President Donald Trump last week not only pardoned former Puerto Rico Gov. Wanda Vázquez Garced, who pleaded guilty to violating campaign finance laws, but also commuted the three-and-a-half-year prison sentence of Act 22/60 beneficiary Terren Scott Peizer, who was convicted of fraud and insider trading in California.
In July 2021, Peizer, 66, obtained his tax decree in Puerto Rico — a benefit that has not been revoked despite his high-profile legal case — according to the Department of Economic Development and Commerce (DDEC, in Spanish), which confirmed the information to the Centro de Periodismo Investigativo (CPI).
“There aren’t enough words to express the gratitude and appreciation I have for the compassion and recognition of this unfair process by the most accomplished President of my lifetime, and perhaps beyond. Thank you, Mr. President!” Peizer said in a statement issued through his attorney, David Willingham of the firm King & Spalding, following the pardon.
In the summer of 2024, the resident of Dorado, Puerto Rico, and Santa Monica, California, was found guilty of fraud and insider trading for using nonpublic information to sell shares of Ontrak, a health care technology company. In 2023, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California charged him with conducting transactions under Rule 10b5-1 of the federal Securities Exchange Act to avoid losses exceeding $12.5 million. In addition to prison time, Peizer had been ordered to pay a fine of nearly $5.3 million and to provide $12.7 million in restitution to the medical biotechnology company.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the former chief executive officer and chairman of Ontrak violated the law after learning, between May and August 2021, that the company was about to lose its largest client. He then made plans to sell his shares to avoid losses of more than $12.5 million.
DDEC weighs revoking the decree as Peizer cultivates a philanthropic image in Puerto Rico
Ernesto Zayas García, director of the DDEC’s Office of Business Incentives, said in written statements to the CPI that the presidential pardon “is limited to the federal criminal sphere and does not extend to administrative or civil evaluations, such as those related to compliance with the requirements of the Incentives Program” in Puerto Rico.
Zayas García said the conduct for which Peizer “was convicted is incompatible with the best interests of the Government of Puerto Rico,” and added that the DDEC is “carefully analyzing the applicable legal and procedural considerations” for a possible revocation of his tax decree.
After his sentencing in California in the summer of 2025, Peizer appealed the conviction, but Trump’s clemency came before the appeals hearing scheduled for next February. He will now avoid prison altogether and will not have to repay a single dollar.
Although he praised Trump as president, there is no public record of Peizer donating to Trump’s campaigns under his own name. Between 2020 and 2022, however, he contributed $5,700 to the campaigns of cryptocurrency investor Brock Pierce — also an Act 22 beneficiary in Puerto Rico — when Pierce first ran for president of the United States and later for the U.S. Senate from Vermont. Peizer is the godfather of one of Pierce’s daughters.
Peizer is not the first resident investor under the program commonly known as Act 22 — since 2019 incorporated into Act 60, Puerto Rico’s Incentives Code — to be accused of a crime while retaining his tax decree. Since 2021, the CPI has identified a dozen such cases and exposed failures in the government’s oversight of beneficiaries of this incentive, which exempts their passive income — such as gains from securities, dividends and interest — from local taxes.
Last year, the DDEC announced new oversight measures, including requiring an updated criminal background check as part of the annual reports that resident investors must submit. Still, the director of the Office of Business Incentives told the CPI that once decrees are granted, “the current regulatory framework […] does not impose an obligation for periodic record reviews outside Puerto Rico.”
‘Terren’s Pardon Me?! Legendary Party’
Peizer is set to host an invitation-only fundraising event for the nonprofit organization Island Corps. “One hundred percent of all donations go to GivingBack2PR for Puerto Rico’s children and youth, a Terren Fundraiser Impact Program benefitting IslandCorps,” according to the promotional page for the event, titled “Terren’s Pardon Me?! Legendary Party.”
“The experience is elevated with exceptional culinary moments, including indulgent caviar, two spectacular 250-lb bluefin tuna presentations prepared by master samurai chefs, and a bespoke Don Julio 1942 bar, each element thoughtfully curated to delight the senses and create lasting memories,” the event page adds. Donations range from $500 to $10,000.
Since 2017, Act 22’s resident investor program has required beneficiaries to make an annual contribution of at least $5,000 to nonprofit organizations in Puerto Rico. For investors granted decrees beginning in 2020, the required contribution increases to $10,000.
In the promotional video for the event, the newly pardoned Peizer warns of the “disappearance” of Puerto Rico’s child population because, he says, children lack “food security and housing security,” and without those conditions, they cannot have a stable education. A native of Cleveland, Ohio, he notes that he hosts this party every year “as a gift to the community, it’s an amazing community.” The event — whose name, as shown in the video, initially made no reference to the pardon — is scheduled for Saturday, Jan. 24, in an ultraexclusive area of Dorado Beach, where Peizer resides.
“In Puerto Rico, I’ve spearheaded efforts to improve education by funding charter schools and integrating AI-driven educational platforms into underserved communities. I also host events that raise substantial funds for local causes, such as disaster relief and toy drives for children. Beyond Puerto Rico, I support causes ranging from wildlife conservation to behavioral health. Each endeavor aligns with my overarching mission to create systemic, sustainable change,” Peizer said in an interview published in March 2025.
Island Corps, officially registered as the Puerto Rico Community Service Corps, was incorporated in Puerto Rico 15 years ago by María de los Ángeles Mayorga to provide community, educational and ecotourism services. Among its recent activities, the organization set up a tent stocked with donated equipment and supplies for teachers ahead of the start of the school year last August. During the holiday season, it collected toys that were distributed via drive-through events in communities in Juana Díaz, Guánica, Culebra and Vieques.
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The CPI contacted Mayorga to clarify the host’s role in the fundraising party at Island Corps, when her organization began managing the Terren Fundraiser Impact Program, and how long she has been affiliated with the entrepreneur. The executive director did not directly answer those questions and said via email that “IslandCorps shares institutional information only through public sources and documents that the law requires to be made available. As a matter of policy, and in accordance with federal rules applicable to tax-exempt organizations, we do not disclose nonpublic information, including donor or contributor data or identities, lists, or internal fundraising documentation or projections that have not been published.”
At one point, Peizer had 30 companies registered across three states. In Texas and Connecticut, he is listed as a director or principal officer of Ontrak. In Puerto Rico, he has four limited liability companies registered with the Department of State: Humanitario Capital, PR Schools, 14 Dorado Beach Estates and Steak. The first is a private investment fund, and the second is a fund for charter schools. The latter two do not list a specific purpose. None of the four companies has annual reports published on the Department of State’s website. The CPI contacted Peizer with questions about the companies he has registered on the island and his relationship with Island Corps, among other matters, but received no response.
In 1981, at age 21, Peizer began working at the investment firm Goldman Sachs and later partnered with Michael Milken, the so-called “junk bond king of Wall Street,” who was barred from trading securities after being convicted of fraud and conspiracy in 1990. Although Peizer testified against his mentor — who was also pardoned by Trump in 2020 — he said in an interview published last year that “Milken has been a significant inspiration. His innovative approaches to finance in the 1980s transformed industries and opened new opportunities for countless businesses. While his career was not without controversy, I learned invaluable lessons from him about the power of vision, resilience, and philanthropy. He demonstrated how one could leverage financial acumen for greater societal impact, a principle I’ve carried into my own ventures.”
While little is publicly known about his personal life, Peizer is a familiar figure in the investment world. Speaking about his business philosophy and philanthropic work at an event in Washington, D.C., in 2024, Peizer said: “I felt like I was like Robin Hood. I robbed the rich, the market, and I gave it to other causes. But the problem with that was that I didn’t believe that I was helping people, I wasn’t helping humanity…. But I felt like, just like the guy who catches a fish and gives it to the villager, enables that villager to have dinner. But the guy that teaches the villager to fish enables him to eat for the next year, plus.”
“I took all that money I made in the market, and I started creating companies that improved humanity,” he added.
After the announcement of the presidential pardon granted to Peizer, attorney Willingham reiterated his client’s innocence, even though Peizer had already been convicted and sentenced. “The management team that operated the company [Ontrak] told Mr. Peizer that he was cleared to enter into his trading plans…the government charged him without even bothering to talk to those people [the company executives who had authorized him],” Willingham said in a statement released by the firm on Jan. 16.
Last Friday, Trump pardoned Vázquez Garced, who had been accused of accepting bribes but pleaded guilty to the misdemeanor charge of violating campaign finance laws. He also pardoned her co-defendants, banker Julio Herrera Velutini and former federal agent Mark Rossini. The pardon came two weeks before their sentencing hearing and six months after the banker’s daughter, Isabel Herrera, made a $1 million donation to MAGA Inc. This was her second contribution to the Trump-aligned political committee; in late 2024, Isabel Herrera donated an additional $2.5 million, The New York Times reported. In May, federal prosecutors approved the plea agreements, which, while favorable to all three defendants, could have resulted in prison time.
Journalist Luis Valentín Ortiz contributed to this story.
