I Beg Your Pardon part 2
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03/17/26
•40m
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Twelve days. That’s how long David Gentile spent in federal prison for a $1.8 billion fraud that wiped out the retirement savings of 17,000 people.
On Thanksgiving 2025, President Trump signed a one-page clemency grant, commuting Gentile’s seven-year sentence to time served and erasing a $15 million restitution order in the process.
In this episode, we talk to one of those 17,000 victims, CarolAnn Tutera, a 70-year-old still working because she can’t afford not to. We also talk to securities fraud attorney Adam Gana and Ponzi Playbook co-host Neal McTighe about how the scheme worked, what the pardon means, and what it says about the current climate for white collar crime.
CarolAnn Tutera
GPB Capital investor and CEO of Tutera Medical
Adam Gana
Securities fraud attorney, Gana LLP
Neal McTighe
Co-host, Ponzi Playbook podcast
The Conviction and Sentencing
DOJ Press Release
The Blueprint of the Fraud
SEC Civil Complaint
The White House Response
Forbes Breaking News — search: “Karoline Leavitt Asked About Trump’s Commutation Of Private Equity CEO’s Fraud Sentence”
00:00 CarolAnn’s Story
04:06 David Gentile’s Promise
04:38 I Beg Your Pardon
07:02 How a Ponzi Scheme Works
14:21 The Smoking Gun Emails
15:47 CarolAnn’s $400K
16:42 The Takedown
18:38 The Verdict
19:22 The Pardon
20:06 The White House Response
23:12 Restitution Wiped Out
29:51 The Pay-to-Play Pattern
33:41 The Perfect Storm
GuestsResourcesChapters36:44 Ponzi Playbook Returns
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Previous Episode
I Beg Your Pardon part 1
March 10
•38m
Jerry Bush was a plumber from Virginia with fourteen employees, a wife battling cancer, and a business his father built from nothing. When a big construction job left him waiting on $350,000 he'd already earned, he did what you'd probably do. He looked for a loan.
The man who picked up the phone was named Jonathan Braun.
Before Braun found Jerry, he was running a half-billion dollar international drug smuggling operation. After he found Jerry, he froze his bank account, drained his father's retirement, took money from his 16-year-old son, and told Jerry his only way out was to win the lottery or die.
And then things got worse.
By the time it was over, Jerry Bush had lost his business, his savings, and nearly his life. Jonathan Braun had a Ferrari, a Lamborghini, a personal butler, and a very powerful friend.
What happens next will make you question everything you think you know about who the justice system is actually designed to protect and who it leaves behind.
I Beg Your Pardon is a new investigative series from PRETEND.
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Next Episode
I Beg Your Pardon part 3
March 24
•36m
You know that little bottle of 5-Hour Energy sitting on the counter of almost every gas station in America? Someone was faking it. Millions of bottles, mixed by hand in a filthy warehouse by day laborers with no training, no sanitation licenses, and no recipe. Just plastic barrels, canoe paddles, and industrial chemicals that may not have been approved for human consumption.
In this episode, you meet Geoffrey Potter, an anti-counterfeiting attorney at Patterson, Belknap, Webb and Tyler who only takes cases where the fake product can kill you. Think of him as a private prosecutor with powers most people don't even know a private attorney can have. He helped bring down one of the most sophisticated food counterfeiting operations in US history.
You'll also learn what happened after the convictions. How a woman with no obvious connection to the President of the United States managed to secure not one, but two acts of presidential clemency. And how, just 42 days after walking out of prison, she was already running a $59 million scheme in the background.
This is the story of Adriana Camberos — a woman who was convicted twice, freed twice, and is still out there. This series is called I Beg Your Pardon for a reason.
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