Internal investigations have become commonplace in corporate America. From Fox’s Bill O’Reilly to the General Motors investigation, companies often hire law firms as a signal to shareholders that they are taking a crisis seriously, as well as a signal to the government that they are able to clean house. Apart from these high profile scandals, internal investigations are routinely done in order to ferret out wrongdoing within companies which have been victimized by employees. In cases where companies are victims, they often use internal investigations to root out the mechanics of the fraud as well as the responsible employees in order to turn them over to the authorities. In these instances, the provisions of the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act (“MVRA”), 18 U.S.C. § 3663A(a)(2) require a court to order restitution for a victim’s “actual loss directly and proximately caused by the defendant’s offense of conviction.” A recent case from the Fifth Circuit demonstrates the reach of the MVRA.
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