*670 OPINION
Kevin Jemel Mickens challenges his 30-month sentence for possession of counterfeit devices and counterfeit-device-making equipment. In his view, the district court miscalculated the loss from the counterfeit scheme, mixing intended and actual loss in a way that gave him a higher guidelines range than the facts of this case permit. Concluding that the district court’s loss calculation was not clearly erroneous, we affirm.
I.
On August 20, 2004, Lance Arzu entered eight banks in the Ashtabula, Ohio area, seeking to obtain cash advances using fraudulent Discover credit cards. He initially succeeded in obtaining $17,000, usually in $3,500 increments.
Later that day, however, the scheme unwound when employees of the First Merit Bank in Ashtabula, Ohio, became suspicious that Arzu was engaged in fraud and alerted the police. The police arrested Arzu outside of the bank. The police found a fraudulent Discover card on Arzu, bearing the name Shaun Brown, which turned out to be encoded with account information belonging to a (real) Discover customer who lived in California. The police also found a fraudulent driver’s license on Arzu, which also bore the name Shaun Brown.
After his arrest, Arzu gave the police information that led to the arrest of his two accomplices, Mickens and India Young. The police also obtained a warrant to search the hotel room where Arzu, Mickens and Young were staying. In the room, they found $15,900 in cash, approximately 35 fraudulent Discover Cards — all in the name of Shaun Brown and all featuring Arzu’s picture- — and equipment for making fraudulent cards. All of the cards were encoded with the account information of actual Discover customers.
On December 15, 2004, Mickens pleaded guilty to (1) possession of at least 15 counterfeit devices (the cards) in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1029(a)(3) and § 2 and (2) possession of counterfeit-device-making equipment in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1029(a)(4). He reserved the right at sentencing to dispute the calculation of the actual or intended loss from the offenses, which the indictment specified at over $120,000.
At sentencing, the district court accepted the government’s calculation that the loss exceeded $120,000, resulting in a 10-level increase in Mickens’ guidelines offense level and a guidelines range of 30 to 37 months. On March 15, 2005, the court sentenced Mickens to 30 months’ imprisonment, which he now appeals. We review a district court’s loss calculation under the sentencing guidelines for clear error,
United States v. Sosebee,
II.
Section 2B1.1 of the sentencing guidelines explains how to calculate losses arising from counterfeiting offenses. It sets a base offense level of six for Mickens’ counterfeiting offenses, U.S.S.G. § 2Bl.l(a)(2), then requires an increase in the offense level based on the loss resulting from the crime — with a loss of more than $30,000 increasing the offense level by six, a loss of more than $70,000 increasing it by eight and a loss of more than $120,000 increas *671 ing it by ten. U.S.S.G. § 2Bl.l(b)(l)(D)-(F).
The commentary to § 2B1.1 says that “loss is the greater
of
actual loss or intended loss.” U.S.S.G. § 2B1.1, cmt. n. 3(A). It then defines actual loss as “the reasonably foreseeable pecuniary harm that resulted from the offense” and intended loss as “the pecuniary harm that was intended to result from the offense ... including] intended pecuniary harm that would have been impossible or unlikely to occur (e.g., as in a government sting operation, or an insurance fraud in which the claim exceeded the insured value).”
Id
cmt. n. 3(A)(i)
&
(ii). We have previously held (in an unpublished opinion) that the total loss “amount'may include both actual and intended losses where the fraud involved both successful and ultimately unsuccessful attempts.”
United States v. Gross,
The commentary also explains that the district court may consider “[t]he approximate number of victims multiplied by the average loss to each victim” in making its loss calculation. U.S.S.G. § 2B1.1, cmt. n. 3(C)(iii). To use one example from the case law, if the counterfeit scheme involved 600 cloned cell-phone identification numbers and the defendants, using 156 of those numbers, defrauded customers and companies of $456,632 (or approximately $3000 per cloned phone), the court may multiply the per-phone average loss over the remaining unused phones and-add it to the actual loss, increasing the actual and intended loss to approximately $2 million.
See United States v. Watson,
On appeal, the government offers two ways of calculating the loss arising from this counterfeit scheme, both of which (it says) establish that the district court did not commit clear error in calculating the loss at over $120,000. Under one method, the government initially totals all of the losses experienced by customers and banks as a result of the credit-card fraud perpetrated by Mickens and his accomplices — $48,802.87. It then adds that number to the likely intended loss, which the government estimates by multiplying the 35 credit cards recovered from the hotel room by $3000 (one estimate of the average amount the defendant and his accomplices were trying to obtain from cash advances on the day they were arrested). The total, $153,802.87, qualifies Mickens for a 10-point offense-level increase.
We would have no problem affirming this approach if the record established that *672 all of the forged credit cards seized from the hotel room were unused. But as we read the record, it remains unclear whether the $48,802.87 in actual losses under this calculation involved any of the cards seized from the hotel room or whether that figure reflects only previously used and discarded cards. If the former is true — if the $48,802.87 figure involved some of the seized cards — that would suggest that the calculation involved forbidden double counting because it would encompass the actual money Mickens and his accomplices took using some cards and an estimate of intended loss from those same cards. Unable to resolve this ambiguity in the record and unable to determine whether any double counting was harmless (because it still would have left Mickens with over $120,000 in loss), we cannot endorse this theory of loss calculation.
The presentence report offers a second method of calculating loss, one that adequately accounts for this concern. The report adds the cash found in the hotel room, $15,900, to an estimate of what Mickens and his accomplices could have obtained with the cards left in the hotel room — 32 cards (a number conceded by Mickens’ counsel) multiplied by an estimate of the average fraud from the fraudulent transactions on August 20, 2004, namely $3500. The result, $127,900, also qualifies Mickens for a 10-point offense level increase. One can fairly infer that the $15,900 used in the report corresponds to what remained of the $17,000 successfully taken from the Ashtabula area banks on August 20, 2004. And the estimate of $3500 corresponds to the amount received in almost all of the successful cash advances Mickens and his accomplices completed on that date. At oral argument, moreover, Mickens’ attorney acknowledged that the 32 cards found in the hotel room (and mentioned in the police report) were not used on August 20, 2004. Finally, with respect to this calculation, at any rate, the defendant does not argue that double counting occurred. As a “court need only make a reasonable estimate of the loss, given the available information,”
United States v. Brawner,
While this approach resolves some of Mickens’ arguments on appeal, it does not resolve all of them. Noting that the commentary says that loss is “the greater of actual loss or intended loss,” U.S.S.G. § 2B1.1, cmt. n. 3(A), Mickens argues that the court may not rely on actual
and
intended loss in making its calculation. That may be true, in one sense, but it does not follow that the sentencing court may not account for the actual loss that occurred in calculating the intended loss — so that the intended loss includes all actual losses resulting from the defendants’ scheme and all reasonably foreseeable losses that would have resulted from the defendants’ scheme had the police not cut it short. As we have reasoned before in rejecting a similar argument, “[t]he intended loss necessarily includes all actual losses, because actual loss is merely a loss that [the defendant] intended to inflict and
did
inflict.”
Tate,
136 FedAppx. at 826. “Logically, intended loss must include both the amount the victim actually lost and any additional amount that the perpetrator in
*673
tended the victim to lose.”
Carboni,
Mickens next argues that
United States v. Booker,
Mickens, lastly, argues that his sentence is unreasonable because the sentencing court did not sufficiently account for the factors identified in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a). In reviewing similar claims, we have observed that a court “need not recite [the § 3553(a) ] factors but must articulate its reasoning in deciding to impose a sentence in order to allow for reasonable appellate review.”
United States v. Kirby,
The district court satisfied this standard. The court was well aware that ultimate sentencing authority rested with the sentencing court, not the guidelines.
See
JA 97 (“[T]he Court understands the scope of its discretion. The court is certainly not a slave to the guidelines .... ”). In determining that a “sentence within the guideline range is appropriate,”
id.,
the court accounted for the § 3553(a) factors in the following ways: The court considered that Mickens had no previous fraud-related convictions and surmised that he had been unduly influenced by his relationship with Young; it reduced his sentence to make it similar to Young’s in an effort to recognize that Mickens may have been led to this crime rather than the initiator of it; it noted that but for the intervention of law enforcement, Mickens and his accomplices “would have continued their illegal activity and would have caused substantially more losses to substantially more ... victims,” JA 98; it noted that “the one place where it’s clear the guidelines are not unduly harsh is in fraud-type convictions like this,” JA 113; and it concluded that “[t]he range for this defendant is completely reasonable, and the Court finds no basis not to stay within it,”
id.
While the court did not parrot each of the § 3553(a) factors, it adequately explained the basis for its ruling.
See Kirby,
III.
For these reasons, we affirm.