I Beg Your Pardon part 3

Geoffrey Potter: My name is Geoffrey Potter. I'm a partner at the law firm of Patterson, Belknap, Webb and Tyler. Speaker 2: Geoffrey is an attorney, but not just any lawyer, I'm an anti counterfeiting lawyer. Speaker 2: But not just any counterfeit lawyer. He only handles counterfeits that can cause serious death or injury. His strategy is aggressive. Civil raids with the US Marshals, frozen bank accounts, entire supply chains dismantled, and his team isn't chasing street level dealers. Now they're going after the kingpins. Think of him as a private prosecutor with the powers that most people don't even know that a private attorney can have. Geoffrey has litigated cases involving counterfeit HIV medications, bogus diabetes test strips, and he's even helped secure a $92 million judgment against a ring trafficking dangerously thin counterfeit condoms. Geoffrey Potter: The Trojan Condom case was extraordinary, and we could, we could talk about Javier Leiva: Yeah. Maybe we'll make that a bonus. Yeah. We'll, we'll, well. It, it no doubt affected you personally because they, um, counterfeited a premium condom, the most expensive one, the Magnum we're not gonna talk about the Trojan Javier Leiva: no, we're not. Speaker 2: But that will be a story for another day. Today's episode is about another product entirely. his most famous case involves the popular five hour energy drink. You know that little bottle that you see on the counter of almost every gas station in America, and, that's why, five Hour Energy reached out to me when they discovered, that their iconic energy shot, was being counterfeited. Speaker 2: Geoffrey Potter's work has led to the shutdown of the factory concocting the imposter, five hour energy brew, and ultimately to the arrest and conviction of Adriana and her husband Joseph Shasta. Lemme tell you, it's a fascinating investigation and we are going to break down the entire scheme for you. but first. By now, you know what this series is all about, the perceived abuse of the presidential clemency system After her conviction, Adriana Cabrera's began serving a 26 month prison sentence in la. Oh, I, yeah, yeah. I'm mixing it up. I, hmm. After her conviction, Adriana Otta began serving a 26 month prison sentence in late 2019. then on January 20th, 2021, Donald, oh boy. On Donald Trump's final day in office, he commuted her sentence, allowing her to walk away free after only serving roughly half her time. She had only been out for 42 days before she went back to running a $59 million scheme. She gets busted again, sent back to prison. Pardoning her clearly seems to have been a big mistake, but she wasn't rehabilitated. She was emboldened. Clearly pardoning her was a big mistake, but President Trump pardoned her. Again, two pardons for the same person for two separate crimes. I'm Javier Leyva and this is Pretend Stories about Real People pretending to be someone else. Yeah, living Essentials. The company that owned and manufactures the Five Hour Energy drink noticed that something was wrong. They came across this bottle of their product that just wasn't right. It looked like a five hour energy bottle, but something was off. Javier VO: And so the story as it was told to me is somebody said, this doesn't look right. And every company, I guess, has a guy and they called, the guy, opened it up and drank it and says, doesn't taste right. Javier Leiva: Yeah. The counterfeits had mold markings, had printing that was just slightly off. And they're like, bank tellers. You and I might be fooled by a hundred dollars bill, but a bank teller who handles them every day is going to pick up on it quite quickly. Speaker 2: they took it to the lab and they confirmed their suspicions. The liquid inside was completely different from the real thing, and under a microscope it was even clearer because every plastic bottle and cap is made using a specific metal mold, metal mold. It like a fingerprint. You know, these molds leave microscopic unique impressions on every single unit, uh, on every single unit they produce. Geoffrey Potter: Now, you as a consumer would, if I put a counterfeit and an authentic next to each other, you would be unable to tell the difference. The sophistication of the, of the packaging of the product, the, shrink wrapped label, the plastic bottle was of the highest quality when I see somebody has put so much money and so much energy in making. The counterfeit, they're not making 10 of them. They're not making a hundred of them. They have a factory. and so we had to find out who was making it. So how do you think you go about doing something like that,

Javier: I don't know, because I would think, first of all, I would find out where that bottle was sold. Right. And then I would ask maybe the store owner, like who their distributor is. I don't know. That's what I would do. Geoffrey Potter: All right, well, you're going, you're going in the, the right direction. Javier Leiva: Oh, good. Geoffrey Potter: And so what we did is we literally canvased the nation. We sent people all over the nation into convenience stores and did this in a matter of days, And then we actually went to the court and got an order from the court. That allowed us to go with the US marshals into these stores and take their counterfeits and take their records, and they were obligated from the court to immediately tell us where they bought them from. Speaker 2: Once they had those secure, they went back to the court and got another one. This time allowing them to go one level further up the chain and the picture was getting clearer, right? Ev, whoever was making these knockoff five hour energy drinks, was making tons of money. I mean, spending pennies on the dollars to produce these things. Then turning around and selling them at full retail price, the exact same price as the real thing. Javier Leiva: For some reason, my naive mind thought that if you went to that store, they would just tell you who their distributor were. Geoffrey Potter: we tried, we tried that route first with a couple of people, Right.

Geoffrey Potter: and we had two concerns. One was that they would tip everyone off. Up the chain and it would be more difficult for us. The orders we got was they were not allowed to tip off their suppliers. but we tried that and we would get, oh, I got it at a flea market. I just picked it up. People were lying to us Javier Leiva: you have two missions to get the product off the market, but now you also have to find out where is this coming from? And I have here a note that says, and I wanna know if it's true or not, that you had 85 private investigators nationwide working on this. Geoffrey Potter: Yes. At one time or another we, we worked with 85 different private investigators. Speaker 2: Keep in mind this is a civil case, not a criminal case. Geoffrey Potter is an attorney,

Speaker: not a prosecutor. He doesn't work for the FBI or the DEA. He works for his client. Five hour Energy. So how is a private attorney getting courts to authorize massive investigations, raids with the US Marshals search warrants? You know, the whole enchilada Geoffrey Potter: You asked an important question that I didn't answer, so let me try again. said, isn't it extraordinary that you're acting as though you're law enforcement? the answer is, yes. These powers, the powers to have a search warrant, the powers to seize and copy someone's computer or telephone are things that typically only belong to the government. The Department of Justice, the state district attorney. Your US attorneys in criminal cases have these powers, but civil litigants, which is all we are, um, never have those powers except in one specific area. And that's counterfeiting cases Speaker 2: and the fancy word for that is ex parte. These civil search warrants were historically unique to counterfeit cases, but they now also apply to trade secret theft, giving private parties the power to seize evidence without ever notifying the defendant. And the fancy word for this is ex parte. These civil search warrants were historically unique to counterfeit cases, but now they also apply to trade secret theft, giving private parties the power to seize evidence without ever notifying the defendant Geoffrey Potter: Which means you go in alone to the court without telling the other side, and you make your case. To the judge that there are counterfeits, that they'll likely be at this specific location. Javier VO: And

Geoffrey Potter: the judge will give you an order that allows you to take the counterfeits Speaker 2: and if there's equipment used to manufacture these counterfeits, They can seize that too, along with any records Geoffrey Potter: Which means we can, we bring computer technicians Speaker 2: they make forensic copies of phones, text messages, call logs, everything. Geoffrey Potter: to see who they communicated with to purchase it. We can take their paper files, should they have paper files, we can copy their computers, their cloud storage, And we go in with the US marshals to take it. so Geoffrey Potter and his team Speaker 2: of 85 private investigators worked their way up the supply chain. Geoffrey Potter: And we had a, a, a group of individuals that we strongly suspected were involved in this. We followed them to see where they went. We saw what buildings they were going into. Speaker 2: It was a facility in San Diego near the Mexican border Geoffrey Potter: We saw them going around and hiring day laborers from gas stations mostly and bringing them Speaker 2: before they pull the trigger on the warrant. They usually send someone to take a look around. The trick is finding someone to get them through the door. Geoffrey Potter: Often we'll have somebody on the door and say, can I use the bathroom? And you walk in and you can see what's going on. Speaker 2: or the investigators would lie and say they're coming for a cleaning service. Geoffrey Potter: Could they look around and give you a bid to clean your facilities?

Speaker: but when they got there,

Javier: It

Geoffrey Potter: happened to be closed. There was a, little glass window next to the door, and there was a MAIL slot in the door, and so the mail would be pushed through and you could look into the window, and the investigator, took photographs, of the mail. Speaker 2: They didn't open the mail. They just noted that the return address and who it was addressed to. And sure enough, it was an invoice from a company that makes very specialized digi. It was an invoice from a company that makes a very specialized digital printer, the kind used on high speed assembly lines to stamp the. The kind that was used, the kind that was used on authentic bottles of five hour energy. Javier VO: It happens to be the same printer that's used in the authentic factory in Indiana. So Geoffrey Potter and his team Speaker 2: took what they had to the courts mail from the printer day laborers coming and going, and the judge signed off this time, he went in this time they went in with the US Marshals. Geoffrey Potter: And again, they weren't there that day. The door was locked, so we had a locksmith unlock the door and we walked in and lo and behold, there was a factory and it was a massive operation. We could see the counterfeit labels, we could see the, the machines that would shrink would shrink wrap. labels. They would go into a oven, it would then bake it onto the bottles We saw. Literally a million additional labels that were in inventory to be put on future bottles. We saw work on progress. We saw bottles that had been shrunk wrapped, but not filled. They had an assembly line. They had the automatic fillers, they had the printing machine. Javier Leiva: It looked like the real Geoffrey Potter: one. It was a real factory. And they, they were making at that point a million bottles a month. they would have workers who would take the bottles off of the assembly line and put them in the counterfeit five hour energy boxes that would then be put in counterfeit, bigger shipping boxes. It would be palletized and they would fill it onto trailer trucks and send it across the nation. Javier Leiva: I mean, if it looked like a legitimate factory, was it clean? no, no. It had all the elements to make it, it was filthy and the liquid. That went into the bottles was being mixed up in barrels and they were using canoe paddles to mix it up and pour it into the uh, uh, uh, filler. So you had these huge plastic barrels that were dirty, that had all sorts of powders and liquids and flavors, and it had caffeine,

Speaker: here's the thing about caffeine. A lethal dose is just five grams. That's two tablespoons. The FDA starts warning about seizures at about a quarter of a teaspoon, and the people mixing this stuff weren't chemists and they weren't even following a recipe. Every batch presumably, is a little different. You get the measurement wrong, and it could stop your heart. Geoffrey Potter: And so if you mix it wrong, you would be killed. So even using this potentially dangerous product, all being done by hand with no inspections, no sanitation licenses, nobody's educated in doing this, they're just mixing up a brew. Each batch is a little bit different. they're using, you know, industrial products, some of which, appeared not to have been approved for human use. Uh, and they're just mixing it up. And it had the potential for a mass catastrophe being given to thousands and thousands of people. Javier Leiva: I'm surprised they even used caffeine, honestly, like. Geoffrey Potter: Well, they, they, I think they were afraid that people might notice it wasn't working and complain. I think they were afraid that if it was just water, people would notice. Now, we don't know of anyone who was hurt by the counterfeit and maybe nobody was, or maybe people were. I mean, if you got sick the next day, how would you know what hurt you? And you know, it, it, it, you know, when you go to any licensed manufacturer of a food drug or cosmetic, they test every ingredient, every batch. The water that's used for bacterial contamination, they don't hire. Undocumented people standing at the corner of the street to do the best they can. I, there was no toilet paper in the bathroom. The place was filthy, the floor was filthy. There were remnants and things all around. and we found the workers and the workers complained. They complained that they weren't paid minimum wage. They weren't always paid what they were supposed to be. Sometimes they had to wait weeks to be paid. They felt it was dirty and abusive. They weren't happy about it. Speaker 2: These were day laborers. You know, they didn't have employ. These were, listen, these were day laborers. No, they didn't have employment records, no protections. And if anybody got hurt or injured or complained, they were just fired. I mean, Most of them weren't even being paid minimum wage. And at the center of this entire counterfeit operation was Adriana Tta. She's gonna get not one, but two presidential pardons. We're gonna find out after the break. Joseph and Adriana Otta were the husband and wife Masterminds behind one of the most sophisticated and dangerous food counterfeiting operations in US history. And at the height of their scheme, they flooded the American market with over 4 million bottles of fake five hour energy, and it was manufactured in a filthy, unregulated facility in San Diego. In an unregulated facility near San Diego, Joseph and Adriana have since divorced. She now goes by her maiden name, Adriana Ros. And from this point on, you're gonna hear both of her last names interchangeably. Javier Leiva: When was the first time that you heard the name Adriana Shayota or Camberos,

Geoffrey Potter: I don't remember when we first heard their name. It's been too many years, but her name was in many, many places. It was in text messages, it was in emails. She was in wire transfers. She was the one who purchased all of the equipment in the factory. She was the one who made the approval for the oven that, uh, uh, was the shrink wrapping machine. She was the brains of the operation. She wasn't the whole operation, she was not as we could see on the sales side, but in terms of financing and manufacturing, they were relying on her. She controlled the purse strings, later as we did more seizures in, in her office, her home got her telephone, uh, got all the bank records, uh, we were able to of course, figure out how they got into this absolutely lame brain scheme Speaker 2: So you might be asking yourself why Five hour energy out of all products? It was a relatively new company. I believe they had some sales around the world, but they were contemplating having global sales. And here's someone who presented themselves very well as an established distributor in Mexico. and they placed an order for, um, several trailer truckloads,

Speaker: But the truckloads that were showing up were wrapped in Spanish labels. Adriana and Joseph never intended to sell a single bottle in Mexico. The whole plan was to just buy cheap on the international market and then flip it back to sell at full price in the us. Geoffrey Potter: The Shayotas, uh, uh, were furious and said, you've tricked us. And they said, no, this is what you have to have to sell. And they said, oh, no, no. I'm gonna have trouble with this product. People will think it was different, the, the complete scam that had been successful with other companies and five hours in, she said, no. If you want product from Mexico, it's going to be manufactured in compliance with the rules and regulations in Mexico. We will give it to you at a Spanish label. If you wish to buy us product, go to one of our authorized distributors and buy as much as you'd like. And so they stopped buying from them because when they tried to sell the Spanish labeled product in stores in the us, people wouldn't want it. Javier Leiva: Right.

Geoffrey Potter: The, the stores didn't wanna stock it. Javier Leiva: but I could see their dilemma, right? So they're getting all this Mexican five hour energy, which is legitimate five hour energy, but it, it, it doesn't fit with their scheme of selling it back to the US and making a, a killing on him. Right. Geoffrey Potter: so here's what they do. They say, we can't sell this stuff and we wanna get our money out of it. So we, we'll rent a warehouse and we'll hire day laborers and we'll fake the label. which makes the product a counterfeit, but it would have the same liquid. And they using razor blades by hand. Remove the labels from tens of thousands of bottles. Put a new shrink wrap label on, repackage it and sell it. And they're like, this is terrific. And then they're like, well, five hour energy isn't gonna sell us product. We already are manufacturing the labels. Let's manufacture the bottles in the caps and the boxes and the liquid Javier Leiva: Yeah. and we can really make this profitable. Speaker 2: They cut out the middleman. Why spend all this money buying real five hour energy and relabeling it back in English when you could just make your own bottle, print your own label, and add flavored caffeine water? I mean, who would know the difference?

Javier: you had the US Marshals assisting you, you had court ordered, you know, the judge signed off. But at any point did you guys get law enforcement like the FBI or anybody involved?

Geoffrey Potter: we shared all of our evidence with the government. Every case I have done, we have gone all the way. Up to the top and shut it down. Speaker 2: companies like Five Hour Energy, don't just hire attorneys like Geoffrey Potter because counterfeits Speaker 2: cut into their sales. They hire him. because a contaminated fake bottle can destroy their brand overnight. And yet, if a counterfeiter makes $50 million and is sued for $10 million, eh, they still come out ahead. So civil litigation alone won't stop them. Geoffrey Potter: Amma, a cost of doing business. I'm going to get a large judgment, but putting people in prison has the greatest deterrence, 'cause counterfeiting puts us, our friends, our family, our children at risk. Speaker 2: for decades, law enforcement treated counterfeiting as a victimless intellectual property dispute. Not a violent crime. that means that these counterfeiters face almost zero personal risk. Okay, but the SHA OTAs case changed all that because by proving that they were mixing unregulated chemicals in their filthy vats, prosecutors were able to do something That is rarely done in food counterfeiting cases. They put the kingpins in prison. Adriana got 26 months and Joseph Shiota got seven years Okay. Getting a presidential commutation isn't easy. There's a formal process, a petition to review by the Department of Justice, a recommendation to the president. It could take years, and most people never get one. Adriana Cabrero didn't have that kind of patience. She filed the petition, but Adriana Berros had no obvious connection to Donald Trump. They don't have a political history together. No celebrity friends, no leverage, right? She was just a convicted food counterfeiter from San Diego. So while the official application was still sitting in the queue, she went looking for a backdoor. A presidential commutation is a golden ticket, and Adriana was gonna buy one first. She needed a credible character witness according to campaign finance records, PAC money tied to. Pac money tied to her and her brother helped elect John McCann, the Deputy Mayor of Chula Vista, and McCann. Then wrote a letter to the Trump administration calling Adriana, quote, an incredibly good person. that letter, made it into the official White House statement. McCann has told reporters that he had no idea where that PAC money came from, but a deputy mayor from Chula Vista, that wasn't gonna be enough according to whistle. according to a whistleblower who later helped the FBI dismantle her second scheme, Adriana was working every angle she could find, including trying to reach Trump through a contact close to UFC President Dana White. And that went nowhere. what ultimately worked, but we don't fully know. according to a reporting from the New York Times and Washington Post, Trump's inner circle included figures who operated with those news outlets, described as a pay-to-play scheme. With those outlets described as a pay-to-play access scheme, whether Adriana found that door, we can't confirm, but someone opened it because on January 20th, 2021, the last day of Trump's full term, Adriana Otta Cabrero walked outta prison. Adriana Curos. Adriana Curos walked outta prison. She had only served roughly half her sentence. So now Adriana Curos is outta prison. What will she do? Will she leave counterfeiting and the diversion business behind? Of course not, When you look at the, the, the funds that were, later, frozen by the government, many millions of dollars, uh, in assets, tens of millions of dollars in real estate. it, it greed knows no limit. I've never heard of a, of a criminal saying, that's enough. Javier Leiva: I've had enough. I, I've made enough money. No, no. Geoffrey Potter: Javier you're not a criminal. So you're thinking, if I had that much money, I would just retire. Why take the risk? Why continue to do it? But you're not a criminal Javier, so what you would do or what you think about isn't really relevant. Speaker 2: because we know what's coming. she's about to get the president to grant her clemency a second time. But here's the thing, the five hour energy scheme, well, that was just a side gig. Javier VO: They had a completely different grift. Javier Leiva: Yeah, so that's what I was gonna say. This wasn't even their main thing, right? Like this was just a side hustle for them. Speaker 2: Just 42 days after her release, Adriana was back in business running an even larger scheme that had been playing in the background this entire time. Javier VO: They were in the diversion business. Geoffrey Potter: they were in the diversion business. Speaker 2: Diversion. It's when a distributor buys good at a steep discount by promising to sell them in a specific region, and then they turn around and sell them somewhere more profitable. Instead, The manufacturer almost never knows. The Cabreras and Chiota family had been running this scheme for nearly 30 years under a company called Baja Exporting. It wasn't just a side house called Baja exporting, and by all accounts, this business was a fraudulent business the entire time. It was never legit. They approached major American brands like Proctor and Gamble, Mars, Hershey's, pitching themselves as this established distributor in Latin America, specifically in a free trade zone in Baja, California. Just south of the US border, the Cabreras and Chiota family had been running this scheme for nearly 30 years under a company called Baja Exporting. Oh yeah, I already said that. Um, the cover story was. and their cover story was brilliant because Baja was a border zone, And they told manufacturers that Mexican consumers actually prefer English language packaging. It was a perfect excuse to buy massive quantities of American labeled products at a heavily discounted international rate. But here's the catch. Yeah, those products almost never saw the inside of a Mexican supermarket. Instead, the family diverted the goods back into the United States, selling them to domestic distributors at full price and pocketing millions in profit. to keep this illusion running, they opened the real office in Mexico City, staffed by an executive named Gino Bertozzi. just to make it look legitimate to the companies. They were defrauding. They forged export documents. If a brand rep ever got suspicious and wanted proof of Mexican distribution, the family would buy the product at an American store, drive it across the border, and pay off Mexican store owners to temporarily stock them in their shelves. Stock the shelves just to snap a convincing photo. Every single dollar that this company made was built on the scheme. But unlike the five hour energy scheme that we talked about earlier, Adriana Cabrera's wasn't counterfeiting these products. The tide in that bottle was real tide. The Snickers in the box was real Snickers companies. Consumers got exactly what they paid for. the only people getting robbed were the brands Geoffrey Potter: And so the companies would be ripped off, but consumers would get the same product. Speaker 2: in 2023, Adriana Ros, in 2023. Adriana Berros was indicted again, and by the end of 2024, a jury had convicted her. In 2005, a judge sentenced her to a year in federal prison and ordered her and her brother to pay back nearly $49 million to the 20 companies they they'd robbed. Then on January 15th, 2026, Donald Trump pardoned them, both Adriana and her brother, full and unconditional. Full and unconditional pardons. The conviction gone. The $49. The $49 restitution order that was meant to go back to the victims. That was gone too. Okay. 20 companies that had played by the rules got defrauded, went through years of litigation, and won and then won. They walked away with nothing. I reached out to several of these companies and none of 'em got back to me. So two presidential pardons for two separate schemes, and the second pardon was for a crime she committed specifically because she was freed from the first one. What a lucky gal, huh?

Javier: and you can say this about any criminal really, but especially about her, is that imagine if she would apply herself to a legitimate business because she was running a major operation there. Like the way you describe it, it was dirty, it was filthy or whatever, but she had the whole supply chain figured out. I mean, she was, obviously, she wasn't a dummy, you know?

Geoffrey Potter: my, my interactions with her were limited, but from what I could tell, she is a highly intelligent, highly capable, highly motivated, very well organized person who could run any legitimate business, but instead has chosen to commit crime. Javier Leiva: Yep. It's the profit margins. That's the difference. Speaker 2: Adriana Berros has now been granted clemency twice for two separate schemes by the same president, and she's only 55 years old. surely no one gets pardoned three times, right? That's it for today's show. Today's show was written and produced by yours truly, Javier Eva Music is by Joe Basil with the chicken.net. I really could do this series indefinitely. There are so many pardons and such little time. If you're enjoying this series, let me know. Write a review on Apple Podcasts. Drop a comment on Spotify. Let me know on social, but if you're sick of this series, I'd like to hear from you too. I'd like to take the time to thank some of my Patreon supporters, Steph Ryans, Beth Long Christie, Sarah McLean. Sarah McClennan, Lucinda Colo. Stephanie Debr. Danielle. Beverly. S Bjork. Amanda Fable. Ashley C Emma Truman, Tracy Jensen, Kara, Sam Lewis, Jeff Geist, Jennifer Hughes, Jennifer Taylor, Jen Dorio, and Maya. Those are just a few of the names who are helping support this show. They are keeping it running. This is an independent podcast that I do on the side and. It cannot happen without you guys, so I really do appreciate everyone who supports the show. If you want to support the show, you could join Patreon for as little as $3 a month, or you could join Patreon or support Pretend on Apple Podcasts or join Pretend Plus. On Apple Podcasts. You get bonus content, early releases ad free, but best of all, you're supporting local. Best of all, you're supporting independent journalism. If you can't afford to support pretend monetarily, you could always, you could just simply text a friend about this show and let them know that they are gonna love it too. That's it. Just text your friend. Do it now before you forget. All right. That's all I got for today. Talk to you next week.