Donald Trump‘s list of pardons is a rogue’s gallery of immoral, greedy criminals who exploit people to wring as much money out of them as possible. So, perhaps it’s not exactly a mystery why Trump sympathizes with them to the point of throwing out presidential pardons like confetti.
Enter Adriana Camberos. In 2016, she and her husband were convicted on conspiracy charges after authorities unravelled an elaborate and bizarre scheme to import millions of bottles of counterfeit 5-Hour Energy shot drinks to the United States from Mexico.
Aside from circumventing multiple importation laws, putting counterfeit energy drinks onto the market has the potential to harm the public, who are unknowingly consuming a highly caffeinated beverage that wouldn’t be regulated by the FDA. As such, a federal jury sentenced her to 27 months behind bars.
She’d only served half her sentence when, in one of the last acts in his first term, Trump commuted her sentence and set her free. So, what did Camberos do with this lucky break? Learn her lesson? Go legit? Make money legally?
Law & order huh?
— THEE ROCKSTAR #rockstar 🤟☠🤟 (@VonWolf9) January 18, 2026
Turns out crime DOES pay!
Well, no. The lesson she (totally understandably) learned was that crime pays and consequences are fleeting. And, by 2024, Camberos was back at it with a new scheme that involved defrauding major manufacturers by claiming she was buying goods for sale in Mexico or that would be sold to prisoners, while actually selling them to U.S. consumers at much higher prices.
All too soon, Camberos was reaping the rewards of crime, owning multiple houses in San Diego and cruising the streets in a Lamborghini Huracan. Once again, the feds swooped in, she was once again convicted by a jury of multiple charges of fraud, and tossed back behind bars.
But Trump, presumably thinking that the third time’s the charm, decided that she deserves one more chance of going straight. And so, on Jan. 17, Trump officially pardoned her again, leaving her free to stroll out of prison, hop into her Lambo, and peel out of there in a cloud of dust.
By our reckoning, Camberos has at least three years to cook up one more massive fraud against American consumers and manufacturers, just in time for one more Trump pardon at the end of his second term. Maybe this time she can upgrade to a Ferrari, or possibly even a McLaren if she really puts some effort into her next enormous crime!
Published: Jan 19, 2026 07:16 am