficient rationale as to why the interest calculation presented a reliable basis for awarding interest. It first acknowledged the “extraordinary” and “rare[]” efforts that Fike made to pay the full negotiated
Fike counters that J.M.‘s declaration was “self serving.” (ECF 21, Appellant Br., 11). She insists that the district court should have required more rigorous evidence, like “financial documents” or “witnesses” or “cross examination [of J.M.].” (Id. at 6, 9). But a “self-serving” affidavit is not inherently incredible.” Martin v. United States, 889 F.3d 827, 833 (6th Cir. 2018) (collecting cases). And a victim‘s credited testimony can sufficiently establish the loss amount for restitution. See United States v. Whitfield-Neeley, No. 24-3452, 2025 WL 1088292, at *3 (6th Cir. Apr. 8, 2025); see also United States v. Kuo, 620 F.3d 1158, 1167 (9th Cir. 2010) (“[V]ictim affidavits will generally provide sufficient, reliable evidence to support a restitution order.” (citation omitted)). Having found the declaration reliable, the district court did not need to elicit other evidence or subject J.M. to cross examination. Resisting this conclusion, Fike says that, beyond notarization, the declaration had “no other indices of reliability” for the numbers it applied. (ECF 21, Appellant Br., 9). But Fike does not challenge the total dollar amounts, years, or math. Indeed, when the district court asked Fike‘s counsel if he disagreed with the declaration‘s mathematical calculation, he responded that he would “use the word ‘fail to understand’ rather than ‘disagree.’” (Sent. Tr., R. 35, PageID 196). And we find no mathematical error in the compound-interest calculation, which the district court credited. Fike‘s only real challenge to the numbers is that J.M. did not “prove[]” the relevant interest rates. (ECF 21, Appellant Br., 11). Yet Fike offers no alternative interest rate or explanation why J.M.‘s rates were untrustworthy. To demonstrate an abuse of discretion, Fike must show that the declaration‘s interest-rate calculation lacked sufficient indicia of reliability or rested on mere speculation; she does not make this showing.
To the contrary, the declaration‘s interest-rate calculation rested on sufficient evidence. J.M. explained that she “suffered substantial loss of a retirement, education, or other savings or investment fund,” and that her “[m]oney is held at Morgan Stanley and so is tied to the money market rate.” (Decl. of Victim Losses, R. 24-1, PageID 98–99). She attested to the fact that the money market rate was “in the 2% range” from 2018 to 2022 and “5%” from 2023 through May 2024. (Id.). She then applied those yearly interest rates to the defrauded funds in a compound-interest calculation, beginning in 2018 and ending in May 2024. J.M.‘s application
III.
We AFFIRM.