Salomon Melgen was an immigrant who came to the United States and wound up committing fraud, ripping off the American taxpayers by $42 million. “Melgen devised a scheme to enrich himself by defrauding Medicare to the tune of tens of millions of dollars,” an F.B.I. official said when Mr. Melgen was sentenced to 17 years in jail during President Trump’s first term.
Given the high-profile “war on fraud” in government programs that Mr. Trump announced on Monday, pointing to scams allegedly carried out by Somali and other immigrants, Mr. Melgen might have a prominent place in the president’s rogue’s gallery of fraudsters.
But Mr. Melgen is actually prominent in another presidential lineup, the gallery of criminals convicted of fraud who have been granted clemency by Mr. Trump.
That second gallery is not small.
Across both of his terms, Mr. Trump has granted clemency to more than 70 allies, donors and others convicted in fraud cases. In his second term, Mr. Trump’s pace of pardoning those convicted of fraud has increased. In the first year of his second term, he handed out nearly three dozen pardons and commutations for people accused of fraud.
Mr. Trump is unabashed about using the government to reward friends and supporters and punish foes. Still, his handling of fraud cases stands out. Not only are there striking similarities between some of the crimes that were prosecuted and those that were pardoned, but the president also has excused some of those who have stolen the most.
Exhibit A is Philip Esformes. The South Florida owner of nursing and assisted-living facilities was arrested in 2016 in what the F.B.I. called “the largest-ever criminal health care fraud case brought against individuals.” The fraudulent billing scheme stole $1.3 billion from Medicare and Medicaid — the same type of public entitlement programs the president says he is protecting with his crackdown on fraud in Minnesota and elsewhere.
But Mr. Trump commuted Mr. Esformes’s 20-year-sentence in 2020, after a lobbying campaign by well-connected lawyers and public figures. In announcing the commutation, which left in place $5.5 million in restitution, a statement from the White House said Mr. Esformes had devoted his time in prison “to prayer and repentance.”
“The war on fraud seems like a war on specific fraud committed by a specific kind of people,” said Elizabeth G. Oyer, who was fired as the Justice Department’s pardon attorney after she said she opposed restoring the gun rights of Mel Gibson, the actor and prominent supporter of Mr. Trump.
Mr. Trump himself was found liable in a civil fraud case related to his businesses, and he has railed against what he views as politically motivated cases targeting him and his allies. The president, Ms. Oyer said, is partial to “fraud committed by people in whom he sees something of himself. He sees a wealthy and successful businessman and he sees something of himself in him.”
In Minnesota, the Justice Department, beginning in the Biden administration, has charged nearly 100 people with defrauding a variety of government programs, including stealing hundreds of millions of dollars intended for a child nutrition program during the coronavirus pandemic, a period marked by a wave of scams involving federal money.
A recent assessment by federal prosecutors suggested that since 2018, more than half of the $18 billion in taxpayer funds spent on 14 state programs in Minnesota was most likely stolen. The vast majority of people who have been charged are of Somali descent, which Mr. Trump has cited as a justification for his immigration crackdown in Minnesota.
Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said, “President Trump is launching a historic war on fraud to deliver justice for countless American taxpayers that have been ripped off by fraudsters, illegal aliens and career criminals.” She said that Mr. Trump also wants to “pardon victims of political prosecution or over-prosecution by a weaponized Biden D.O.J.” and that “this comparison from The New York Times is a false equivalence.”
Still, some of the fraud cases in Minnesota seem strikingly similar to those for which Mr. Trump has granted clemency.
Take, for instance, the case of Aimee Bock and Salim Said, who were charged as part of the $250 million theft from the federally funded child nutrition program in Minnesota. Federal prosecutors say they used the money “to fund their lavish lifestyles,” adding that the verdict against them “sends a message to the community that fraud against the government will not be tolerated.”
Compare that with the case of Lawrence Duran, the owner of a Florida mental health care company, who pleaded guilty along with co-defendants in 2011 to orchestrating a $205 million Medicare fraud scheme. Prosecutors say Mr. Duran “billed Medicare for hundreds of millions of dollars in mental health services that were not necessary or never provided,” adding that the government “will not allow our scarce Medicare dollars to be diverted from the sick and the elderly into the pockets of greedy fraudsters.”
The main difference between the two cases? Mr. Trump commuted Mr. Duran’s 50-year sentence last year, while Ms. Bloch and Mr. Said are facing possibly decades in prison.
Fraud charges are brought in a wide swath of financial crime cases, and Mr. Trump has used his clemency power in many types of fraud cases and for many reasons.
Some clemency went to people who are politically aligned with the president.
Mr. Trump pardoned Devon Archer, whose testimony helped fuel a Republican-led investigation into the Biden family, forgiving Mr. Archer’s conviction for defrauding investors and a Native American tribal entity of tens of millions of dollars. And he commuted the lengthy fraud sentence of Jason Galanis, a former business associate of Hunter Biden’s who also assisted in the investigation.
Mr. Trump has granted pardons to politicians from both parties whom he views as loyal, including former Representative George Santos, the New York Republican and serial fabulist who was convicted of wire fraud and aggravated identity theft.
Other pardons or commutations went to political donors or their relatives, although the White House has denied a connection between clemency and cash.
Last March, Mr. Trump pardoned Trevor Milton, the founder of electric vehicle start-up Nikola, who had been sentenced to four years in prison on allegations he had defrauded his investors. Before Mr. Trump granted the pardon, his campaign received donations from Mr. Milton and his wife totaling more than $1.8 million.
Julio Herrera Velutini, a Venezuelan-Italian banker, and two others, including the former governor of Puerto Rico, were charged in 2022 with wire fraud among other crimes in a bribery scheme. Mr. Herrera and the others pleaded guilty to a lesser charge, but Mr. Trump pardoned them before sentencing. The clemency grants came after Mr. Herrera’s daughter, Isabela Herrera, donated $2.5 million in 2024 — and then another $1 million in 2025 — to MAGA Inc., a super PAC devoted to Mr. Trump and run by his allies.
Grants of clemency in fraud cases often go to those with the connections to get their pleadings in front of the president. But pardons are not always predictors that the well-connected will behave themselves.
On his way out of office after his first term, Mr. Trump commuted the sentence of Eliyahu Weinstein, who had been convicted twice of defrauding private investors. His case was supported by an Orthodox Jewish organization that works with prisoners and numerous others who are also influential with the White House, including the lawyer Alan Dershowitz. In explaining the grant of clemency, the White House said Mr. Weinstein had “maintained an exemplary prison history” and that after his release he would “have strong support from his community and members of his faith.”
Four years later, he and co-conspirators were convicted of defrauding investors of millions of dollars in what prosecutors described as a Ponzi scheme, and was sentenced to 37 years in jail.
Mr. Weinstein has not been as fortunate as Adriana Camberos. In 2021, Mr. Trump commuted the sentence she was serving for a fraud scheme involving fake energy drinks. A lawyer who had worked in the Trump White House assisted her with her case. Three years later, Ms. Camberos was convicted with her brother of defrauding food wholesalers. In January, Mr. Trump pardoned them both, with no explanation.
In the Oval Office on Monday, Mr. Trump signed an executive order, “Establishing the Task Force to Eliminate Fraud,” put Vice President JD Vance in charge and gave him the nickname “Fraud Czar.”
“As the president said,” Mr. Vance explained, “this is a problem that has festered in this country for far too long, and far too few people have actually wanted to do anything about it. That’s what makes this administration different.”
In summarizing the executive order, Will Scharf, the White House staff secretary, said the task force could return “potentially billions or tens of billions or even hundreds of billions of dollars to the American taxpayer.”
Left unstated was Mr. Trump’s record of pardons and commutations for fraud convictions and the more than $700 million in restitution and fines connected to those cases, according to a review of Justice Department documents.
Mr. Trump said the administration would pursue fraud wherever it existed, but mentioned only Minnesota and California. He described the suspected fraud in Minnesota as totaling $19 billion — federal prosecutors estimate it is half that amount — and said it could be 10 times that in California.
Mark Osler, a professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minneapolis who studies clemency, said while “the fraud is real” in Minnesota, he questioned the prosecutorial zeal in rooting it out, given recent events.
In January, the federal prosecutor overseeing the sprawling fraud investigation in Minneapolis resigned along with other prosecutors after Justice Department officials displayed reluctance to investigate the killing of Renee Good by an immigration agent, but pressed for an inquiry into her widow.
Overall, he said, there is “certainly a deep contradiction” in the administration’s approach to fighting fraud.
“The message they want to send about fraud is that blue states have been suckers about fraud and the other message is that the government has been too tough on people who commit fraud in other contexts,” Mr. Osler said.
He said that historically, “presidents favor for clemency people they feel sympathy for.” Given Mr. Trump’s personal experience with civil fraud allegations, “it shouldn’t surprise us that he has the most empathy for the people who have faced the charges he faced.”
Kenneth P. Vogel contributed reporting.
Luke Broadwater covers the White House for The Times.
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