A little more than four years after President Donald Trump freed a little-known South Bay businesswoman from prison, a San Diego judge on Friday ordered Adriana Isabel Camberos back into custody, sentencing her to more than a year behind bars for a massive new fraud scheme.
Chief U.S. District Judge Cynthia Bashant said Camberos, 54, and her brother Andres “Andy” Camberos, 46, who were convicted last year for a plot in which they sold products destined for Mexico in the more lucrative U.S. market, made tens of millions of dollars based on “a series of lies … (and) elaborate schemes.”
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But the judge said the criminal conduct in the new case, which began just weeks after Trump commuted Adriana’s prior sentence, was less egregious than the scheme that first landed her in prison, since that case involved selling a counterfeit drink.
Bashant sentenced Adriana Camberos to one year and one day in federal prison in the new case, plus an additional two months in custody for violating her supervised release in her previous case. The judge sentenced Andy Camberos to one year of home detention.
“I never thought I’d be in a courtroom again,” Adriana Camberos told the judge. She said she was mortified for her brother and what the case has done to him and his family. Andy Camberos promised the judge he would never be accused, much less convicted, of another crime in his life.
Bashant indicated she’s likely to order both siblings to pay more than $12 million each in restitution and to forfeit millions of dollars worth of properties, luxury vehicles and money held in various bank accounts. A hearing to determine the exact amounts of restitution and items to be forfeited was scheduled for next month.
Bashant on Friday also denied post-conviction motions the siblings made asking that their jury verdicts be thrown out and that they be acquitted or granted a new trial. Attorneys for the siblings asserted in court Friday that they would appeal the convictions to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, largely based on the theory that the conduct the jury found was fraud was actually a legal business practice.
“The 9th Circuit is going to tell us whether this was a crime or not,” John Littrell, one of Andy’s attorneys, told the judge.
A federal jury convicted the siblings in October of conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud and seven counts of wire fraud. The jury found that the duo used three Otay Mesa companies they owned to illegally purchase wholesale groceries and other household items from manufacturers at a steep discount on the promise that the products would be sold in Mexico, but they instead turned around and sold the products at much higher prices in the more lucrative U.S. market.
Prosecutors said three companies controlled by the siblings made more than $59 million in profits between 2019 and 2023, almost all of that through fraud. The government alleged that Andy Camberos paid himself $14.4 million from the companies while his sister paid herself $12.5 million.
Among the jury’s findings was that Adriana Camberos committed wire fraud just 42 days after Trump granted her clemency on Jan. 20, 2021, the last day of his first term in the White House. Known then by her married name of Adriana Shayota, Camberos was at the time about halfway through a 26-month federal prison term for her role in a fraud scheme with her ex-husband and others involving counterfeit 5-hour Energy drinks.
That scheme involved the Shayotas and other business partners first making counterfeit English labels so they could resell 350,000 bottles of Spanish-label 5-hour Energy drinks that didn’t sell as well as expected in Mexico. Once those drinks sold, Joseph Shayota and others came up with a new scheme to make use of the high-quality counterfeit labels by concocting their own beverage that they packaged and sold as 5-hour Energy.
Of the 11 people charged in that plot, all but Shayota and his wife pleaded guilty. The couple went to trial and lost in 2016. Camberos spent years appealing her conviction and sentence before reporting to prison in 2019. Her later commutation was a remarkable benefit for a mostly unknown federal prisoner on the same day that Trump pardoned political allies such as Steven Bannon and celebrities such as Lil Wayne.
The Camberos siblings have maintained before, during and after the trial that what prosecutors alleged and the jury found to be fraud may have been dishonest, but was actually a legal and shrewd business practice known as product diversion. They argued in recent court filings that product diversion is common in the industry and that the jurors were given “erroneous and … impermissibly confusing” instructions regarding the legality of that and other business practices, and that as a result they should be granted a new trial or have the judge issue an order of acquittal and dismiss the charges.
Prosecutors argued the siblings were the “masterminds” of what they knew was a fraud scheme that bilked U.S. companies out of tens of millions of dollars. At trial, prosecutors said the siblings “went to tremendous lengths to hide” their illegal business practices from the manufacturers they victimized. The government alleged they changed Spanish labels to English, cycled through email addresses and business names, made purchases through a Tijuana-based company to cover their tracks and searched pallets of goods for GPS devices so manufacturers could not track where their products were ending up.
Bashant agreed with the government that the siblings made themselves into unnecessary middlemen. “This was more than just product diversion … it was an elaborate scheme,” the judge said. She said she couldn’t see how Adriana would think it was proper to lie to her business partners and others after her earlier conviction.
Prosecutors recommended a six-year sentence for Adriana and a four-year sentence for Andres, but Bashant said long custody terms were not necessary to punish the siblings given the negative media coverage they’ve received, the homes and vehicles they’ll be ordered to forfeit and the millions of dollars in restitution they’ll be ordered to pay.
“I’m going to be taking a lot of money away,” Bashant told Adriana Camberos on Friday.
The money, properties and vehicles that prosecutors are seeking through forfeiture include a Ferrari F12 sports car; three Range Rover SUVs; several homes and condos worth millions of dollars in El Cajon, Chula Vista, San Diego and Coronado; their business property in Otay Mesa; and millions of dollars held in personal and business bank accounts, saving accounts, life insurance policies and a cryptocurrency account.