## Facts

- Ernest Bankas pleaded guilty to fraudulently obtaining federally guaranteed student loans.
- While committing the fraud, Bankas earned multiple advanced degrees, including three master’s degrees, a doctorate, and a law degree.
- The district court sentenced Bankas to two years’ imprisonment and ordered him to pay $340,810 in restitution to the U.S. Department of Education under the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act.
- After Bankas’s release from prison, the government began collecting restitution through the Federal Debt Collection Procedures Act, including garnishment of royalty income Bankas earned from a book.
- About four years later, the government learned Bankas was working as a health-care aide and earning at least $630 every two weeks, and it obtained a writ of continuing garnishment to collect from those wages.
- Bankas objected to the garnishment and submitted a form requesting a hearing based on financial hardship.
- Bankas also claimed exemptions tied to child support and child-care expenses for his five children, but the children were already over eighteen.
- The district judge denied an evidentiary hearing but held a telephone status conference, explaining that financial hardship is not a statutory basis to block garnishment and that the claimed child-related exemptions did not apply.
- Bankas appealed, arguing that the denial of a hearing violated due process and that the garnishment amount was miscalculated because his pay fluctuated and increased shortly before the wage garnishment began.

## Issues

1. Whether the district court was required to hold a hearing under 28 U.S.C. § 3202(d), or otherwise violated due process, when Bankas objected to wage garnishment based on financial hardship and asserted child-related exemptions that were unavailable.
2. Whether the continuing wage-garnishment order was improper because Bankas’s wages fluctuated and increased shortly before the garnishment began.

## Decision

- The court affirmed the continuing wage-garnishment order.
- The court held that a post-writ hearing under 28 U.S.C. § 3202(d) is limited to specific subjects (including the validity of claimed exemptions and statutory compliance) and does not provide a hearing right for hardship-based objections.
- The court held that Bankas’s asserted child-related exemptions failed because they did not apply to his circumstances (including that his children were over eighteen).
- The court rejected the due-process argument, concluding that Bankas received notice and an opportunity to raise objections within the limits set by the statute, and the dispute turned on legal limits rather than contested facts requiring live testimony.
- The court rejected the challenge to the garnishment calculations, concluding that pay fluctuations or a recent increase in wages did not show that the writ was unlawful or incorrectly issued.

## Legal Principles

- A hearing under 28 U.S.C. § 3202(d) is narrow in scope and addresses only the probable validity of claimed exemptions, compliance with the collection statute’s requirements, and limited challenges to the underlying judgment in specified situations; it does not authorize relief based on financial hardship alone.
- Criminal restitution may be enforced through civil collection tools, including continuing wage garnishment, and the debtor must point to a valid statutory exemption or a statutory defect in the collection process to obtain relief.
- A court may deny an evidentiary hearing when the objections raised do not fall within the grounds permitted by § 3202(d) or when the objections present legal questions that can be resolved without witness testimony.
- Continuing wage garnishment generally operates across pay periods, and changes in earnings do not, by themselves, make the writ invalid; the garnishment mechanism accounts for the debtor’s actual earnings as they are paid.

## Conclusion

The court affirmed the government’s continuing wage garnishment to collect Bankas’s restitution, holding that § 3202(d) does not grant a hearing or relief based on financial hardship and that Bankas failed to establish any valid exemption or legal defect in the garnishment process, including as to his wage fluctuations and recent pay increase.


United States v. Bankas, 717 F.3d 637 (2018)