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A South Bay business owner who was convicted of fraud, sentenced to prison, and pardoned on the final day of President Donald Trump’s first term – then convicted in 2024 of another fraud scheme hatched after her release and sent to prison again – was pardoned a second time by Trump Thursday.
Adriana Camberos was sentenced to one year and one day in federal prison in April after a jury convicted her and her brother, Andres, of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and wire fraud charges.
Court records show Camberos went into federal custody in August, and the federal Bureau of Prisons website shows she was no longer in custody as of Thursday, the day Trump signed the pardon.
Andres Camberos, who was sentenced to a year in home confinement, was pardoned at the same time. Precisely why the two siblings were pardoned is unclear. No reason was given in the order Trump signed.
In a brief statement, Marcus Bourassa, a lawyer for Camberos, thanked both Trump and Alice Johnson, a woman Trump pardoned in 2020 and who became his pardon advisor this year.
“Ms. Camberos was wrongfully convicted,” Bourassa wrote. “She’s home now and very grateful to the President, the White House, and Alice Johnson for their support.”
The brother and sister were convicted by a jury in 2024 for running a scheme where several Otay Mesa companies they controlled bought an array of household goods from various companies and promised they would sell the products in Mexico or in domestic prisons and rehabilitation centers. That allowed them to purchase the goods at a discounted price.
Instead, the products were sold back into the U.S. market – at U.S. level prices.
Prosecutors contended they pocketed millions of dollars in profits.
The scheme was similar to another that Adriana Camberos participated in years before and which initially landed her and her former husband in prison.
That scheme involved 5-Hour Energy drinks and a similar pattern: The manufacturer sold them bottles at a 40% discount from the price paid by U.S. distributors. They were intended to be sold in Mexico and bore labels in Spanish.
Instead the couple re-labeled the bottles, scraping off the Spanish language labels with a razor blade, then slapping on bogus English labels. They then sold the drink back into the U.S. market, at U.S. market prices.
Later, the company brazenly concocted its own home brew version of the drink, and for nearly a year sold millions of bottles of the drink in the U.S.
Camberos was convicted along with her husband and several others at a trial in the Bay Area in 2016, and sentenced to 26 months in prison, which she began serving at the end of 2019.
She was in prison for slightly more than a year before Trump pardoned her on his way out of office in 2021.
That first pardon became an issue in the race for the District 1 San Diego County supervisor seat last spring between Paloma Aguirre, then the mayor of Imperial Beach, and Chula Vista Mayor John McCann. Aguirre won the race.
In 2020, McCann wrote a letter in support of Camberos’ initial pardon, as did other community leaders. He later said he did so after being approached by Andres when Adriana Camberos was in prison the first time.
After her release, both Adriana and Andres Camberos made a maximum $360 campaign fund to McCann’s 2022 mayoral campaign.
Two of their companies contributed a combined $30,000 to an independent committee which spent funds opposing McCann’s mayoral opponent, as well as other campaigns that year, sponsored by The Lincoln Club of San Diego County. Adriana Camberos also made a personal $20,000 contribution to the same committee, records show.
McCann told inewsource last year during the race that he did not know of any of the 2022 campaign contributions.
The president has pardoned a number of people who were charged and convicted of various types of fraud.
inewsource is a community-focused nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom dedicated to investigative and accountability journalism. The news outlet is a 2025 Pulitzer Prize finalist.
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