In yet another gift to corporate criminals, President Donald Trump has reportedly used his executive authority to commute the seven-year prison sentence of a former private equity executive convicted of defrauding more than 10,000 investors of around $1.6 billion.
David Gentile, the founder and former CEO of GPB Capital, was convicted of securities and wire fraud last year and sentenced to prison in May, but he ended up serving just days behind bars. The New York Timesreported over the weekend that the White House “argued that prosecutors had falsely characterized the business as a Ponzi scheme.”
One victim said they lost their “whole life savings” to the scheme and are now living “check to check.” Another, who described themselves as “an elderly victim,” said they “lost a significant portion” of their retirement savings.
“This money was earmarked to help my two grandsons pay for college,” the person said. “They had tragically lost their father and needed some financial assistance. So this loss attached my entire family.”
In a statement following Gentile’s sentencing earlier this year, FBI Assistant Director in Charge Christopher Raia—who was appointed to the role by Trump’s loyalist FBI director, Kash Patel—said the private equity executive and his co-defendant, Jeffry Schneider, “wove a web of lies to steal more than one billion dollars from investors through empty promises of guaranteed profits and unlawfully rerouting funds to provide an illusion of success.”
“The defendants abused their high-ranking positions within their company to exploit the trust of their investors and directly manipulate payments to perpetuate this scheme,” said Raia. “May today’s sentencing deter anyone who seeks to greedily profit off their clients through deceitful practices.”
Critics said Trump’s commutation of Gentile’s sentence sends the opposite message: That the administration is soft on corporate crime and rich fraudsters despite posturing as fierce protectors of the rule of law and throwing the book at the vulnerable.
“Trump will deport an Afghan living in the US with Temporary Protected Status if he is accused of stealing $1,000,” said US Rep. Sean Casten (D-Ill.). “But he’ll set a white dude free who was convicted of stealing $1.6 billion from American citizens to go commit more crime.”
After criticizing former President Joe Biden for commuting the sentences of death-row prisoners, Trump has wielded his pardon power to spare political allies—including January 6 rioters—and rich executives while his administration works to “delegitimize the very concept of white-collar crime.”
Since the start of Trump’s second term, his administration has halted or dropped more than 160 federal enforcement actions against corporations, according to the watchdog group Public Citizen. White-collar criminals reportedly view Trump as their “get-out-of-jail-free card.”
“The most shamelessly corrupt administration in history,” journalist Wajahat Ali wrote in response to the Gentile commutation.