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President Trump this week pardoned a San Diego-area woman whose sentence he commuted during his first term but who shortly wound up back in prison for a different scheme.

In 2016 a federal jury convicted Adriana Camberos and her then-husband, Joseph Shayota, on conspiracy charges 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 barely more than half of that time when Trump commuted her sentence in 2021.

But her freedom proved fleeting. In 2024, Camberos and her brother, Andres, were convicted in a separate case that involved lying to manufacturers to purchase wholesale groceries and additional items at big discounts after pledging that they were meant for sale in Mexico or to prisoners or rehabilitation facilities. The siblings then instead sold the products at higher prices to U.S. distributors, prosecutors said.

To avoid detection, prosecutors said, Camberos and her brother committed bank and mail fraud. Prosecutors said the pair made millions in illegal profits, funding a lavish lifestyle that included a Lamborghini Huracan, multiple homes in the San Diego area and a beachside condominium in Coronado.

The decision to pardon Camberos came amid a flurry of such actions from Trump in recent days, including for the father of a large donor to his super PAC and the former governor of Puerto Rico, who pleaded guilty last August to a campaign finance violation in a federal case that authorities say also involved a former FBI agent and a Venezuelan banker.

The president has issued a number of clemencies during the first year of his second term, many for defendants in criminal cases once touted by federal prosecutors. The moves come amid a continuing Trump administration effort to erode public integrity guardrails — including the firing of the Justice Department’s pardon attorney.

Among those granted relief of their prison sentences are defendants with connections to the president or to people in his orbit.

Administration officials have not offered a public explanation for Trump’s decision to pardon Camberos. But a White House official, speaking on background, said the administration felt it was correcting an earlier wrong by pardoning Camberos, arguing that she and her brother were unfairly targeted and subject to a political prosecution under the administration of former President Biden. The official alleged the Biden administration targeted the Camberos family in response to the earlier conviction and that the conduct was a typical part of the Camberos’ wholesale grocery business.

Ahead of her first conviction, authorities said Camberos and her then-husband operated a company called Baja Exporting, which contracted with the distributors of 5-Hour Energy to sell the product in Mexico. However, the company then altered the goods’ Spanish-language packaging and labeling and instead distributed them in the U.S. at well below the company’s normal retail price, prosecutors alleged.

That relabeling effort involved 350,000 bottles sold from late 2009 through 2011 at 15% below normal retail prices, according to authorities. The couple then took things a step further, joining with other defendants in Southern California and Michigan to manufacture a bogus concoction bottled and labeled to mimic the authentic product, according to court records. The scheme transformed the following year into one that produced and marketed several million bottles of counterfeit drink that was mixed under unsanitary conditions by day laborers, prosecutors said.

Six other defendants pleaded guilty to similar charges in connection with the scheme.

It wasn’t clear whether any consumers were harmed. The Food and Drug Administration, which regulates 5-Hour Energy as a dietary supplement, has investigated at least eight deaths and a dozen life-threatening reactions involving energy shots before and during the time period of the counterfeiting.

The recent wave of clemencies joins previous Trump pardons of former Democratic Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and former Republican Connecticut Gov. John Rowland, whose promising political career was upended by a corruption scandal and two federal prison stints.

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 a Capitol balcony over a question he didn’t like. Reality TV stars Todd and Julie Chrisley, who had been convicted of cheating banks and evading taxes, also received pardons from Trump.

Times staff writer Ana Ceballos and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

Fetty Wap is free from federal prison as of Thursday, 11 months ahead of his scheduled release.

The “Trap Queen” rapper, born William Junior Maxwell II, pleaded guilty in August 2022 to conspiracy to distribute and possess controlled substances. He will be supervised for five years, in line with his six-year 2023 sentence.

“Home,” the 34-year-old posted in an Instagram story on Thursday showing the text in stark white on a plain black background.

“Right now, my focus is on giving back through my community initiatives and foundation, supporting at-risk young children by expanding access to education, early tech skills, and vision care for young kids and students so they can show up as their best selves,” he said Thursday in a statement to Billboard. He also thanked family, friends and fans for their support.

He will be in home confinement in Philadelphia until Nov. 8, TMZ reported, then will have to spend the next five years abstaining from alcohol and drugs unless he gets a prescription from a doctor. He might get sent to an outpatient drug program during that time if the court thinks it’s needed, the site said. In addition to getting tested for drug use while under supervision, he won’t be able to open any bank accounts without federal agents’ OK and will have to keep the U.S. Probation Department apprised of his earnings and tax records.

Fetty Wap was arrested in October 2021 before he could take the stage at the New York edition of the Rolling Loud festival and charged along with five other men. In the indictment, the six defendants were accused of distributing cocaine, heroin, fentanyl and crack cocaine. In addition to the conspiracy charge, the five other defendants were also initially charged with using firearms in connection to the alleged drug trafficking.

The performer was released on $500,000 bail while he awaited trial, then — after being put back in custody two months later for a threatening FaceTime call that authorities said violated the terms of his release — pleaded guilty in August 2022.

In May 2023, the “My Way” emcee was sentenced to six years for his role in the drug scheme, with five years of post-release supervision to follow.

“Me being selfish in my pride put me in this position today,” he told the judge who sentenced him. His lawyers had suggested he decided to sell drugs because of financial woes brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“This is a sad day,” defense attorney Elizabeth Macedonio said at the time. “This is a kid from Paterson, New Jersey, who made it out.”

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York saw it differently, saying in a news release that Fetty Wap was “a kilogram-level redistributor” for his trafficking organization.

The organization distributed more than 100 kilograms (approximately 220 pounds) of cocaine, heroin, fentanyl and crack cocaine from June 2019 through June 2020, the release said. Searches executed during investigation of the crime yielded approximately $1.5 million in cash, 16 kilograms of cocaine, 2 kilograms of heroin, numerous fentanyl pills, two 9mm handguns, a rifle, a .45 caliber pistol, a .40 caliber pistol and ammunition, the release said.

“The defendants obtained the narcotics on the west coast and used the United States Postal Service and drivers with hidden vehicle compartments to transport the controlled substances across the country to Suffolk County, where they were stored,” the office said. “The drugs were then distributed to dealers, who sold them on Long Island and in New Jersey.”

Fetty Wap did his time at a low-security federal prison in Sandstone, Minn., north of Minneapolis.

Former Times staff writer Nardine Saad and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s administration announced late Tuesday that it’s freezing child care funds to Minnesota and demanding an audit of some day care centers after a series of fraud schemes involving government programs in recent years.

Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services Jim O’Neill said on the social platform X that the move is in response to “blatant fraud that appears to be rampant in Minnesota and across the country.”

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz pushed back on X, saying fraudsters are a serious issue that the state has spent years cracking down on but that this move is part of “Trump’s long game.”

“He’s politicizing the issue to defund programs that help Minnesotans,” Walz said.

O’Neill referenced a right-wing influencer who posted a video Friday claiming he found that day care centers operated by Somali residents in Minneapolis had committed up to $100 million in fraud. O’Neill said he has demanded Walz submit an audit of these centers that includes attendance records, licenses, complaints, investigations and inspections.

“We have turned off the money spigot and we are finding the fraud,” O’Neill said.

The announcement comes one day after U.S. Homeland Security officials were in Minneapolis conducting a fraud investigation by going to unidentified businesses and questioning workers.

There have been years of investigations that included a $300 million pandemic food fraud scheme revolving around the nonprofit Feeding Our Future, for which 57 defendants in Minnesota have been convicted. Prosecutors said the organization was at the center of the country’s largest COVID-19-related fraud scam, when defendants exploited a state-run, federally funded program meant to provide food for children.

A federal prosecutor alleged earlier this month that half or more of the roughly $18 billion in federal funds that supported 14 programs in Minnesota since 2018 may have been stolen. Most of the defendants in the child nutrition, housing services and autism program schemes are Somali Americans, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Minnesota.

O’Neill, who is serving as acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, also said in the social media post Tuesday that payments across the U.S. through the Administration for Children and Families, an agency within the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, will now require “justification and a receipt or photo evidence” before money is sent. They have also launched a fraud-reporting hotline and email address.

The Administration for Children and Families provides $185 million in child care funds annually to Minnesota, according to Assistant Secretary Alex Adams.

“That money should be helping 19,000 American children, including toddlers and infants,” he said in a video posted on X. “Any dollar stolen by fraudsters is stolen from those children.”

Adams said he spoke Monday with the director of Minnesota’s child care services office and she wasn’t able to say “with confidence whether those allegations of fraud are isolated or whether there’s fraud stretching statewide.”

Trump has criticized Walz’s administration over the fraud cases, capitalizing on them to target the Somalia diaspora in the state, which has the largest Somali population in the U.S.

Walz, the 2024 Democratic vice presidential nominee, has said an audit due by late January should give a better picture of the extent of the fraud. He said his administration is taking aggressive action to prevent additional fraud. He has long defended how his administration responded.

Minnesota’s most prominent Somali American, Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, has urged people not to blame an entire community for the actions of a relative few.

Golden writes for the Associated Press.

MINNEAPOLIS — A surge of federal officers in Minnesota follows new allegations of fraud by day care centers run by Somali residents.

President Trump has previously linked his administration’s immigration crackdown against Minnesota’s large Somali community to a series of fraud cases involving government programs in which most of the defendants have roots in the east African country.

Surge in federal officers

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and FBI Director Kash Patel both announced an increase in operations in Minnesota this week. The move comes after a right-wing influencer posted a video Friday claiming he had found that day care centers operated by Somali residents in Minneapolis had committed up to $100 million in fraud.

Tikki Brown, commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Children, Youth, and Families, said at a Monday news conference that state regulators took the influencer’s allegations seriously.

Noem posted on social media that officers were “conducting a massive investigation on childcare and other rampant fraud.” Patel said the intent was to “dismantle large-scale fraud schemes exploiting federal programs.”

Past fraud in Minnesota

Minnesota has been under the spotlight for years for Medicaid fraud, including a massive $300-million pandemic fraud case involving the nonprofit Feeding Our Future. Prosecutors said it was the country’s largest COVID-19-related fraud scam and that defendants exploited a state-run, federally funded program intended to provide food for children.
In 2022, during President Biden’s administration, 47 people were charged. The number of defendants has grown to 78 throughout the ongoing investigation.

So far, 57 people have been convicted, either because they pleaded guilty or lost at trial.

Most of the defendants are of Somali descent.

Numerous other fraud cases are being investigated, including new allegations focused on child care centers.

In news interviews and releases over the summer, prosecutor Joe Thompson estimated the loss from all fraud cases could exceed $1 billion. Earlier this month, a federal prosecutor alleged that half or more of the roughly $18 billion in federal funds that supported 14 programs in Minnesota since 2018 may have been stolen.

Crackdown targeting Somalis

Trump’s immigration enforcement in Minnesota has focused on the Somali community in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, which is the largest in the country.

Trump labeled Minnesota Somalis as “garbage” and said he didn’t want them in the United States.

About 84,000 of the 260,000 Somalis in the U.S. live in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. The overwhelming majority are U.S. citizens. Almost 58% were born in the U.S and 87% of the foreign-born are naturalized citizens.

Among those running schemes to get funds for child nutrition, housing services and autism programs, 82 of the 92 defendants are Somali Americans, according to the U.S. attorney’s office for Minnesota.

Republicans have tried to blame Walz

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the 2024 Democratic vice presidential nominee, has said fraud will not be tolerated and his administration “will continue to work with federal partners to ensure fraud is stopped and fraudsters are caught.”

The fraud could be a major issue in the 2026 gubernatorial race as Walz seeks a third term.

Walz has said an audit due by late January should give a better picture of the extent of the fraud but allowed that the $1-billion estimate could be accurate. He said his administration is taking aggressive action to prevent additional fraud. He has long defended how his administration responded.

Minnesota’s most prominent Somali American, Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, has urged people not to blame an entire community for the actions of a relative few.