President Trump this week pardoned a San Diego-area woman whose sentence he commuted during his first term, but who soon found herself back in prison for a different purpose.
In 2016, a federal jury convicted Adriana Camberos and her then-husband, Joseph Shayota, of conspiracy in connection with an elaborate scheme to sell millions of bottles of counterfeit 5-Hour Energy shots in the United States. She was sentenced to 26 months in prison and served just over half of that time when Trump commuted her sentence in 2021.
But his freedom proved fleeting. In 2024, Camberos and his brother Andres were convicted in a separate case involving lying to manufacturers into purchasing bulk groceries and additional items at deeply discounted prices after promising they were intended for sale in Mexico or to prisoners or rehabilitation centers. The siblings then sold the products at higher prices to U.S. distributors, prosecutors said.
To avoid detection, prosecutors said, Camberos and his brother committed bank and mail fraud. Prosecutors said the two made millions in illegal profits by financing a lavish lifestyle that included a Lamborghini Huracan, several homes in the San Diego area and an oceanfront condominium in Coronado.
The decision to pardon Camberos came amid a wave of similar actions by Trump in recent days, including against the father of a major donor to his super PAC and the former governor of Puerto Rico, who pleaded guilty last August to campaign finance violations in a federal case that authorities say also involved a former FBI agent and a Venezuelan banker.
The president has issued a number of pardons in the first year of his second term, most for defendants in criminal cases once touted by federal prosecutors. The moves come amid the Trump administration’s ongoing efforts to erode public integrity safeguards, including the firing of the Justice Department attorney.
Among those receiving relief from their prison sentences are defendants with ties to the president or people in his orbit.
Administration officials have not provided a public explanation for Trump’s decision to pardon Camberos. But a White House official, speaking behind the scenes, said the administration believed it was correcting an earlier mistake by pardoning Camberos, arguing that she and her brother had been unfairly targeted and subjected to political prosecution during former President Biden’s administration. The official alleged that the Biden administration targeted the Camberos family in response to the prior conviction and that this conduct was typical of the Camberos’ wholesale grocery business.
Before her first conviction, authorities said Camberos and her then-husband operated a company called Baja Exporting, which contracted with 5-Hour Energy’s distributors to sell the product in Mexico. However, the company then changed the products’ packaging and Spanish-language labeling and instead distributed them in the United States at a price well below the company’s normal retail price, prosecutors alleged.
This relabeling effort involved 350,000 bottles sold between the end of 2009 and 2011 at 15% below normal retail prices, according to the authorities. The couple then went further, teaming up with other defendants in Southern California and Michigan to make a fake concoction bottled and labeled to mimic the authentic product, according to court records. The scheme evolved over the next year into one that produced and marketed several million bottles of counterfeit drinks mixed in unsanitary conditions by day laborers, prosecutors said.
Six other defendants pleaded guilty to similar charges related to the scheme.
It was unclear whether any consumers had been harmed. The Food and Drug Administration, which regulates 5-Hour Energy as a dietary supplement, investigated at least eight deaths and a dozen life-threatening reactions involving energy injections before and during the counterfeit period.
The recent wave of pardons joins previous pardons granted by Trump to former Democratic Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich and former Republican Connecticut Governor John Rowland, whose promising political careers were upended by a corruption scandal and two stints in federal prisons.
Trump also pardoned former U.S. Rep. Michael Grimm, a New York Republican who resigned from Congress after a tax fraud conviction and made headlines for threatening to throw a reporter off the Capitol balcony over a question he didn’t like. Reality TV stars Todd and Julie Chrisley, who had been convicted of bank fraud and tax evasion, were also pardoned by Trump.
Times Staff Writer Ana Ceballos and Associated Press contributed to this report.
Source | domain www.latimes.com
