President Biden commuted the sentences of nearly 1,500 people on Thursday which included drug traffickers, embezzlers and even a leader of a biker gang.
In the largest single-day act of clemency in modern history, pardoned 39 Americans convicted of nonviolent crimes and handed out 1,499 commutations.
A commutation reduces a sentence that is being served, but does not erase a conviction nor imply innocence, according to the Department of Justice.
One of those 1,499 was Rita Crundwell, the former comptroller of the city of Dixon, Illinois, who was involved in stealing over $50 million in city funds.
She had served as Dixon’s comptroller for over 20 years and pleaded guilty to embezzling the funds in 2013.
The stolen money, which she began to accumulate in 1990, was said to be used to support her lavish lifestyle as well as a horse breeding business she ran.
The city managed to recover some of Crundwell’s stolen money, after they sold some of her belongings and used it as a recovery fund.
State marshals managed to sell off a chandelier made of old revolvers, Western-style furniture, horses, vehicles, jewelry and her homes.