Donald Trump has just set free a man who was supposed to spend the next seven years behind bars. David Gentile, the private equity boss convicted of defrauding more than ten thousand investors, walked out of federal custody only twelve days after starting his sentence.
Gentile, 59, had been sentenced in May by District Judge Rachel P. Kovner for wire and securities fraud. Prosecutors said his scheme drained around 1.6 billion dollars from regular people—small business owners, teachers, nurses, farmers, veterans. Many wrote to prosecutors saying they had lost their life savings.
He reported to prison on November 14. By Wednesday, he was out, thanks to a Trump commutation quietly executed while the former president was at Mar-a-Lago. The Bureau of Prisons confirmed his release, though it didn’t list where he had been held.
Alice Marie Johnson, Trump’s clemency adviser, celebrated the move on X, saying she was grateful Gentile could return to his young children. The Justice Department hasn’t yet published the commutation online, and it’s still unclear whether his financial penalties remain.
One thing didn’t change: the fate of his co-defendant, Jeffry Schneider. Schneider, who marketed GPB funds to investors, received six years but hasn’t been granted clemency and doesn’t appear in Bureau of Prisons custody.
Prosecutors had long argued that between 2015 and 2018, the two men misled investors and ran a scheme disguised as a legitimate investment vehicle. In court, victims described devastating financial losses. “I lost my whole life savings,” one wrote. “I’m living from check to check.”
But Trump’s allies have pushed back. They claim the GPB fund disclosed its practices in advance and accused the Biden-era Justice Department of mischaracterizing the case as a Ponzi scheme. They say the government never tied specific fraudulent statements to Gentile and raised concerns about false testimony.
The civil case against Gentile from New York Attorney General Letitia James remains untouched. Trump’s clemency only affects federal convictions.
Gentile now joins the long list of people Trump has pardoned or granted clemency to since January—thousands, including about 1,500 January 6 defendants on his first day in office. He has also wiped sentences for several high-profile fraud convicts, from former congressman George Santos to billionaire Binance founder Changpeng Zhao.
Gentile’s release is one of the most striking yet, both for the scale of the alleged fraud and the speed of the commutation.
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