President Donald Trump has freed GPB Capital founder David Gentile, who was sentenced to seven years in prison for a fraud scheme that put at risk more than $1 billion of investor funds.
Gentile had reported to federal prison on Nov. 14 and spent less than two weeks there before Trump commuted his sentence. According to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons website, Gentile was released from its custody as of Nov. 26. The fund manager was convicted by a New York federal jury in August 2024, along with co-defendant Jeffry Schneider, on securities and wire fraud charges.
The Justice Department at the time accused Gentile of attempting to defraud investors by misrepresenting the performance of three private equity funds and the source of investor payments.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on Monday dismissed the case as “another example” of “a weaponization of justice from the previous administration.” Gentile’s case was championed by White House pardon czar Alice Marie Johnson, who posted on X that she was “deeply grateful to see” him “heading home to his young children.”
“GPB disclosed to investors the possibility of using investor capital to pay some of these distributions rather than funding them from current operations,” Leavitt said. “Even though this was disclosed to investors, the Biden Department of Justice claimed it was a Ponzi scheme.”
Gentile and two other executives were accused of using the funds to cover shortfalls and enrich themselves instead of securing returns for their customers. Some 17,000 investors were affected, about 4,000 of them seniors, according to a related complaint by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
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At the time of Gentile’s sentencing, the judge who presided over the case said she received hundreds of letters from victims, many of whom lost their life savings or were retirees in their 70s, including one who said they lost $450,000 as a result of the fraud.
Trump’s commutation is the latest instance of his use of clemency for white-collar criminal defendants. Still, the grant falls short of a full pardon, meaning that the crimes may remain on Gentile’s record.
Schneider, who was given a six year sentence, did not appear to receive clemency. His lawyer did not return a call seeking comment.
A spokesman for U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Joseph Nocella, whose office prosecuted the case, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In a May statement on the defendants’ sentencing, Nocella said the prison terms were “well deserved and should serve as a warning to would-be fraudsters that seeking to get rich by taking advantage of investors gets you only a one-way ticket to jail.”
Adriana Riviere-Badell, a lawyer for Gentile at Kobre & Kim, did not immediately return a voicemail seeking comment about Gentile.
Recently, Trump has granted clemency to former New York Representative George Santos as well as Ozy Media co-founder Carlos Watson, who was set to begin serving his nearly 10-year prison term for lying to investors in his startup before his term was commuted, according to a senior White House official.
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