Sorted · labeled · shorter than the version going around

A Who’s Who of the clemency list

TL;DRA list of financial-crime clemency grants, with each one labeled pardon or commutation, and each dollar figure labeled by what kind of number it actually is. The pardon power isn’t in question. What the record shows is that the money owed to victims goes with the grant.

A short list that holds beats a long list that doesn’t. Nobody has to beat the whole list; they only have to find the softest line and walk away saying you people make things up.

A version of this list travels well and loses badly. It stacks ten names, mixes four completely different kinds of dollar figure into one column, counts one crime twice, and includes a conviction that isn’t fraud. Every one of those is a door out for anybody who knows a single case on it. So here it is sorted.

Read the labels, because they are the argument. A pardon wipes the conviction; a commutation ends the sentence and leaves the conviction standing. And a dollar figure can be the size of a scheme, an order to forfeit proceeds, an order to pay restitution to victims, or a corporate settlement paid by a company rather than a person. Those are four different facts. Presented as one number, they add up to something that never happened.

The list

Commutation → pardon

Jason Galanis & Devon Archer

One scheme, two men, two grants — and this is the correction the viral version needs most. Both were convicted in the same fraud: bonds issued by the Wakpamni Lake Community Corporation, a business arm of an Oglala Sioux Tribe community, sold on a promise that the proceeds would fund tribal economic development and diverted instead. Listing them as two separate $60M crimes inflates the total by sixty million dollars.

The scheme: More than $60 million in tribal bonds — a scheme size, not a restitution order.
Galanis: Serving 189 months; sentence commuted March 28, 2025, then a full pardon January 15, 2026. His sentence had carried an order to forfeit roughly $80.8 million and pay an equivalent amount in restitution.
Archer: Convicted 2018, sentenced to a year and a day; pardoned March 2025. The White House said the case’s “tone and tenor” changed after he cooperated with congressional investigators.

Pardon

Trevor Milton

Founder of the truck maker Nikola; convicted by a New York jury in October 2022 of securities fraud and wire fraud over statements about the company, sentenced to four years in December 2023, and pardoned in late March 2025 while free pending appeal.

The number that matters: Two weeks before the pardon, prosecutors asked the court to order $680 million in restitution to Nikola shareholders and $15.2 million to one wire-fraud victim. Because of the pardon, no restitution could be ordered at all. (Sought, never ordered — which is the honest way to say it, and the worse fact.)

Commutation

Carlos Watson

Founder of Ozy Media; convicted at trial in Brooklyn of conspiracy to commit securities fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and aggravated identity theft. Sentence commuted March 28, 2025 — hours before he was due to surrender on a 116-month term.

The money, labeled: Forfeiture of nearly $60 million and restitution of more than $36 million, ordered jointly against Watson and Ozy. The commutation removed the criminal penalties.

Pardon

Todd and Julie Chrisley

Convicted of conspiring to defraud community banks with falsified documents, and of tax crimes; sentenced to 12 years and 7 years. Pardoned May 2025.

The money, labeled: Scheme size: more than $30 million in fraudulent loans. Restitution ordered: $17.8 million. Two different numbers, and the viral list quotes only the bigger one.

Commutation

George Santos

The former congressman, convicted of wire fraud and aggravated identity theft after admitting he deceived donors and used the identities of eleven people, including family members, to make campaign donations. Sentenced to seven years; sentence commuted October 17, 2025, roughly three months in.

No dollar figure here, on purpose: The circulating list gives a range. This page could not confirm one, so it prints none. Seven years, three months served is the number that lands anyway, and it is not in dispute.

Pardon

Scott Jenkins

Former sheriff of Culpeper County, Virginia, convicted in December 2024 on one count of conspiracy, four counts of honest-services fraud and seven counts of bribery — cash and campaign contributions in exchange for auxiliary deputy badges, from eight people including two undercover FBI agents. Pardoned one day before he was to begin a 10-year sentence.

The money, labeled: More than $75,000 in bribes — a specific, verified figure. “Tens of thousands” undersells it.
Worth noting: Virginia’s Republican attorney general publicly disagreed with the pardon, calling the conviction well-founded.

Pardon

Paul Walczak

A Florida nursing-home executive who pleaded guilty in connection with employment taxes withheld from his employees’ paychecks and never paid to the government. Pardoned twelve days after being sentenced.

The money, labeled: More than $7 million in withheld employment taxes is the figure most reporting uses; at least one outlet says over $10 million. Where sources disagree, the lower verified figure is the one to say out loud.
Do not merge this with another case: A separate $38 million nursing-home tax case involving a different person surfaces in the same searches. Different man, different case. Merging them is exactly how a good list dies.

Commutation (2021) → pardon (2026)

Adriana Camberos

The most unusual entry, and the one the viral list undersells: clemency twice, in two different cases. Convicted in 2016 with a co-defendant over a scheme to sell counterfeit energy shots; sentence commuted in 2021. Convicted again in 2024 in a separate scheme involving wholesale goods obtained at discount on false pretenses; fully pardoned in January 2026.

Pardon

Changpeng Zhao — and why he is listed separately

He does not belong in a fraud column, and putting him there is the single most attackable line on the circulating list. Zhao pleaded guilty to failing to maintain an effective anti-money-laundering program — a Bank Secrecy Act compliance offense, not fraud — and served four months. Pardoned October 23, 2025.

The number, labeled correctly: The $4 billion-plus was Binance’s corporate settlement with the federal government, paid by the company. It is not a personal conviction amount and it is not a victim loss. Dropping a corporate fine into a column of individual fraud figures is how a true list starts reading like an invented one.

Four kinds of number in one column is how a true list starts to read like an invented one.

The version this page refuses

A long list with a big total at the bottom. Twelve true entries and three shaky ones is weaker than four airtight ones, because nobody has to beat the list — they pick the softest line, disprove it, and walk away saying you people make things up. The total at the bottom is the softest line of all, since adding scheme sizes to forfeitures to corporate settlements produces a number that corresponds to nothing.

And any claim about what was in anyone’s head. This page makes no assertion about motive, about deals, or about why any grant was made. You do not need to read a heart to read a record — and a claim about a motive is a door that only swings one way, which is the kind of argument this house does not keep.

The steelman, at full strength

The pardon power is constitutional, unreviewable, and deliberately unlimited. The founders put it in Article II on purpose, and no president needs a reason, a process, or anyone’s agreement. Nothing on this page is a claim that any of it was unlawful, because none of it was.

And a rule that only catches the other team is a preference wearing a rule’s clothes, so here is the same standard pointed the other way. Bill Clinton pardoned Marc Rich in 2001 — a fugitive who had been indicted on tax charges and had fled the country, whose ex-wife had been a substantial Democratic donor; investigators later found no evidence of a quid pro quo, and the pardon is still regarded across the spectrum as an abuse of the power. Joe Biden pardoned his own son in December 2024, after saying repeatedly that he would not — a preemptive pardon covering any offense over a ten-year window, which is a broader instrument than anything on the list above. Both are real, both are in the record, and any version of this argument that leaves them out has stopped being an argument about clemency and become an argument about a team.

The honest counter goes further still: some of these people were prosecuted by an administration their pardoner opposed, and “the last administration went after my supporters” is a claim that can be argued rather than dismissed. Grant all of it.

What survives all of that

Something narrower, checkable, and much harder to answer. A grant of clemency does not only release a person; it can erase what a court ordered them to pay back. Galanis’ roughly $80.8 million in forfeiture and restitution, gone. Watson’s $60 million forfeiture and $36 million restitution, gone. Milton’s restitution — $680 million sought for shareholders and $15.2 million for one man — never orderable at all.

Whatever anybody thinks of the sentences, the repayment was not the punishment. It was the part that pointed at the people who lost the money: the tribal community whose development bonds were drained, the shareholders, the employees whose withheld taxes never reached the government, the one wire-fraud victim with a name and a figure attached to it. A sentence is what the state is owed. Restitution is what the victims are owed. Those are different things, and only one of them is the president’s to forgive.

Clemency to the convicted is the president’s power. Clemency with someone else’s money is a different act.

That is the argument, and it is deliberately small enough to defend: not that the grants were illegal, not that anyone was bought, not that the total is some headline number — only that the bill to the victims disappeared with the sentence, and nobody voted on that. It is the same shape as everything else here: the person deciding was not standing where the decision landed.

And there is a reform that follows from exactly that much and no more — one that does not touch the mercy, needs no constitutional amendment, and would apply to every future president including one you like: pardons should be reviewable → (aspirational — a proposal, not a bill)

Where this page stands, and what it cannot do. Every entry above is drawn from published reporting, and not one primary source was opened to build it — the machine that drafted this page is behind a network that blocks the Justice Department’s clemency list and most news sites outright, so it worked from search results. That is stated here rather than hidden, because a page about other people’s accuracy is the last place to be vague about its own. The doors to check it yourself: the Office of the Pardon Attorney’s published clemency lists at justice.gov/pardon, and the docket in each case. A caught error in this session: one search summary confidently dated a 2025 pardon to 2023, which is impossible — the Tell, arriving mid-verification, in the exact place it always does: a checkable number. Verified and checkable: the names, the convictions, the pardon-versus-commutation status, and the dates. Opinion: every ruling above, including which figures belong on a list and which do not. Refused: any claim about motive, any grand total, and any characterization of any person beyond what a court adjudicated — records, never souls. A correction goes up loudly the moment one is earned; that is what this page does with its errors. Held to the one rule: no lying. ;

Sources

Tribal Business News, on the Wakpamni bond scheme and both grants · CNBC, on the Watson commutation and the Milton pardon · CNN, on the Chrisley pardons and the Zhao pardon · NPR, on the Santos commutation · CBS News, on the Jenkins pardon · McKnight’s Long-Term Care News, on the Walczak pardon · inewsource, on the Camberos pardons · NBC News and NPR, on the Hunter Biden pardon · TIME and Forbes, on the Marc Rich pardon.
Primary, and the right place to start: the Office of the Pardon Attorney, justice.gov/pardon.