concurring:
I join the opinion of the court. While restitution for victims is very important, no good is done by restitution orders that vastly exceed a defendant’s ability to pay and that therefore will never be satisfied.
The defendant in this case caused great suffering for the victims of his crimes, while he and his family used the stolen funds to live lavishly. As we observed in our earlier opinion, the defendant’s personal expenditures during a three-year period totalled $2.5 million, including more than $500,000 for jewelry and nearly that much for gifts to his family. 24 F.3d at 539.
*486Defendants convicted of fraud offenses are sometimes masters at hiding assets. Therefore, if the government bore the burden of proving that such defendants still possess illegally obtained assets, the government would be unable to locate hidden assets, those assets would not be taken into account in framing the restitution orders, and the defendants would continue to profit at the expense of the innocent victims. This would be unconscionable.
The solution is to place the burden of proof on the defendant to show what has happened to all of the illegally obtained assets. See 18 U.S.C. § 3664(d). All the assets for which the defendant cannot account may be included in the amount of restitution ordered. To the extent that records are unavailable, the risk of inaccuracy should be borne by the defendant rather than the victims.