Gina Champion-Cain, who is serving a 15-year prison sentence for masterminding a $400 million Ponzi scheme, is pushing hard for an early release, citing unrelenting sexual abuse while she was in the now-shuttered minimum-security facility in Northern California where she was initially incarcerated. While the former San Diego businesswoman has, on her own, pursued a number of steps aimed at ending or shortening her incarceration following the sexual assault she alleges she endured since the day she arrived at the Dublin facility, she is now getting help from a former fellow inmate and prison reform advocate. Kendra Drysdale, who works for the California Coalition for Women Prisoners, has started an online petition on change.org to help build support for an earlier appeal by Champion-Cain for a presidential pardon. While Champion-Cain, 59, filed a formal petition for commutation of her sentence with the U.S. Office of the Pardon Attorney two years ago, it has yet to be acted on. A search of the Pardon Attorney website confirms that Champion-Cain’s 2022 clemency petition for what would be a reduction in her sentence is still pending. A once prominent restaurateur, Champion-Cain has tried on multiple occasions to get approval of some form of early release that would allow for home confinement in light of well-documented allegations of abuse that led to the closure earlier this year of the women’s prison in Dublin, which came to be known as the “rape club.” READ MORE ABOUT CHAMPION-CAIN IN OUR TWO-PART SERIES Inside Gina Champion-Cain’s empire of lies “I felt so betrayed: Champion-Cain launches a $400M Ponzi scheme that ensnares her closest friends In April, Champion-Cain was transferred out of Dublin’s prison camp and is currently serving the remainder of her sentence at a prison in Pekin, Ill. Her current release date is Jan. 9, 2033, which would shorten her time in custody by more than three years. It’s not unusual for federal inmates to see their custody time reduced slightly due to a number of factors, including credit for good behavior. “Courts have consistently ruled that prison authorities must protect inmates from the threat and occurrence of sexual assault and provide necessary medical and psychological care if such an assault occurs,” reads the petition posted by Drysdale, who came to know Champion-Cain well during her incarceration at Dublin. “But the BOP (Bureau of Prisons) has been and remains unwilling or unable to provide such care to Gina.” The petition concludes, “By any measure, whether it is redress warranted by the abuse she has suffered or an evaluation of her rehabilitation, she deserves to be placed back in society where she can use her talents and education in service to her community.” The online petition is intended to push the pardon attorney and President Biden to act on Champion-Cain’s request for commutation of her sentence, said Drysdale, who was released from Dublin in April for reasons unrelated to the sexual abuse issue. In multiple court documents she filed over the past year in federal court in Northern California, Champion-Cain detailed the abuse she suffered once she arrived at Dublin in 2021. She alleged that a correctional officer working in her area would taunt and threaten her if she did not comply with certain demands, such as undressing for him. “‘Welcome to hell,’” she said he told her. “‘I can show you what a real man feels like.’” He would also watch the women inmates, including herself, take showers and on occasion would come by and “rip open” the showers while they were naked, Champion-Cain related in a court filing. “I felt like a helpless fly trapped in my sadistic abuser’s web of dominance. The worst part is I keep reliving these traumatic experiences over and over again, triggered by certain sights and smells, extreme anxiety while taking my showers, and even sounds like footsteps of guards and the rattling of their keys outside my room at night,” she wrote in a victim impact statement that was included in a legal complaint she filed this year seeking release to home confinement. Champion-Cain later asked that the case be withdrawn, telling the judge that she hadn’t intended to file it as a separate case. The documentation in the filing was intended to support a separate class-action case filed on behalf of Dublin inmates against the Bureau of Prisons, she explained in her request for dismissal. The need to be removed from her prison environment has grown more urgent, she says in her pleas, in light of the physical and psychological toll she says the alleged abuse at Dublin has taken on her. Champion-Cain says she has experienced severe weight loss and suffers from anxiety, panic attacks and depression. Equally unsettling, she says, is the impact it has had on those close to her. “My husband of 32 years filed for divorce shortly after I told him of the abuse; he simply could not handle it nor handle my new difficulty in sustaining relationships due the abuse,” she wrote in the victim impact statement. “My parents, in their 80s, have suffered greatly in that they feel so helpless and ineffective as parents while they have watched me spiral in a downward arc of depression and sadness.” It’s a monumental change from the days when Champion-Cain was the head of her own company that once employed as many as 700 and she was opening her high-profile portfolio of Patio-themed restaurants in some of San Diego’s most popular neighborhoods. But it all came tumbling down in August of 2019 when the Securities and Exchange Commission charged her with fraud in connection with a multi-year Ponzi scheme. In March 2021, she was sentenced and immediately taken into custody after pleading guilty a year earlier to criminal charges of securities fraud, conspiracy and obstruction of justice. Her plea arose out of a federal probe documenting how Champion-Cain, over nearly eight years, had defrauded close to 300 investors — a number of them long-time friends — who thought they were making high-interest liquor license loans to cash-strapped restaurant and bar owners. In truth, no loans were ever made. The money solicited by Champion-Cain was instead diverted to her and her business enterprises, many of which were failing. In all, her victims’ net loss totaled $183 million, but in the years since, they’ve recouped a large share of that money through settlements with a third-party company, Chicago Title, that had held their funds in bogus escrow accounts. They were also able to share in the proceeds of Champion-Cain’s remaining assets that were disposed of by a court-appointed receiver. The recovery for the investors is noted in the change.org clemency petition that credits Champion-Cain’s cooperation with authorities for helping realize such a high recovery rate. The petition, which was filed a week ago, is one many such online appeals that have been launched in support of women who were serving time at Dublin and have since been moved to other federal prisons, Drysdale said. She noted that several women who were inmates at Dublin have since been released due to the conditions at the prison. Among Champion-Cain’s own efforts to fight back against the “terrifying” abuse she says she suffered at Dublin is a request she filed for compassionate release, which has since been denied, according to a letter she wrote to the judge overseeing the Dublin inmates’ class action lawsuit. She noted that it was initially approved by the Dublin prison warden at the time and signed off on by the U.S. Probation office in San Diego but was later denied by the Bureau of Prisons General Counsel. The Federal Correctional Institution stands in Dublin, Calif. known as the “rape club” was closed earlier this year following reports of years-long sexual abuse of inmates. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File) In January, Champion-Cain filed what’s known as a petition for writ of habeas corpus, arguing that her sentence was carried out in a manner that violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. In that petition, she asked that the court order her immediate release on several grounds, including sexual abuse. Last month, the judge in that case seemed poised to dismiss the case, ordering her to “show cause” as to why the petition should not be dismissed. In a response she filed not long after, Champion-Cain requested that her writ be granted and that she be released so that could serve the remainder of her sentence in home confinement for fear of retaliation from inmates and other prison staff, including those at other facilities. Alternatively, she asked that her sentence be reduced to 90 months.  There are multiple pathways to potentially getting an early release from prison, but clemency is probably the hardest and least likely to yield a positive outcome, said San Diego defense attorney John Kirby, who has represented many individuals charged with federal crimes and also was a federal prosecutor for 10 years. “Anything like clemency is always a long shot unless you know someone who knows the president or someone in the president’s inner circle or you have a super high-profile case,” he said. “It’s a rare thing. I’ve asked for clemency for a couple of clients, and it’s a real Hail Mary type of call.” Also very challenging is prevailing on a habeas corpus petition like the one Champion-Cain filed, he said. During his career he’s filed 15 of them, and only one was successful. Champion-Cain might have a slightly greater chance at a compassionate release, he said. Meanwhile, the judge in the Dublin class-action suit recently ruled on a motion by the Bureau of Prisons to dismiss the case. U.S. District Court Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers denied the motion, rejecting the bureau’s apparent position that “all is now well, and continued intervention is unnecessary.” She concluded that “the notion that the constitutional injuries alleged by FCI Dublin’s AICs (adults in custody) were comprehensively remedied by the facility’s closure strains credulity. Redressable injuries stemming from the AICs’ experiences at FCI Dublin remain to be addressed, and the BOP is well aware of this fact.” While Champion-Cain’s efforts to be released from prison or at least get her sentence substantially reduced have largely focused on the abuse she claims to have suffered at Dublin, she also has sought to have her sentenced reduced on the grounds that it was her cooperation with the court and the receiver that helped recover money for her victims. Earlier this year, Champion-Cain filed a legal brief making such a request, arguing that federal prosecutors had “acted arbitrarily and in bad faith” by failing to seek a reduced sentence in exchange for her continued cooperation in her fraud case. Then U.S. District Court Judge Larry Burns, who has since retired, denied her motion. At the time of her sentencing, prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s office had recommended a lesser sentence of nearly 11 years, in part, because of her cooperation in the case. Burns, however, disagreed with prosecutors, concluding, as he did in his ruling this year, that Champion-Cain has already received considerable credit for her cooperation. “The reasons supporting the defendant’s original sentence — the scope, duration, and calamitous consequences of her offenses, the concepts of just punishment, promoting respect for the law, and the need for specific and general deterrence — continue to have great force and effect,” he wrote in his ruling. “The Court finds these factors militate against further reduction of the defendant’s sentence.”