“… Mr. Gentile and a co-defendant, Jeffry Schneider, were
convicted in August 2024 of securities and wire fraud charges, and
sentenced in May. Unlike a pardon, the commutation granted to Mr. Gentile will not erase his conviction.
Mr. Schneider, who was
sentenced to six years, does not appear to have received clemency from Mr. Trump.
… In court filings, prosecutors said that Mr. Gentile and Mr. Schneider over several years used private equity funds controlled by Mr. Gentile’s company, GPB Capital, to defraud 10,000 investors by misrepresenting the performance of the funds and the source of money used to make monthly distribution payments.
More than 1,000 people submitted statements attesting to their losses,
according to prosecutors, who characterized the victims as “hardworking, everyday people,” including small business owners, farmers, veterans, teachers and nurses.
“I lost my whole life savings,” one wrote, adding, “I am living from check to check.”
In a statement after the sentencing in May, Joseph Nocella Jr., the U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of New York, said that Mr. Gentile and Mr. Schneider had “raised approximately $1.6 billion from individual investors based on false promises of generating investment returns from the profits of portfolio companies, all while using investor capital to pay distributions and create a false appearance of success.”…”