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Former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, center, goes back into his home after holding a news conference on Feb. 19, 2020, hours after being released from federal prison. His sentence was commuted by President Donald Trump. (Terrence Antonio James/Chicago Tribune)
Former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, center, goes back into his home after holding a news conference on Feb. 19, 2020, hours after being released from federal prison. His sentence was commuted by President Donald Trump. (Terrence Antonio James/Chicago Tribune)
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Hundreds of requests for pardons and clemency petitions for federal convictions are filed each year, but usually just a few result in a presidential pardon or commutation of sentence. Recent presidents have waited until their last months in office before granting clemency.

5 things to know about presidential clemency

Though anyone seeking pardons or clemency for a nonmilitary criminal offense can submit a formal petition to the Office of the Pardon Attorney through the U.S. Department of Justice, the president is under no obligation to abide by this advice.

It’s a complicated system that makes it difficult to track how many people in the state of Illinois and more specifically the Chicago area have had their offenses forgiven (pardoned) or have been released from prison early due to a president’s intervention without forgiveness for the crime (commutation).

That’s where the Tribune’s archives help. We’ve reviewed the names of people who have received pardons or commutations going back to the 1950s. Here’s a look at people with Chicago or Illinois connections who have been granted clemency by a president.

After President Donald Trump’s pardon, ex-Gov. Rod Blagojevich says he has ‘deepest and most profound and everlasting gratitude’

Pardons

Conrad Black

Conrad Black leave the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse with his wife Barbara Amiel on July 23, 2010. (Terrence Antonio James/ Chicago Tribune
Conrad Black leave the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse with his wife Barbara Amiel on July 23, 2010. (Terrence Antonio James/ Chicago Tribune

President Donald Trump signed a full pardon on May 15, 2019, for the former executive of the Chicago Sun-Times’ parent company and disgraced media mogul. Black wrote a book about Trump the previous year, titled “Donald J. Trump: A President Like No Other.”

A jury found on July 13, 2007 that former Hollinger International head Conrad Black was guilty of obstruction of justice and mail fraud for removing 13 boxes from his Toronto office during the government's fraud investigation of him. (Chicago Tribune)
A jury found on July 13, 2007 that former Hollinger International head Conrad Black was guilty of obstruction of justice and mail fraud for removing 13 boxes from his Toronto office during the government's fraud investigation of him. (Chicago Tribune)

The globe-trotting tycoon was accused of tanking what was then one of the largest newspaper companies in the world. He resigned from the company after criminal allegations that he and other executives had looted the company of about $32 million through a bonus-disguising scheme.

In December 2007, Black, the former chairman and chief executive of Hollinger International Inc., was sentenced to six and a half years in federal prison after being convicted of fraud and obstruction of justice. His sentence was later cut nearly in half, with a judge citing Black’s tutoring of inmates.

Rod Blagojevich

Former Gov. Rod Blagojevich waves to the crowd as he leaves his home in Chicago for Englewood federal prison near Littleton, Colorado, March 15, 2012. (William DeShazer/Chicago Tribune)
Former Gov. Rod Blagojevich waves to the crowd as he leaves his home in Chicago for Englewood federal prison near Littleton, Colorado, March 15, 2012. (William DeShazer/Chicago Tribune)

President Trump, now convicted of felonies himself, pardoned the former Illinois governor on Feb. 10, 2025 — almost five years after he commuted Blagojevich’s 14-year sentence to about eight years served.

The decision came after Trump had repeatedly teased the idea of commuting Blagojevich’s sentence. Trump, a Republican, said the sentence against Blagojevich, a Democrat, was “a tremendously powerful, ridiculous sentence in my opinion.” Though the two were from different political parties, Blagojevich appeared on Trump’s “The Celebrity Apprentice” TV show while Blagojevich awaited trial on the corruption charges.

Blagojevich was elected governor in 2002 and served until 2009 when he became the first Illinois governor in history to be impeached and removed from office. The impeachment occurred after Blagojevich was arrested in late 2008 by federal law enforcement on a series of corruption charges, including attempting to sell the U.S. Senate seat once held by President Obama. At Blagojevich’s first trial he was convicted of lying to the FBI, but jury hung on other charges.

Rod Blagojevich saga timeline: From arrest to Donald Trump’s commutation to the end of his supervised release

At his second trial, in 2011, Blagojevich was found guilty on the more widespread allegations, including the Senate seat charges, trying to shake down a children’s hospital leader in exchange for sending money approved for pediatric services and seeking a $100,000 contribution from a horse track owner in exchange for signing favorable legislation.

After being released from a federal prison in Colorado, Blagojevich returned to Chicago and proclaimed himself a “Trumpocrat.”

Abraham Bolden

Abraham Bolden at home in Chicago on April 26, 2022, hours after it was announced that he had been pardoned by President Joe Biden. (Terrence Antonio James/Chicago Tribune)
Abraham Bolden at home in Chicago on April 26, 2022, hours after it was announced that he had been pardoned by President Joe Biden. (Terrence Antonio James/Chicago Tribune)

Bolden, who became the first Black Secret Service agent to serve on the security detail for a U.S. president, was among 78 people granted pardons or commutations of their sentences on April 26, 2022, as part of President Joe Biden’s first use of his executive clemency powers.

Bolden, who’d warned about lax security practices around President John F. Kennedy, was charged in 1964 with attempting to sell a copy of a Secret Service file to a ring of counterfeiters. Bolden, who had earned a bachelor’s degree in music, held piano concerts to raise money for his defense. His first trial ended in a hung jury, and after he was convicted on Aug. 12, 1964, in a retrial, key witnesses said they had lied at the prosecutor’s request. But Bolden’s request for a new trial was denied.

Former Secret Service agent Abraham Bolden's request for a new trial was denied in Feb. 1965, though one of the key witnesses in his trial admitted to lying on the witness stand. (Chicago Tribune)
Former Secret Service agent Abraham Bolden's request for a new trial was denied in Feb. 1965, though one of the key witnesses in his trial admitted to lying on the witness stand. (Chicago Tribune)

A longtime resident of Chicago’s South Side, Bolden served about three years in federal prison. He has long maintained his innocence and wrote a book in which he argued he was targeted for speaking out against racist and unprofessional behavior in the Secret Service.

Bolden said he swore to give his life for the president. But in the end he said his experience helped him gain spirituality.

“I was in prison but prison never got in me,” Bolden said. “I used that time to study, make myself approved in the eyes of God and learn something where humanity could progress.”

Paul Fauteck

Fauteck — who dropped out of school after eighth grade — was pardoned by President George H.W. Bush on Dec. 24, 1992.

“In our society, you really carry a target on your back if you have a conviction,” he told the Tribune in 2000. “The pardon doesn’t completely remove that, but it certainly takes away some of the stigma. You can get a great deal of pride and personal satisfaction.”

Fauteck ran afoul of federal authorities in 1955 when the 19-year-old smuggled his Mexico-born wife, María Elena Díaz Fauteck, into the U.S. in the trunk of a car. The woman, whom he later divorced, had a criminal record. Fauteck pleaded guilty and got two years in prison. His wife was deported. Later, Fauteck did another two years for cashing forged cashier’s checks and transporting a stolen car across state lines.

Leaving prison with $20 and a high school equivalency certificate, Fauteck straightened up. He eventually entered therapy to undo his mother’s “negative programming,” he said. He chose a better crowd, landed a job in advertising and moved to Chicago in 1967.

He was also a member of Mensa International, the high IQ society, and served as its chairman.

“Many people outside think of us as a snob society,” he told the Tribune in 1974. “But if I feel superior and want to lord it over people, the last place I want to be is at a Mensa gathering with people as smart as I am. Being proud of intelligence is as ridiculous as being proud of being born rich. I do not have a god—- thing to do with it.”

He went through a program at Roosevelt University that, after testing, allowed him to enter a graduate program without an undergraduate diploma. He graduated with a master of arts degree in psychology in 1979. Then he obtained a doctorate from the Chicago School of Professional Psychology, an accredited training institution for clinical psychologists.

Theresa Renee Gardley

The Hillside resident was pardoned by President Barack Obama on Dec. 19, 2016, for unlawful use of an authorized access device.

Jack Johnson

Boxing legend Jack Johnson and his wife Lucille in an undated photo. (Chicago Tribune historical photo)
Boxing legend Jack Johnson and his wife Lucille in an undated photo. (Chicago Tribune historical photo)

President Trump granted a rare posthumous pardon to boxing’s first Black heavyweight champion on May 24, 2018, clearing Johnson’s name more than 100 years after what many see as his racist conviction.

The short, sad story of Cafe de Champion — Jack Johnson’s mixed-race nightclub on Chicago’s South Side

Trump said Johnson — who lived in Chicago and owned a short-lived cafe in the Bronzeville neighborhood — had served 10 months in prison for what many view as a racially motivated conviction and described his decision as an effort “to correct a wrong in our history.” The case had been brought to Trump’s attention by “Rocky” star Sylvester Stallone.

Johnson was convicted in 1913 by an all-white jury for violating the Mann Act, which made it illegal to transport women across state lines for “immoral” purposes, for traveling with his white girlfriend, Lucille Cameron. He was sentenced to a year and a day in prison in June 1913, but fled to Canada with Cameron, whom he’d married while free on bond. He remained a fugitive for seven years, traveling from Europe to Mexico, where he fought bulls and ran a bar called the Main Event.

Johnson returned to the United States in 1920 and turned himself in. He served about a year in federal prison in Leavenworth, Kansas, and was released in July 1921 — and arrived back in Chicago a few days later to 35,000 people cheering him on. Johnson died on June 10, 1946, in an auto crash in North Carolina, after storming out of a diner where he’d been asked to sit in a rear section reserved for Blacks. He is buried in Graceland Cemetery.

The paperwork for Johnson’s trial — along with images of some of the handwritten documents — were officially entered into the court’s electronic court docketing system in 2021, marking a final chapter in a sensational saga that garnered international headlines.

William R. “Big Bill” Johnson

President Harry Truman pardoned the one-time Chicago gambling boss on Christmas Eve 1952.

Johnson was indicted in early March 1940 by a federal grand jury on charges of income tax evasion, but during his trial denied that he owned and operated properties where gambling was illegal (although he did say he co-owned several sites where where gambling was legal). He and five others were found guilty on Oct. 11, 1940.

Dev-Lin illegal gambling house flourished in 1930s just outside Chicago

Johnson was sentenced to five years in prison and fined $10,000. He was freed on parole from the Terre Haute, Indiana, federal penitentiary on Nov. 30, 1948, after serving 32 months of his five-year prison sentence.

After his release, Johnson became a “gentleman farmer,” according to the Tribune, until his death in 1962. His Sunny Acres Farm in Downers Grove is now part of Hidden Lake Forest Preserve.

James Won Hee Kang

James Won Hee Kang of South Barrington, Ill., received word on Dec. 23, 2008, that he had been granted a presidential pardon for a 1985 charge of trafficking in counterfeit goods. (Darrell Goemaat/for the Chicago Tribune)
James Won Hee Kang of South Barrington, Ill., received word on Dec. 23, 2008, that he had been granted a presidential pardon for a 1985 charge of trafficking in counterfeit goods. (Darrell Goemaat/for the Chicago Tribune)

The South Barrington man was pardoned by President George W. Bush on Dec. 23, 2008.

Kang, who arrived in the United States as a student from South Korea in 1974, was running a stand at the rough-and-tumble Maxwell Street Market when an undercover Chicago police officer stopped by in October 1984 and purchased some fake Rolex and Omega watches, according to a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office.

Charged in U.S. District Court with one count of trafficking in counterfeit goods, Kang was sentenced by a federal judge in May 1985 to a year’s probation. He paid a $5,000 fine and records show he was released from probation in good standing just a month later.

“I told customers these were not real,” Kang said, adding that he sold “toy” Rolexes for just $7. “We were not fooling anybody.”

But he said he pleaded guilty and paid the fine because it was just the easiest way to deal with federal agents. He thought that would be the end of it.

In 1989, Kang helped form Foster Bank, which was founded by Korean American business owners and catered to that community. He served on the board of directors and later was on the loan committee. A reorganization several years later triggered background checks by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., according to Kang’s lawyer, Kie-Young Shim of Northbrook. The old charge turned up, and Kang was forced to leave the board.

“He was a hardworking Korean American,” Shim said. “He worked 10, 14 hours a day.”

Shim, a longtime friend, suggested that Kang apply for the pardon to clear his name — and his record. They applied for the pardon in 2002.

Martin Kaprelian

The Park Ridge resident was pardoned by President Obama on Nov. 21, 2011— nearly 30 years after he had been convicted of transporting stolen jewelry worth about $70,000. According to a federal Appellate Court opinion denying his appeal, Kaprelian and his girlfriend were indicted in the theft of two jewelry cases from the trunk of a jewelry company employee’s Cadillac while the man was paying for gas in La Crescent, Minnesota. Police later found some of the stolen jewelry and the Buick at the apartment Kaprelian shared with his girlfriend in Harwood Heights.

Kaprelian was sentenced to nine years in prison and five years of probation in 1984 after being convicted of conspiracy to transport stolen property on interstate commerce and similar charges, the White House said.

George Papadopoulos

Former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos arrives at a closed-door hearing before the House Judiciary and Oversight Committee Oct. 25, 2018 at Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol in Washington, D.C. Papadopoulos, who pledged guilty for lying to investigators in the special counsel Robert Mueller probe, made his first appearance before the congressional panel. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos arrives at a closed-door hearing before the House Judiciary and Oversight Committee Oct. 25, 2018 at Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol in Washington, D.C. Papadopoulos, who pledged guilty for lying to investigators in the special counsel Robert Mueller probe, made his first appearance before the congressional panel. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Though President Trump once belittled him, Trump pardoned his former campaign aide on Dec. 22, 2020.

The Chicago native had pleaded guilty and been sentenced in September 2018 to 14 days in prison. Memos authored by House Republicans and Democrats, which have been declassified, showed that information about Papadopoulos’ contacts with Russian intermediaries triggered the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation in July 2016 of potential coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign. That probe was later taken over by special counsel Robert Mueller.

According to a sweeping indictment, Russian intelligence had stolen emails from Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and other Democratic groups by April 2016. The same month, Papadopoulos said a professor told him that Russian officials had shared that they had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails.” Papadopoulos said he later used his connections with the Maltese professor, Joseph Mifsud, and other Russian nationals in an attempt to broker a meeting between then-candidate Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. He admitted in 2017 to lying to the FBI about those contacts with Russians and Russian intermediaries and false statements that prosecutors say caused irreparable harm to the investigation during its early months.

Papadopoulos was the first to plead guilty in the probe and the first to be sentenced. The punishment was far less than the maximum six-month sentence sought by the government but more than the probation that Papadopoulos and his lawyers had asked for.

Dan Rostenkowski

Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, D-Ill., center, leaves U.S. District Court in Washington on June 10, 1994, after his arraignment. (Denis Cook/AP)
Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, D-Ill., center, leaves U.S. District Court in Washington on June 10, 1994, after his arraignment. (Denis Cook/AP)

The former congressional powerhouse was pardoned on Dec. 22, 2000, by President Bill Clinton.

“I didn’t expect it. I was absolutely flabbergasted. I was absolutely amazed,” he told the Tribune.

The pardon expunged Rostenkowski’s 1996 felony conviction on two counts of mail fraud in connection with charges that he used public funds to buy favors for relatives and political associates and converted stamps bought out of his congressional budget into cash.

Former Rep. Dan Rostenkowski was among 62 people given clemency by President Bill Clinton in Dec. 2000. The pardon expunged Rostenkowski's 1996 felony conviction on two counts of mail fraud. (Chicago Tribune)
Former Rep. Dan Rostenkowski was among 62 people given clemency by President Bill Clinton in Dec. 2000. The pardon expunged Rostenkowski's 1996 felony conviction on two counts of mail fraud. (Chicago Tribune)

Rostenkowski, a U.S. representative from 1959 to 1995, for many years was considered one of the most powerful politicians in the U.S. as he headed the House Ways and Means Committee. In 1994, he was indicted on corruption charges for his role in the House Post Office scandal. Rostenkowski faced an array of charges, from ghost payrolling and using congressional funds to buy gifts for friends to trading in officially purchased stamps for cash at the House Post Office.

He lost his seat to an upstart Republican, and in 1996 he pleaded guilty to charges of mail fraud. He served about 15 months in prison after treatment for cancer, but maintained he was innocent the rest of his life.

Iva Toguri D’Aquino (‘Tokyo Rose’)

Iva Toguri D'Aquino, once known as Tokyo Rose, gives San Francisco postmaster Lim P. Lee an envelope addressed to President Ford, containing a petition for a presidential pardon in San Francisco in 1976. She was requesting that her American citizenship, stripped from her by her treason conviction in 1949, be restored to her. (Chicago Tribune file photo)
Iva Toguri D'Aquino, once known as Tokyo Rose, gives San Francisco postmaster Lim P. Lee an envelope addressed to President Ford, containing a petition for a presidential pardon in San Francisco in 1976. She was requesting that her American citizenship, stripped from her by her treason conviction in 1949, be restored to her. (UPI)

Pardoned by departing President Gerald Ford on Jan. 19, 1979, Toguri had been living in Chicago for decades and quietly working at the mercantile store her father founded near Clark Street and Belmont Avenue.

She attributed Ford’s timing to a changing social atmosphere.

“Three decades ago, people feared to express support for me. It wasn’t popular … little by little, true things were separated from mythology. Young people, free thinkers, got down to facts,” she said.

Vintage Chicago Tribune: The pardon of ‘Tokyo Rose’

Toguri’s name had been intertwined with the notorious label “Tokyo Rose” since World War II. Born July 4, 1916, in Los Angeles, the bobby sox and saddle shoe-wearing University of California Los Angeles graduate enjoyed swing music and wanted to become a doctor. Life took a precarious turn, however, in early 1941. An aunt in Japan was dying. Toguri’s mother was too sick to make the journey, so the 25-year-old daughter went on the hastily planned trip (sans passport) instead — though she spoke no Japanese, had never been to Japan and had never met this relative. When the Japanese military bombed Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, Toguri was trapped with no identification to secure a passage home. She wouldn’t be with her own mother when she died in 1942 nor with her family when they were forced into an internment camp.

Job prospects in Japan were limited. She found work at Radio Tokyo and was quickly put on the air for an English-language show. “Zero Hour” was operated by Australian and U.S. prisoners of war under the direction of the Imperial Japanese government. Toguri was one of several female disc jockeys on the program — who were nicknamed collectively by U.S. forces as “Tokyo Rose” — but she was the only American citizen. She went by “Orphan Ann” — Ann was short for announcer and orphan, to convey a little about the circumstances of her situation.

Though she was one of dozens of women who broadcast over Japanese radio during World War II, Iva Toguri D'Aquino was the only one brought to trial. (Chicago Tribune)
Though she was one of dozens of women who broadcast over Japanese radio during World War II, Iva Toguri D'Aquino was the only one brought to trial. (Chicago Tribune)

Toguri was charged with broadcasting propaganda on Tokyo’s airwaves that toyed with the morale of American military personnel. When she became the second woman convicted of treason in the U.S., she was also labeled a traitor, stripped of her citizenship and sent to federal prison.

To others, however, Toguri was a scapegoat. Though many were involved in the broadcasts, she was the only one who would be prosecuted for them. No written or electronic recording of her shows was presented at her trial and testimony against her was considered weak. The Tribune said she was “the victim of the greatest post-war travesty on justice.”

Interest in Toguri’s case was renewed in 1969 when she granted an interview with WBBM-Ch. 2’s Bill Kurtis. Tribune reporter Ronald Yates then revealed in 1976 that two witnesses were forced to tell half-truths and withhold vital information during Toguri’s trial.

Twenty-seven years after her conviction for treason, Toguri was pardoned.

“I hope now that the whole thing is really over and that I can go back to my simple life and work,” she said during a news conference in Chicago at the Japanese American Citizens League. “The difference now is, however, that I have regained my American citizenship, a right and a privilege I have always cherished.”

Toguri died in 2006 and is buried in Montrose Cemetery.

Casey Urlacher

Casey Urlacher, of Libertyville, leaves after his arraignment hearing on gambling-related charges at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse in Chicago on March 4, 2020.
Casey Urlacher, of Libertyville, leaves after his arraignment hearing on gambling-related charges at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse in Chicago on March 4, 2020.

Ten months after Chicago Bears’ Hall of Famer Brian Urlacher visited the White House, President Trump pardoned his brother, Casey Urlacher — even though prosecutors had said they were working toward a plea deal in his case. Casey Urlacher was among 140 defendants granted executive clemency in a flurry of late-night activity on Jan. 20, 2021, just hours before Trump left the White House.

‘It was enormous’: Leader of massive sports gambling ring sentenced to 18 months in federal prison

Casey Urlacher, mayor of Mettawa in Lake County, pleaded not guilty in March 2020 to federal charges alleging he acted as a recruiter and bagman for a sports gambling ring that raked in millions of dollars from hundreds of Chicago-area bettors.

Joseph A. Yasak

The former Chicago police sergeant was pardoned by President Clinton on Jan. 20, 2001.

Yasak, then a former supervisor in the records department at Traffic Court, pleaded guilty in October 1988 and admitted to lying to a federal grand jury to conceal that he accepted bribes and that he later joined an assistant corporation counsel in a scheme to fix parking tickets. He was part of the 1980s’ Operation Greylord sting investigation of corruption in the city’s courts. Yasak was sentenced to 90 days in jail.

Commutations

Eric Bloom

Eric Bloom, former CEO of a Northbrook money management firm, and his family leave Dirksen Federal Building after sentencing on Jan. 30, 2015. (Zbigniew Bzdak/Chicago Tribune)
Eric Bloom, former CEO of a Northbrook money management firm, and his family leave Dirksen Federal Building after sentencing on Jan. 30, 2015. (Zbigniew Bzdak/Chicago Tribune)

President Biden commuted the sentence of the onetime leader of a Northbrook money management firm on Dec. 12, 2024.

Bloom was convicted by a jury in March 2014, then sentenced in January 2015 to 14 years in prison for defrauding clients of more than $665 million in what prosecutors believe is the largest fraud case ever brought in federal court in Chicago. Prosecutors alleged that as head of Sentinel Management Group Bloom secretly began exposing his well-heeled customers to an increasingly risky mix of leveraged deals in 2003, leading to the company’s collapse four years later. He had been serving out his sentence at a residential reentry facility in Florida, prison records show. His sentence had been due to expire in May 2026.

President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of both former Dixon comptroller Rita Crundwell and former Sentinel Management Group leader Eric Bloom on Dec. 12, 2024. (Chicago Tribune)
President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of both former Dixon comptroller Rita Crundwell and former Sentinel Management Group leader Eric Bloom on Dec. 12, 2024. (Chicago Tribune)

Rita Crundwell

Former Dixon comptroller Rita Crundwell exits the Lee County Courthouse after her arraignment on felony theft charges, Oct. 31, 2012, in Dixon. (John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune)
Former Dixon comptroller Rita Crundwell exits the Lee County Courthouse after her arraignment on felony theft charges, Oct. 31, 2012, in Dixon. (John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune)

President Biden commuted Crundwell’s sentence on Dec. 12, 2024.

The former Dixon comptroller embezzled nearly $54 million from the tiny town to fund a lavish lifestyle. Crundwell, 71, pleaded guilty in 2012 to what authorities then called the largest municipal fraud in the country’s history, admitting that she stole $53.7 million from the city over more than a decade and used the money to finance her quarter horse business and lavish lifestyle.

She was sentenced in 2013 to nearly 20 years in federal prison. In April 2020, Crundwell had petitioned a federal judge for early compassionate release based on her poor health and the COVID-19 pandemic. She’d served about eight years behind bars before being released in 2021 to a halfway house in Downers Grove, U.S. Bureau of Prisons records show. Crundwell would have completed her sentence in October 2028.

Philip Esformes

In this Aug. 7, 2015 photo, Philip Esformes arrives at the 15th Annual Harold and Carole Pump Foundation Gala held at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza, in Los Angeles. (Rob Latour/Invision/AP)
In this Aug. 7, 2015 photo, Philip Esformes arrives at the 15th Annual Harold and Carole Pump Foundation Gala held at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza, in Los Angeles. (Rob Latour/Invision/AP)

President Trump commuted the sentence of the so-called “king” of Medicaid fraud — who drove a Ferrari, crisscrossed the country on private jets and bribed the head men’s basketball coach at the University of Pennsylvania so that his son would be admitted to the school — on Dec. 23, 2020.

Esformes, who once controlled a network of more than two dozen health care facilities that stretched from Chicago to Miami, garnered $1.3 billion in Medicaid revenues by bribing medical professionals who referred patients to his Florida facilities then paid off government regulators while vulnerable residents were injured by their peers, prosecutors said.

He housed elderly patients alongside younger adults who suffered from mental illness and drug addiction — sometimes with fatal results. In Esformes’ Oceanside Extended Care Center in Miami Beach “an elderly patient was attacked and beaten to death by a younger mental health patient who never should have been at (a nursing facility) in the first place,” prosecutors wrote in a presentencing memo.

Allegations of fraud and neglect piled up. A 2010 whistleblower lawsuit alleged that the giant pharmaceutical firm Omnicare Inc. paid millions in kickbacks to secure long-term contracts with Esformes’ facilities, the Tribune reported. The Tribune also found that families had filed 20 wrongful death lawsuits over a four-year period against seven of Esformes’ facilities in Miami-Dade County, including one case where a patient was allegedly attacked by a fellow resident, then sent to another Esformes-owned facility, where he suffered a catastrophic fall and died of a brain injury.

Esformes was arrested in October 2016 at his Miami estate and charged with a massive $1.3 billion Medicare and Medicaid fraud scheme that at the time was billed by the U.S. Justice Department as the largest single criminal health care fraud case ever brought to court.

A jury convicted Esformes of paying bribes, money laundering and other crimes but was unable to reach a verdict on the main count of conspiring to defraud the Medicare program for the elderly and indigent. At his sentencing hearing in January 2019, Esformes wept and pleaded for mercy, saying, “There is no one to blame but myself.” He was sentenced later that year to 20 years in prison.

James ‘Jimmy’ Hoffa

Teamsters Union president Jimmy Hoffa is seen in Washington on July 26, 1959. (AP)
Teamsters Union president Jimmy Hoffa is seen in Washington on July 26, 1959. (AP)

President Richard Nixon commuted the sentence of the former Teamsters president on Dec. 23, 1971.

Though Hoffa didn’t live in Illinois, his case had a Chicago connection. After he was convicted in March 1964 of jury tampering in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment, a Chicago jury found him guilty five months later of mail fraud involving a scheme to divert $1.7 million in union pension funds to himself and others. For that case, Hoffa was sentenced to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine. His sentences in both cases were to run concurrently, but didn’t begin until March 7, 1967 — after numerous appeals had been exhausted.

Hoffa disappeared on July 30, 1975, and is presumed to have been murdered by fellow Teamsters.

Larry Hoover

Larry Hoover, founder of the Gangster Disciples, attends an annual parole hearing on Aug. 31, 1995, at Dixon Correctional Center. (John Dziekan/Chicago Tribune)
Larry Hoover, founder of the Gangster Disciples, attends an annual parole hearing on Aug. 31, 1995, at Dixon Correctional Center. (John Dziekan/Chicago Tribune)

President Trump commuted the federal life sentence for infamous Gangster Disciples founder Larry Hoover on May 28, 2025, abruptly ending Hoover’s yearslong quest to win early release under the First Step Act law passed during Trump’s first term.

The two-page order said Hoover’s sentence was considered served “with no further fines, restitution, probation or other conditions,” and directed the U.S. Bureau of Prisons to release him “immediately,” according to a copy of the document provided by Hoover’s legal team.

The controversial move appeared to have already sparked Hoover’s transfer out of the supermax prison compound in Florence, Colorado, that he’d called home for the past two decades.

Hoover was sentenced in 1973 to 200 years in prison for the kidnap and murder of William Young. Key evidence was a deposition from a witness who was slain before the trial began.

Vintage Chicago Tribune: 10 infamous people condemned to Stateville prison

Though imprisoned, law enforcement officials said Hoover maintained control of the street gang. In a secretly recorded tape played in federal court in 1996, Hoover bragged about the freedom he enjoyed at Stateville Correctional Center near Joliet, including conjugal visits and 30-pound shipments of marijuana. He was convicted the next year on wide-ranging narcotics charges and sentenced to six life terms, seven 20-year sentences and three four-year sentences.

Hoover isn’t going free — he’s still serving a 200-year sentence for his state court conviction for murder. Officials with the Illinois Department of Corrections have previously said they would push for Hoover to finish his state sentence in federal prison due to security concerns.

Óscar López Rivera

Oscar Lopez Rivera speaks during a community meeting at Tuley High School in Chicago on Feb. 1, 1973. John Bartley/Chicago Tribune
Oscar Lopez Rivera speaks during a community meeting at Tuley High School in Chicago on Feb. 1, 1973. John Bartley/Chicago Tribune

President Barack Obama commuted on May 17, 2017, López’s prison sentence for his role in the FALN, an organization that in the 1970s and early 1980s plotted bombings, prison escapes and armed robberies in an effort to secure independence for Puerto Rico.

After he was indicted in 1977 in connection with 16 Chicago-area bombings, López was arrested by police in Glenview on May 29, 1981. He was found guilty by a federal jury on July 24, 1981, on seven counts of weapons, explosives and seditious conspiracy charges. López was sentenced to 55 years in prison.

FALN leader Oscar Lopez Rivera was found guilty on July 24, 1981 on seven counts of weapons, explosives and seditious conspiracy charges. (Chicago Tribune)
FALN leader Oscar Lopez Rivera was found guilty on July 24, 1981 on seven counts of weapons, explosives and seditious conspiracy charges. (Chicago Tribune)

His cause had been taken up by pop culture figures, religious leaders and political luminaries. Former President Jimmy Carter, Pope Francis and former U.S. Rep. Luis Gutiérrez supported his release, as did South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

“Hamilton” creator Lin-Manuel Miranda in a tweet from London said he was “sobbing with gratitude” after learning that Obama had commuted López’s sentence. Miranda said he would reprise his role as Alexander Hamilton at a Chicago performance for López (he kept half that promise).

Ronald Mikos

A booking photo of Ronald Mikos, who was convicted of fatally shooting Joyce Brannon in 2002. Brannon was cooperating in a federal fraud probe of his Medicare billings. (FBI)
A booking photo of Ronald Mikos, who was convicted of fatally shooting Joyce Brannon in 2002. Brannon was cooperating in a federal fraud probe of his Medicare billings. (FBI)

President Biden commuted the federal death sentence for the former Chicago podiatrist to life in prison without the possibility of parole on Dec. 23, 2024.

Mikos shot and killed Joyce Brannon, a patient who was cooperating in a federal fraud probe of his Medicare billings, in January 2002 — just days before she was scheduled to testify before a federal grand jury, according to Tribune archives.

Authorities alleged in a 25-count indictment that Mikos defrauded Medicare of more than $1.25 million by falsely claiming to have performed thousands of surgeries and that he obstructed justice by recruiting patients to lie to investigators about the fraud. In Brannon’s case, authorities said, Mikos fraudulently billed Medicare for 85 surgeries on her feet that had not been carried out. Mikos was found guilty in May 2005 and a federal jury imposed the death penalty after defense attorneys unsuccessfully tried to spare his life by arguing that his judgment was affected by mental illness and abuse of alcohol and prescription drugs and that he had three young children.

After deliberating for parts of three days during the punishment phase of the trial, some jurors told the Tribune the decision to impose the death penalty had been a difficult one. Mikos, who claims he is innocent, is incarcerated in the federal prison in Terre Haute.

Jorge Torrez

On Dec. 23, 2024, President Biden commuted the federal death sentence for the former Marine who grew up in Zion to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Torrez was convicted of murder in the slaying of Amanda J. Snell in July 2009 at a Washington-area military base. Torrez, though, was also linked by DNA to the notorious stabbing deaths of 8-year-old Laura Hobbs and her friend 9-year-old Krystal Tobias in Zion on Mother’s Day in 2005.

Lake County prosecutors later charged Torrez with the murders and released Laura’s father, Jerry Hobbs, who had spent five years in jail awaiting trial before he was cleared of the crime and released.

After he already received the death penalty in the Virginia case, Torrez in 2018 pleaded guilty to murdering the girls and was sentenced to 100 years in prison.

Reynolds Wintersmith

Reynolds Wintersmith, photographed Tuesday Dec. 16, 2014, is living on the west side of Chicago in his own apartment not too far from his job as a school counselor. (Nancy Stone/Chicago Tribune)
Reynolds Wintersmith, photographed Tuesday Dec. 16, 2014, is living on the west side of Chicago in his own apartment not too far from his job as a school counselor. (Nancy Stone/Chicago Tribune)

President Obama commuted Wintersmith’s sentence on April 17, 2014.

At age 11, Wintersmith lost his mother to a drug overdose and was sent to Rockford to live with relatives who ran a drug house. Within five years, he joined the illicit trade with the Gangster Disciples, a decision that ended in 1994 in a stunning mandatory life sentence for the first-time teenage offender. At the time he was sentenced, the federal sentencing guidelines gave judges no real leeway and a 2010 law did not give Wintersmith and other prisoners like him retroactive relief.

A year after he received clemency, Wintersmith found a home in Chicago and, perhaps more impressively, a career. He became a counselor at a Chicago high school. He walked the halls in a sharp suit, teasing students with pet names, mediated minor fights and never shied away from sharing his story.

“I have 21 years’ worth of things to talk to them about,” he said with a smile.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Wintersmith also earned an associate degree and became a consultant.

Sources: Tribune reporting and archives; U.S. Department of Justice; White House

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