GPB, the priest and a get out of jail card

Quick pop fraudster quiz.

If you’re the founding executive of an asset management firm that works with financial advisors to sell high-risk, private equity-styled  products to Mom and Pop investors, what’s the going rate to get out of prison after a jury convicts you of fraud?

The answer is a cool $2.5 million, according to recent reporting by the New York Times. It also helps to know a priest from Long Island who is pals with President Donald J. Trump.

The priest linked to convicted fraudster in question - David Gentile of GPB Caital Holdings Inc., also of Long Island - and his get out of jail card is Reverend Frank Mann, a retired Catholic priest from Queens who is friends with President Trump, according to the Times.

Father Mann was one of the people facing scrutiny from Department of Justice staff recently investigating Gentile’s release. The Times reported that the Department of Justice in May wound up quashing that inquiry. Lawmakers said this week they wanted the death of that investigation analyzed and looked into. 

“The Gentile commutation was particularly sensitive because of the personal relationship between Mr. Trump and Father Mann, who delivered the closing benediction at the inauguration last year and has attended at least two events at the White House since,” according to a Times report from June. “But five people with knowledge of his efforts said that he pushed Mr. Trump to free Mr. Gentile.”

Citing a parishioner who had spoken with the priest, Father Mann had said that Gentile “was unjustly convicted,” according to the parishioner cited in the report, describing a conversation with the priest.

Father Mann said he had spoken to President Trump and had “counseled him,” recalled the parishioner, “and then, from his suggestion, he got him to commute his sentence,” the Times reported.

Let’s refresh our memories about David Gentile and GPB Capital Holdings Inc. There is no doubt Gentile should be in prison. A jury of his peers voted to put him there. 

From 2013 to 2018, Gentile and his partners at GPB, Jeff Schneider and Jeffrey Lash, worked with dozens of broker-dealers to sell high-risk, high-priced private placements.

GPB promised to invest that capital into a series of businesses, mostly auto dealerships, and generate 8% annual returns for clients, all after paying brokers 7% and more in commissions.

Turned out Schneider, Gentile and Lash were running a fraud.

The federal government in 2021 charged the GPB executives used phony documents to goose sales of private placements.

The feds claimed Gentile and Schneider used false, back-dated documents and paid distributions, or dividends, to investors using their own money, rather than coming clean and admitting that the performance of GPB funds was not as steady as it appeared.

A jury in federal court in Brooklyn in the summer of 2024 found Gentile guilty of five counts of fraud and he later got a sentence of seven years in prison. Schneider was found guilty on three counts and then got six years.

It took the jury five hours to convict. 

Lash, an auto executive, testified against his partners and was sentenced to time served.

The fraud hit the fan last Thanksgiving weekend, when, shockingly, President Trump commuted Gentile’s sentence after he spent just a few days in prison, leaving many in the financial advice industry in disbelief. 

Not only was his prison sentence erased, but so was the $15.5 million penalty a federal judge ordered Gentile to pay as part of his sentence. If the reported $2.5 million payment is accurate, Gentile got good return for his money – far better than GPB ever generated for its clients. 

Meanwhile, Schneider is doing his time and sitting in federal prison, even though he got a lesser sentence than his former business partner,  an accountant by trade.

The question many have been wondering is, how did Gentile secure the get out of jail card? Was some kind of payment involved? 

An attorney for Gentile on Thursday did not return a call to comment. Father Mann also did not return a message to comment but has denied to the Times earlier he had anything to do with the clemency.

The Department of Justice did not respond Thursday to questions about Father Mann and whether an investigation into Gentile's comutation had been halted, as the Time reported. 

The David Gentile story doesn’t appear to be going away. Lawmakers want answers and information. 

“Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, was pressed at his confirmation hearing on Wednesday about his office’s role in closing an early-stage investigation into the circumstances of a clemency grant President Trump issued to a convicted fraudster,” according to a report from the New York Times this week.

“After the hearing, two Democratic senators asked the Justice Department’s internal watchdog to open an inquiry into the quashing of the investigation earlier this year,” according to the report.

“The investigation had begun examining whether improper payments were made to help facilitate the commutation awarded to David Gentile, a private equity executive who was convicted in a $1.6 billion scheme that defrauded thousands of mostly mom and pop investors, some of whom lost their retirement savings.”

The moral of the David Gentile story is clear. Fraud pays in our country in 2026.