Teman Denied Pardon - Again

By Lois Weiss

The Trump Administration has just turned down a pardon for tech entrepreneur and comedian, Ari Teman, who spent over seven months in Federal lockup after trying to collect funds owed to his intercom company by two New York City landlords and a co-op, which variously claimed in court they hadn’t signed the electronic documents or didn’t even do business with his firm, despite having his intercom system on the door of their buildings.

Speaking exclusively to BetweenTheBricks.com in a WhatsApp call from Israel, where he just became a citizen, Teman said he believes he was turned down because he refused to pay for the pardon.

“Both Pardon Attorney Ed Martin and U.S. assistant attorney general Harmeet Dhillon have publicly stated I was innocent. But when I refused to pay Dhillon’s firm $150,000 for a pardon, and I called her out on it on Twitter, they turned their backs on me.”

The engagement letter from Dhillon’s firm specifically states, “Pardons and commutations are extremely rare. We cannot and do not guarantee results in your case, as each outcome is the product of many variables beyond our control and our present knowledge of the facts.” 

Nevertheless, Teman believes that those who pay to play do get pardoned by Trump.

A recent article in the New York Post revealed some law firms even charge into the millions of dollars for pardons. https://nypost.com/2026/07/25/us-news/inside-the-booming-pardon-lobbying-racket-around-trumps-clemency-power/

Teman pointed to Philip Esformes, who Teman says privately bragged about paying $1.2 million through the Orthodox Chabad-Lubavitch movement to get a commutation for his Medicaid fraud, even though public records showed he gave just $65,000 in contributions. After the pardon, Esformes was rearrested for other crimes).  https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/24/us/politics/trump-pardon-clemency-access.html

Teman also discussed the case of David Gentile, who got clemency after spending just two weeks of a seven-year sentence for a $1.6 billion securities and wire fraud scheme. In June, the New York Times wrote that Trump’s political appointees stopped an investigation as to whether Gentile had paid $2.5 million to “people and companies to help facilitate his clemency.”

In both cases, restitution for the victims was wiped out with the pardons.  https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/21/us/politics/trump-fraudster-priest-investigation-brooklyn.html?searchResultPosition=1

Teman has already paid the full, nearly $300,000 in restitution to his three client “victims” after depositing remotely created checks, known as RCCs, to obtain past due payments from his clients.

He resorted to this unusual collection strategy -- permitted he claimed, as part of his client agreements -- when he was inspired during Passover 2019, that his company, GateGuard, could provide free intercoms to Chabad locations around the country to protect them from attacks like the one that had occurred in a Pittsburgh synagogue in October 2018, where 11 people were slaughtered.    

But Teman needed funds to pay his Chinese parts suppliers – a fact used by the Southern District of New York court during his January, 2020 trial for bank and wire fraud, to further smear him.

Teman has also battled with the presiding Justice Paul Engelmayer, who has ordered him to return to the United States from an approved visit to his parents in Israel. But that visit turned out to be at the start of the Israeli war with Hamas in Gaza. Teman has since refused to return to the US, citing a clogged eustachian tube that could rupture if he were to fly home.

Teman is now awaiting his Israeli health insurance to kick in so he can get the operation to clear his ear, but says he still won’t return to the states.

“I want my case dismissed,” Teman insisted. He is trying to build a life in Israel, patenting the Jovari electric vehicle that uses AI to replicate the “feel” of any sportscar, and a futuristic airport https://nypost.com/2025/07/11/lifestyle/future-airport-makes-major-cuts-to-passenger-wait-times-with-shotgun-cartridge-boarding-system/  

He previously founded the volunteer JCorps in the United States and helped out at the site of the Surfside condominium collapse in Miami while wearing an ankle monitor and appealing his case. He is currently gathering support to build Sunflower Centers in Israel as a research and addiction treatment campus for veterans and victims of October 7th.

But upon a return to the U.S., Teman could also be locked up again by Justice Engelmayer for what he and many others believe is a miscarriage of justice. Numerous prominent legal scholars, from Alan Dershowitz to Larry Lessig and Ron Coleman as well as Dhillon and Martin, have previously deemed Teman innocent and have called on Trump for either a pardon or to dismiss the case.

In an Op Ed in the Jerusalem Post, https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-904088 Hallal Silverman called on prominent donor Miriam Adelson to urge President Trump to pardon Teman and order the investigation into the handling of his case by the SDNY.

The case was marred by several Brady violations - including Teman's appeal lawyer not disclosing that he was married to one of Justice Engelmayer's mentees who worked at the SDNY and may have overheard strategic discussions that took place in their apartment during the Covid lock downs, a situation that shocked even Justice Engelmayer.

Teman was supposed to remain on probation for three years after his release from prison but also spent years wearing a painful ankle monitor and reporting to a probation officer while appealing his 2020 conviction. “I spend two years on probation and 7.5 months in prison – and if you are really smart, prison is hell," he added.

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