Targeted for Standing with President Trump
Mike Shirley — Case #25 A Republican political consultant with 30 years in the business, convicted in 2023 of honest services wire fraud tied to a $6,000 payment that generated consulting fees for his firm. He maintains the payments were for legitimate work, that prosecutors shifted their legal theory mid-trial, and that a key witness invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 60 times. He says prosecutors pressured him, during his own case, to falsely implicate President Trump in election matters in exchange for leniency — and he refused. He's serving 87 months; the 11th Circuit denied his appeal in early 2026.
Michael Castillero — Case #7A pre-IPO entrepreneur and vocal Trump supporter, convicted in November 2025 in connection with StraightPath Venture Partners investment funds. He maintains his investors were profitable and that he turned down a $75 million settlement built on what he calls false allegations. Prosecutors are now seeking forfeiture of his family home — which his supporters say would leave his wife and children without a place to live.
Brian Martinsen — Case #40 Another StraightPath principal and Trump supporter. Of 2,200 clients, only 8 submitted statements at his May 2026 sentencing — none reporting a loss. He maintains no customer losses were proven at trial and that expert witnesses on both sides agreed his fund was properly structured. He was sentenced to 10 years, $115 million in restitution, and $25 million in forfeiture. He is appealing and seeking a pardon.
Ryan Salame — Case #10 A major Republican donor caught in the FTX collapse. He pled guilty to campaign finance and licensing charges, and maintains he did so specifically to protect his girlfriend (now wife) from investigation — prosecutors charged her regardless. He's serving 7.5 years. Supporters describe it as a case where financial charges were used to reach a political target.
Angelica Pacheco — Case #43As Vice President of the Hialeah-Miami Lakes Republican Club, Angelica opened a local Trump campaign office. Five months later, under the Biden administration, she was indicted on eight counts tied to a $19.1 million healthcare fraud allegation against her husband's substance abuse treatment center — a business she had no ownership stake or signing authority in. She was suspended from her City Council seat by Executive Order the same day. On the eve of trial, the government dismissed 100% of the healthcare fraud counts. She pled guilty to a single, unrelated charge — a false statement on a PPP loan application — and was sentenced to probation, with no prison time. Court filings allege the DOJ admitted pursuing her case for its "deterrent effect" as an elected official; the judge called the timeline "highly suspect." While under indictment, Hialeah voters elected her Republican Executive Committeewoman anyway.
Entrepreneurs & Business Owners
Ed Rosenberg — Case #1After building ASGTG, a large and active seller community that helped legitimate Amazon sellers follow the rules, Ed indirectly exposed how Amazon’s compliance system often punished the wrong people. Instead of addressing those issues, Amazon submitted an unvetted referral through a high-end law firm with DOJ connections to target ED. That referral helped trigger an indictment that grouped Ed with known bad actors, even though the underlying facts against Ed never made sense and not a single seller supported the case against him. Neither Amazon nor the DOJ ever seemed able to clearly explain the case to the public. In a new and complex industry, almost nobody can realistically fight Amazon plus the DOJ. The person helping clean up the marketplace was turned into the villain. The good guy became the bad guy. Ed was forced into an absurd probation “plea” just to move on with his life over routine seller-related activity.
Matthew Simpson — Clemency #C309817 As a college student, he built the foundational network later used for Google Voice and won three separate civil suits against AT&T over predatory billing practices. After his growing company began drawing business away from AT&T, the matter was referred to the Justice Department. He was denied bond, his assets were seized, and he was sentenced to 40 years.
BJ Taylor — Case #13 A clinical laboratory owner and author who spent years writing about what he saw as corrupt relationships between major insurers, Medicare, and government-backed healthcare systems, publishing his findings in two books. He says that after publicly criticizing pandemic-era policy and insurance industry practices, his lab's billing operations became the target of aggressive federal action. He maintains he was denied his chosen legal counsel and watched his businesses dismantled while fighting the case.
Lucky Ott Jr. — Case #22 A Texas pharmacy owner prosecuted for seven years in Georgia — a state he'd never set foot in. In October 2025, a judge granted his acquittal before the jury finished deliberating, ruling the government had failed to prove it had the right to bring the case there, or sufficient evidence to support it.
Richard Brasser — Clemency #C335860 A Charlotte tech entrepreneur who, facing a business crisis, proactively self-reported a payroll tax issue to the IRS, entered its Voluntary Disclosure Program, and personally paid every dollar owed. The IRS closed the matter with no criminal referral. A federal prosecutor pursued charges anyway; he was acquitted of the more serious counts but convicted on a narrower one, and is now appealing to the Fourth Circuit.
Steven King — Case #39 Convicted in a $50 million healthcare fraud case. He maintains he never personally profited a single dollar from the alleged scheme.
Matthew ConnollyA former Deutsche Bank trading director convicted in the LIBOR manipulation case. The Second Circuit overturned his conviction in 2022, finding insufficient evidence any crime occurred. He has since filed a malicious prosecution suit against the bank, arguing it shielded higher-level executives by shifting blame onto him.
Nevin ShettyA former tech company CFO convicted of wire fraud after a $35 million transfer. He maintains the move was authorized under his company's own written investment policy. Prosecutors sought 9 years; he received 2.
Doctors Punished for Practicing Medicine
Elizabeth Hernandez — Case #9 A nurse practitioner and mother of five with no prior record. She says she self-reported a billing discrepancy to Medicare and requested a flag on her own account, then was prosecuted regardless, with exculpatory evidence allegedly withheld from the jury. She's now years into a 20-year sentence, hundreds of miles from her five children.
Dr. Ron Elfenbein - Case #4 A Johns Hopkins-trained ER physician whose clinics delivered COVID testing and treatment to more than 200,000 patients. A jury convicted him of alleged billing irregularities; a federal judge then acquitted him for insufficient evidence — before the 4th Circuit reversed that acquittal. He faces a new trial in August 2026, and says the case is retaliation for his public criticism of pandemic-era policy.
Dr. Sanjeev Kumar - Case #6 A Mayo Clinic-trained cancer surgeon. Tennessee's own state medical board reviewed and dismissed every allegation against him — the DOJ prosecuted him anyway. His case is currently under post-trial review for alleged evidence violations. Thousands of his patients lost access to a surgeon who treated some of the most complex, high-risk cases in his field.
Dr. Vichi Ganesh A California family medicine physician sentenced to 63 months. She and her supporters say the case relied on records later shown, through forensic analysis, to have come from an unrelated doctor's office — and that she was targeted partly for publicly criticizing federal healthcare policy.
Dr. Neil Anand Rushed to Ground Zero on September 11, 2001, to help the wounded, then served his country as a Navy physician. He once defeated a major insurer in civil court — and the judge assigned to his later federal case was the same judge he'd previously beaten. He's serving 13 years.
Veterans & Public Servants
Jeremy Harrell — Case #2 An Iraq War veteran, 100% service-disabled since 2011, who founded a nonprofit helping fellow veterans heal from PTSD, TBI, and addiction. Prosecutors argued his unpaid volunteer leadership proved he was employable, resulting in a conviction and the loss of his VA disability benefits.
Whistleblowers & Truth-Tellers
Chris & Erin Mazzei — Case #19 California filmmakers and parents who pled guilty to PPP-related fraud charges after being prosecuted in Hawaii — a state with no connection to their lives or work. They maintain the case involved prosecutorial overreach and that the prosecutor who handled it is now reportedly under FBI review himself; they say they were producing a documentary exposing local government corruption when they were charged.
Richard Luthmann An investigative journalist and former attorney. A 2017 federal detention memo alleged sweeping organized-crime ties, based almost entirely on one cooperating witness — a career felon. An FBI raid on his office found no weapons, no cash, no supporting evidence, and a federal judge later dismissed the allegations as unsubstantiated hearsay. He was still held in pretrial detention for four years. He now works as an investigative journalist.
Timothy Barton A Texas real estate developer who says he flagged a suspected foreign capital-flight scheme to U.S. authorities as a whistleblower in 2019 — and became the target of the investigation himself. He has pled not guilty and maintains the financial instruments in question were ordinary loans, not securities. More than $100 million in his assets have been liquidated by a court-appointed receiver, with no trial yet reached after nearly four years.
Amy Nelson — Case #15 Founder of The Riveter. Amazon accused her husband of involvement in a kickback scheme; nearly $900,000 was seized from their family and business accounts through civil forfeiture before any criminal charge was filed. No charges were ever filed against him, and the DOJ later acknowledged related guilty pleas from others were "not in the interest of justice."
Advocates & Reformers
Steve Keller Founder of Kelco, which grew to control roughly 65% of the global life settlement market — helping terminally ill Americans access financial security in their final months, and helping build what's now a $180 billion industry. Facing federal fraud, money laundering, and conspiracy charges he says were driven by powerful insurance interests threatened by his innovation, he left the country with his family before ultimately being located, extradited, and sentenced to 14 years, of which he served approximately 9. Rather than stay silent, he wrote the memoir Pay to Play about his experience and has since co-founded the Justice Restoration Foundation alongside fellow #43Americans member Lucky Ott, advocating publicly against prosecutorial overreach and corruption in the federal system.
Innovators Facing Outdated Law
Keonne Rodriguez — Case #3 Co-developer of Samourai Wallet, an open-source, non-custodial Bitcoin privacy tool that never held user funds. He's serving 5 years. His wife, Lauren, continues publicly campaigning for his pardon, arguing the case criminalizes legitimate privacy software.
Roman Storm — Case #23 Co-founder of Tornado Cash, open-source privacy software that never held user funds. A jury convicted him on one charge — operating an unlicensed money transmitting business — while deadlocking on the two most serious counts. Months later, the DOJ's own Deputy Attorney General issued formal policy stating prosecutors "will not charge regulatory violations in cases involving digital assets — including but not limited to unlicensed money transmitting." The exact charge he was convicted of. He faces a retrial in October 2026 and up to 40 additional years — for writing code.
Dr. Karim Arabi — Clemency #C337644 A semiconductor engineer whose civil contract dispute with a former corporate partner over invention ownership — a matter that had already been settled once in civil court — was later prosecuted as a federal crime. He's serving 48 months and was ordered to pay over $100 million in restitution.
Mike Kail A former Netflix VP who led the company's cloud infrastructure migration. He accepted disclosed advisory fees from startups, standard in the industry; after a civil settlement with Netflix, the matter was referred to the DOJ. He's serving 30 months for honest services fraud.
Additional Cases
Douglas Vance A husband, father, and grandfather sentenced to 174 months over a business dispute. His wife Heather says critical exculpatory evidence — including a co-defendant's letter and a recorded FBI call stating he had no knowledge of the underlying misconduct — was never shown to the jury.
Jake Ellis Daughtry Owner of a chemical supply business, sentenced to 15 years after pleading guilty to selling an industrial chemical. A retired 25-year DEA diversion-control veteran who later reviewed the case concluded the statute relied on had expired years before the sales in question. He is currently challenging his plea in federal court, arguing ineffective counsel and actual innocence.
Cleared, But Never Made Whole
A conviction reversed or a charge dismissed doesn't undo the years lost, the money spent, the careers destroyed, or the toll on a family. These cases show that even when the system eventually corrects itself, the punishment has already been carried out.
Dr. Kirk Moore A Utah plastic surgeon prosecuted for giving families a choice during the vaccine mandate era, administering saline at parents' explicit request. He faced up to 35 years and endured a federal trial before Attorney General Pam Bondi ordered all charges dismissed mid-trial in July 2025, stating publicly: "Dr. Moore gave his patients a choice when the federal government refused to do so. He did not deserve the years in prison he was facing. It ends today." By then, his career and reputation had already taken the hit.
Dr. Eithan Haim A trauma surgeon who provided evidence to a journalist showing a hospital had quietly resumed pediatric procedures it had publicly claimed to pause. Armed U.S. Marshals were sent to his home. He faced up to 10 years and the loss of everything he'd built in medicine before the DOJ dismissed all charges with prejudice in January 2025. The months of fear and legal costs were never returned to him.
Mark Sorensen A Chicago durable medical equipment business owner, convicted in 2023 and sentenced to 42 months — and he served that time, behind bars, before the Seventh Circuit reversed his conviction in April 2025 for legally insufficient evidence. Full acquittal came in June 2025. The prison time itself was never given back.
Mike McMahon A retired 31-year NYPD sergeant and September 11th first responder, convicted after a pre-dawn FBI raid on his family home. His wife, actress Martha Byrne, spent years fighting publicly to clear his name while he lived under conviction. He received a full pardon from President Trump in November 2025, and the Second Circuit vacated the conviction in 2026 — years after the raid that upended their lives.
Jeremy Hutchinson Son of a U.S. Senator and a former Arkansas State Senator himself, sentenced to prison time supporters called politically motivated. President Trump issued him a full, unconditional pardon in May 2025 — after the sentence, the record, and the toll on his family were already a reality.
Ryan Bloom An Oklahoma City business owner arrested at gunpoint in his own front yard, then dragged through 18 months of federal prosecution on bank fraud charges. His legal team eventually uncovered a disqualifying conflict of interest in the lead prosecutor, and all charges were dismissed in early 2026 — after a year and a half of his life had already been consumed by the fight.
Dr. Raj Bothra A Padma Shri-winning physician denied bail nine separate times and held in pretrial federal detention for 1,301 days — over 3.5 years — while co-defendants went free. A jury acquitted him and his co-defendants on all charges in 2022. No acquittal returns 3.5 years of a person's life.
Dr. Muhamad Aly Rifai A quadruple board-certified psychiatrist who faced up to 40 years on healthcare fraud charges. He rejected every plea offer and went to trial rather than admit to something he says he didn't do — a gamble that could have cost him everything. A jury acquitted him unanimously after just hours of deliberation, but not before years of his practice and reputation hung in the balance.