United States v. Nivis Martin

CourtCourt of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
DecidedApril 13, 2018
Docket16-11002
StatusUnpublished

This text of United States v. Nivis Martin (United States v. Nivis Martin) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. Nivis Martin, (11th Cir. 2018).

Opinion

Case: 16-11002 Date Filed: 04/13/2018 Page: 1 of 20

[DO NOT PUBLISH]

IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT ________________________

No. 16-11002 ________________________

D.C. Docket No. 1:13-cr-20457-JIC-3

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff - Appellee,

versus

NIVIS MARTIN, a.k.a. Nivis Alvarez,

Defendant - Appellant.

________________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida ________________________

(April 13, 2018)

Before JORDAN and JILL PRYOR, Circuit Judges, and REEVES, * District Judge.

JILL PRYOR, Circuit Judge:

* The Honorable Danny C. Reeves, United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Kentucky, sitting by designation. Case: 16-11002 Date Filed: 04/13/2018 Page: 2 of 20

This is Nivis Martin’s second appeal relating to her conviction for crimes

arising out of a mortgage fraud scheme in Miami, Florida. In her first appeal,

Martin challenged the district court’s order that she pay nearly $1 million in

restitution to three banks under the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act of 1996

(“MVRA”), 18 U.S.C. § 3663A. We concluded that even though the banks were

not the original lenders and merely purchased the fraudulently procured mortgages

on the secondary market, they still could recover restitution as victims under the

MVRA. We nonetheless remanded for the district court to determine anew the

restitution amounts, taking into account that the successor lenders may have paid

discounted prices to purchase the fraudulently procured mortgages on the

secondary market.

On remand, the government, apparently while preparing to address whether

the successor lenders paid discounted prices to acquire the mortgages, learned that

the facts of the underlying transactions did not support its theories advanced at the

first sentencing hearing about why two of the lenders were victims under the

MVRA. At the restitution hearing on remand, the government contended for the

first time that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (the “FDIC”) was the

proper victim for one property because it had taken over as receiver for the original

lender. Regarding a second property, the government claimed, again for the first

time, that Bank of America Home Loans (“Bank of America”) was a victim, not

2 Case: 16-11002 Date Filed: 04/13/2018 Page: 3 of 20

because it purchased the loan from the original lender, but because it acquired the

original lender through a corporate merger. The district court accepted the

government’s new arguments and entered a new restitution award, determining that

the FDIC and Bank of America were victims under the MVRA.

Martin now challenges the district court’s determination that the FDIC and

Bank of America were victims under the MVRA. She also challenges the district

court’s recalculation of the restitution amounts, arguing that the government again

failed to present evidence regarding the amounts paid by the purported victims to

purchase the fraudulently procured mortgages. After careful review, we affirm the

district court’s order in part and remand with limited instructions to correct a minor

mathematical error regarding Bank of America’s restitution award.

I. BACKGROUND

A. The Fraudulent Scheme

Martin’s mortgage fraud scheme involved three properties in Miami, but

only two of those properties are relevant for purposes of restitution in this appeal.1

The first property was an apartment that Martin and her ex-husband owned (the

“Miami Apartment”), which they purported to sell to Martin’s father for $495,000.

To finance the purchase, Martin’s father applied to First Franklin Corp. (“First

1 The bank that owned the mortgages on the third property declined any restitution after we remanded this case following Martin’s first appeal. As a result, the government decided not to pursue any restitution related to that property. The details surrounding that property are therefore irrelevant to our decision here. 3 Case: 16-11002 Date Filed: 04/13/2018 Page: 4 of 20

Franklin”) for two mortgages totaling the full purchase price. In his mortgage

application, Martin’s father lied about his assets and monthly income and failed to

disclose that he was related to Martin or that she had given him the money for his

initial deposit. First Franklin approved the application and loaned Martin’s father

the money. After the sale closed, Martin and her ex-husband paid off the previous

mortgage on the property and pocketed about $216,000 in cash. For over a year,

Martin and her ex-husband paid the new mortgages. Then they stopped paying, the

mortgages went into default, and the Miami Apartment was sold at a short sale for

$130,000.

The second property was a residential home in Miami Beach that Martin and

her ex-husband purchased for $1,550,000 (the “Beach House”). They funded the

purchase with two mortgages from LoanCity, Inc., in the amounts of $1,085,000

and $465,000. LoanCity issued these mortgages as stated income loans, meaning it

did not verify Martin’s and her ex-husband’s incomes. Their mortgage application

contained false information about their monthly income and assets. Based on

Martin and her ex-husband’s misrepresentations, LoanCity approved the

mortgages. Martin and her ex-husband eventually defaulted on the loans, and the

Beach House was sold at a short sale for $710,000.

4 Case: 16-11002 Date Filed: 04/13/2018 Page: 5 of 20

Martin was indicted, along with several others, for her role in the fraud. She

was charged with (1) conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud, (2) bank fraud,

and (3) wire fraud. A jury found her guilty on all counts.

B. The First Sentencing

At sentencing, the government sought imprisonment and a restitution award.

The pre-sentence report (“PSR”) stated that Bank of America was the victim for

the mortgages on the Miami Apartment because, according to the government,

Bank of America was a successor lender that had purchased the mortgages from

First Franklin. The government offered no evidence or testimony to support its

position that First Franklin had sold the mortgages for the Miami Apartment. The

district court nonetheless accepted the government’s assertion that Bank of

America had purchased these mortgages and found that Bank of America was the

victim, awarding it $358,781.12 in restitution. The district court arrived at this

amount by subtracting the short sale purchase price from the outstanding principal

due on the loans. The district court failed to consider whether Bank of America

had purchased the mortgages from First Franklin at a discount.

As for the Beach House mortgages, the PSR noted that the loans had passed

to two different successor lenders: the $1,085,000 mortgage had passed to

OneWest Bank FSB (“OneWest”), while the $465,000 mortgage had passed to

Saxon Mortgage Services, Inc. (“Saxon”). The PSR stated that Saxon no longer

5 Case: 16-11002 Date Filed: 04/13/2018 Page: 6 of 20

existed and there was no identifiable successor in interest, so the PSR included in

the restitution amount only the loss attributable to the loan owned by OneWest.

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