Freedom For Sale

• August 2024: A federal jury convicted Gentile of securities fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and substantive securities fraud and wire fraud.
  • Gentile ran GPB Capital, a private equity firm that raised $1.68 billion from over 15,000 investors. Gentile and his co-conspirators misrepresented to investors that monthly distributions were being paid with income from GPB portfolio companies, when in reality investor capital was being used to fund a substantial portion of income distributions: the trademark features of a ponzi scheme.
• May 2025: U.S. District Judge Rachel P. Kovner sentenced Gentile to 7 years in prison and ordered him to pay over $15.5 million in restitution.
• November 2025: Trump commuted Gentile’s sentence after he served less than two weeks in jail. As part of his commutation, Gentile is no longer required to pay the $15.5 million in restitution.
  • The New York Times reported that a Justice Department investigation into whether improper payments were made to facilitate Gentile’s commutation was cut short by Trump political appointees. The investigation ended after the Times asked if Reverend Frank Mann, a retired Catholic priest and friend of Trump, lobbied on Gentile’s behalf.
• Many of the victims of Gentile’s fraud were retail investors who had spent a lifetime saving for retirement; approximately 4,000 were senior citizens.
  

Selected Quotes from Victim Impact Statements

• “I had worked for 47 years trying to build enough retirement to help make out later years comfortable. But as a result of this loss, it has caused stress in worrying about how we will manage as the years go on, especially if and when the times comes that one or both of us may need some kind of long-term care” (DOJ-0000033)
• “I am a 100% disabled veteran being 75 years of age. My spouse is 74 years old and in poor health as well. As it stands, neither of us can increase our income by employment or other means. ” (DOJ-0000640)
• “I am a 77 year old retired teacher and my husband is an 85 year old disabled Vietnam vet and retired [electrician]. This man stole $75,000 from our retirement.” (DOJ-0000836)
• “She had been living comfortably in a rental apartment but was evicted early in 2019 because there was no money to pay her rent. She had no other source of income, so she was homeless and living in a shelter. ” (DOJ-0002137)
• “Our trust was established in January, 2021 by a small church wishing to have an impact in the area of nursing. Increasing payments to nurses and assisting with the cost of training them were our primary goals but we found we were hobbled to a great extent by our inability to reach the funds we had invested with GPB. ” (DOJ-0003496)

• October 2022: A federal jury convicted Milton of securities and wire fraud in connection with his scheme to defraud investors in his electric truck company. 
  • Trevor Milton was the CEO of Nikola, a company that claimed to develop electric trucks. Prosecutors said Milton induced investors to purchase Nikola stock based on false, misleading, and fraudulent statements regarding nearly all aspects of Nikola’s business.
  • Most infamously, Nikola duped investors into thinking it had a drivable prototype of its touted zero-emission electric semi-truck by publishing a video showing the truck moving along a highway, when in reality the truck was simply rolling down a hill in neutral.
  • Investors bought $660 million of inflated Nikola stock, which quickly lost nearly all of its value when Milton’s series of frauds came to light.
    • September 10, 2020: Hindenburg Research released a report accusing Nikola of being “an intricate fraud” led by Mitlon.
    • September 12, 2020: Nikola stock was down 36%.
    • September 21, 2020: Nikola announced that Milton is voluntarily stepping down as CEO. Nikola’s stock dropped 30%.
    • September 23, 2020: Oil and gas company BP pulled out of a partnership with Nikola to develop hydrogen re-fueling stations. Nikola stocks dropped 22%.
    • December 23, 2020: Waste management company Republic Services ended a collaboration with Nikola to develop zero-emission garbage trucks. Nikola stock dropped 9.8%.
  • Prosecutors said that Milton’s statements on social media and podcasts targeted retail investors entering into the stock market during the Covid-19 pandemic.
• December 2023: U.S. District Judge Edgardo Ramos sentenced Milton to four years in prison and ordered him to pay a $1 million fine. At the time, prosecutors argued that Milton should also pay $660 million in restitution to his victims.
• March 2025: Trump granted Milton a full pardon before he served any of his prison sentence. The pardon came two weeks after prosecutors asked Judge Ramos to order Milton to pay $680 million in restitution to his victims; the pardon destroyed any chance of restitution.
  • While his case was on appeal, Milton and his wife donated more than $1.8 million to Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign.
  • During his trial, Milton hired Marc Mukasey, who had previously represented the Trump Organization, and Brad Bondi, brother of Pam Bondi, at the time the U.S. Attorney General.
  • Trump reportedly met with Milton sometime before issuing the pardon, telling Milton that high-profile advisors including HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had convinced Trump that Milton had been unfairly prosecuted.
    • Milton had donated $750,000 to RFK Jr.’s 2024 presidential campaign.
• Milton’s fraud specifically targeted retail investors: individual, non-professional investors typically investing for retirement – or in this particular case, who began investing during the COVID pandemic to make “ends meet.”

Selected Quotes from Victim Impact Statements

• “The pain and suffering he caused me and the way he seduced investors is very disgusted [sic] way and while god asked us to forgive our enemies, I’m sorry Mr. Trevor I won’t forgive you, you took money from my children futures and you are still going to be a millionaire when you get out.”
• “I purchased 500 shares, which is a lot for me to do with being a county employee at the time. To date I have lost $16,461.97, with this fraudulent company. This has impacted my retirement plans, not to mention the stress and embarrassment this has caused me.”
• “Furthermore, based on Mr. Trevor’s assurances and presentations, I invested a significant amount of money into Nikola. The financial implications of this deception are tangible and immediate. Investments were made, and plans were drawn based on the premise of a working prototype and the promise of forthcoming innovations like the ‘Badger’.”
• “The Trevor Milton fraud he committed has had a very bad effect on me, on my mental health as well as on my family, because of him I lost the money I worked for 17 years and in addition I lost the best time of my child, whom I was not able to take care of much because of the daily nerves in stress due to the daily drop in the price of Nikola Corporation shares.”

• August 2017: Judge Ronnie Abrams sentenced Galanis to more than 14 years in prison for defrauding both the Sioux tribe of South Dakota and pension fund investors out of tens of millions of dollars.
  • Galanis’ 2017 convictions were subsequently vacated.
• January 2020: Galanis pled guilty to three counts of conspiracy to commit securities fraud, two counts of securities fraud, one count of investment fraud, and one count of conspiracy to commit investment advisor fraud.
  • Galanis pled guilty to both bribing investment advisers to purchase Gerova Financial Group stock on behalf of their clients, and manipulating the market to disguise his ownership interest in Gerova.
  • Galanis pled guilty to misappropriating the proceeds of bonds issued by the Wakpamni Lake Community (WLC), an independent tribal government of the Ogala Sioux Tribe. Galanis was responsible for delivering the proceeds of the sale of tribal bonds to an investment manager. Instead, at least $38 million of the proceeds were transferred to an account controlled by Galanis, who used more $8.5 million for his personal spending. 
  • Back in 2017, Galanis had been sentenced to 14 years in prison for a separate multimillion-dollar fraud against the Ogala Sioux Tribe. That sentence was later vacated.
• September 2020: U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel sentenced Galanis to more than 15 years in prison.Judge Castel also ordered Galanis to forfeit over $80 million and interests in properties in New York and Los Angeles, and pay over $80 million in restitution.
• March 2025: Trump commuted Galanis’ sentence to time served, and erased more than $160 million in fines and restitution owed Galanis’ victims.
  • Galanis’ sentence was commuted after he cooperated as a witness during the failed impeachment investigation in Joe Biden. Galanis and Hunter Biden were former business associates. Galanis testified to Congress that President Biden was intimately involved in Hunter’s private business dealings.
  • During the impeachment investigation, Galanis was represented by Mark Paoletta, who has been the General Counsel of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) during both Trump administrations.
    • The first Trump OMB illegally withheld a $214 million Congressionally appropriated aid package to Ukraine as a means to pressure the Ukrainian government to launch an investigation into Joe and Hunter Biden in an effort to boost Trump’s reelection chances. Trump was ultimately impeached by the House for attempting to coerce a foreign nation to investigate his political rival.
      • Trump continued the unilateral impoundment of Congressionally appropriated funds in his second term through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the Elon Musk-led initiative that wrecked havoc on federal agencies and the federal workforce.

Selected Quotes from Wakpamni Lake Community Victim Impact Statements

• “It is difficult to fully appreciate the devastation this fraud has caused the Wakpamni Lake Community and tribal nations. The Community is a local tribal municipal government on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. We are likely one of the poorest and most traditional communities, on one of the poorest Indian Reservation in the United States. We share this not to ask for your pity, but to understand the depth of destruction this deception has caused.”
• “We shared how difficult it is to find capital for economic development in Indian Country. Mr. Galanis’ fraud has had a chilling effect on all investments in Indian Country.”
• “Depsite being a victim of this scheme, we have now been named in civil litigation by overly-aggressive lawyers. We have no resources to even hire attorneys to respond to these suits much less anything else.”
• “For impoverished communities hope is often our most powerful asset. Perhaps the most devastating aspect is the damage to our hope. The loss of hope is more devastating than monetary damage.”

• February 2022: Bitmex co-founders and executives Arthur Hayes and Benjamin Delo pled guilty before U.S. District Judge John G. Koeltl to violating the Bank Secrecy Act. Under the terms of their plea deals, Hayes and Delo agreed to separately pay $10 million fines and were later sentenced to 2 years and 30 months probation, respectively.
• March 2022: BitMEX co-founder and executive Samuel Reed pled guilty before Chief U.S. District Judge Laura T. Swain to violating the Bank Secrecy Act. Under the terms of his plea deal, Reed agreed to pay a $10 million fine and was later sentenced to 18 months probation.
• August 2022: BitMEX executive Gregory Dwyer pled guilty before U.S. District Judge John G. Koeltl to violating the Bank Secrecy Act. Under the terms of his plea deal, Dwyer agreed to pay a $150,000 fine and was later sentenced to one year probation.
  • Hayes, Delo, Reed, and Dwyer willfully caused BitMEX to fail to establish and maintain an anti-money laundering program (AML), including a “know your customer” program (KYC) to verify the identities of BitMEX customers. Prosecutors claimed that failure to implement an AML program effectively made BitMEX a money-laundering platform and a vehicle for sanctions violations. BitMEX did not file any Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) from 2014 to 2020, even after leadership was notified of allegations that BitMEX was being used to launder money stolen during a crypto hack.
• January 2025: HDR Global Trading LTD, the parent company of BitMEX, was fined $100 million and sentenced to two years probation.
• March 2025: Trump pardoned HDR Global, erasing its obligations to pay the $100 million fine just hours before the fine deadline. Trump also pardoned Hayes, Delo, Reed and Dwyer.
  • BitMEX was the first crypto platform to list the TrumpCoin within a day of its launch while most exchanges waited 4 days. The TrumpCoin was a pump-and-dump scheme that Trump initiated at the start of his second term. The scheme netted Trump over $600 million while investors lost $3.8 billion.
  • The month before getting Trump’s pardon, Arthur Hayes published a blogpost in which he praised Trump and argued that a “memecoin is the purest and most honest popularity metric” for a politician because people “vote with their wallets.” Hayes argued against the idea that politicians shouldn’t profit from their public office, writing that he didn’t believe the Trump memecoin was a grift, but that he did believe the TrumpCoin would, at some point, overtake Bitcoin in price.
  • Trump and his family have amassed over $2 billion from their crypto ventures. Last year, Trump’s Securities and Exchange Commission dropped 60% of ongoing crypto cases, and the Justice Department dissolved its National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team.

• July 2024: A federal jury convicted both Watson and his company, Ozy Media, of conspiracy to commit securities fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and aggravated identity theft in connection with a scheme to defraud investors and lenders of tens of millions of dollars.
  • Carlos and his co-conspirators conducted a scheme to defraud investors through misrepresentations and omissions about Ozy’s financial performance, even instructing employees to create fake contracts with forged signatures in order to get a bank loan. Watson and his co-conspirators assumed the impersonated actual media company executives in order to cover up their prior misrepresentations and to induce a $45 million investment from Goldman Sachs.
• December 2024: U.S. District Judge Eric R. Komitee sentenced Watson to 116 months in prison and Ozy Media to one year probation.
• February 2025: Judge Komitee ordered Watson and Ozy Media to jointly pay $36 million in restitution and $60 million in forfeiture. 
• March 2025: Trump commuted the sentences of both Watson and Ozy Media just three months after their sentencing and before Watson served any of his prison sentence. The commutation erased the $96 million in restitution and forfeiture owed.
  • Watson’s commutation was reportedly facilitated by Alice Marie Johnson, the Trump administration’s “pardon czar”. In 2018, Trump commuted Johnson’s life sentence for a nonviolent drug offense, then granted her a full pardon in 2020. Watson was brought to Johnson’s attention by Topeka Sam, a prison reform activist and another recipient of one of Trump’s first term pardons.
    

Troy Lake and Elite Diesel Service LLC

• December 2024: U.S District Judge Regina Rodriguez sentenced Troy Lake and his company, Elite Diesel LLC, after pleading guilty to violating the Clean Air Act. Lake was sentenced to a year and a day prison time and ordered to pay a $2,500 fine; Elite Diesel was sentenced to five years probation and ordered to pay a total of $50,000 in fines.
  • Lake and Elite Diesel had instructed employees to disable emissions diagnostic systems on at least 344 heavy-duty commercial trucks, violating Clean Air Act requirements. As a result, the 344 diesel trucks released nearly 2,000 tons of excess chemical pollutants into the air. Exposure to diesel exhaust increases the risks for lung cancer and other respiratory and heart diseases, and the chemicals released are known contributors to global warming and acid rain.
• November 2025: Trump issued Lake a full and unconditional pardon. Trump pardoned Elite Diesel LLC 3 months later.
  • Federal and state politicians from Wyoming pushed for Lake’s pardon. Republican U.S. Senator Cynthia Lummis wrote a letter to Trump requesting the pardon, and invited Fox News to Wyoming to spotlight Lake’s case. Forty-one Republican members of Wyoming’s state House signed a letter to U.S. Pardon Attorney Ed Martin.

Ryan and Wade LaLone and Diesel Freak LLC

• February 2024: Judge Maloney confirmed the felony conviction of Diesel Freak LLC and ordered the business to pay a $750,000 fine and serve 5 years probation for violating the Clean Air Act. The owner of Diesel Freak LLC, Ryan LaLone, and an employee, Wade LaLone, were each sentenced to one year probation for violating the Clean Air Act and ordered to pay fines of $7,500 and $4,000, respectively. 
  • From 2015 to 2018, Diesel Freak conducted remote reprogramming of on-board diagnostics systems, including deletions of environmental controls, allowing trucks to work cheaper but generate excess pollution.
• July 2026: Trump pardoned the LaLones and Diesel Freak alongside two more diesel trucking companies, Accurate Truck and Griffin Transportation.
  • Ryan and Wade LaLone paid Jeff Daugherty $20,000 in May 2026, then another $15,000 in July 2026 to lobby the White House and Justice Department for a pardon. The LaLones were connected to Daugherty through Troy Lake, who had become a “kind of sherpa for other mechanics charged in similar emissions cases.”

Accurate Truck Service and Griffin Transportation

• October 2023: U.S. District Judge Paul L. Maloney confirmed the felony convictions of Accurate Truck Service LLC and Griffin Transportations and ordered each business to pay a $500,000 fine and serve one year of probation for violating the Clean Air Act.
  • Both companies engaged in a scheme to disable emissions control systems of semi-trucks to boost performance and fuel economy, and save on maintenance costs. Removing or tampering with emissions controls can drastically increase the emissions of nitrogen oxides, particulate matter, carbon monoxide, and non-methane hydrocarbons, compounds associated with serious health risk and contributors to global warming. A separate company, Diesel Freak LLC, reprogrammed the truck’s computer to function even after the emissions controls were removed or altered.
• July 2026: Trump pardoned Accurate Truck Service and Griffin Transportation, alongside the LaLones and Diesel Freak LLC.
  • Accurate Truck and Griffin Transportation appear to have benefited from the broader push for clemency for individuals and companies who violated the Clean Air Act and their business relationship with Diesel Freak LLC.

Barry Pierce, Gorilla Performance, and GDP Tuning LLC

• August 2023: Gorilla Performance, GDP Tuning, and their owner, Barry Pierce pled guilty to conspiring to violate the Clean Air Act. Under the plea deal, Pierce and his companies agreed to jointly pay a $1 million fine.
  • Pierce and GDP Tuning conspired to violate the Clean Air Act by selling tens of thousands of tuning devices and software that allow users to tamper with a vehicle’s on-board diagnostic systems. Specifically, it allowed diesel trucks to operate with removed or altered emissions control equipment. Pierce and Gorilla Performance also operated a custom auto shop where customers could have their emissions controls removed or altered.
• July 2024: Senior U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill sentenced Pierce to 4 months in prison, and Gorilla Performance and GDP Tuning were each sentenced to five years probation.
• July 2026: Trump pardoned Pierce, Gorilla Performance, and GDP Tuning.
  • Pierce and his companies appear to have benefitted from the broader push for clemency for individuals and companies who violated the Clean Air Act.