The 'Hoodie Bandit' Wants Out of Prison — So He Hired a Congressional Candidate to Ask Trump
A Florida armed robber's family is paying former GOP state legislator Mike Beltran to lobby the president for a pardon. Beltran is now running for Congress.
A man who once robbed convenience stores at gunpoint is trying a new way out of his 32-year prison sentence: hire a lobbyist with the right connections and ask President Trump for a pardon.
That lobbyist is Mike Beltran — a Harvard-trained attorney, a former Republican member of the Florida House, and, as of last month, a candidate for Congress.
Here’s how the pieces fit together.
The robber.
Back in 2010, Turkish national Yener Vahit Belli earned the nickname “Hoodie Bandit” from Tampa Bay reporters and police. He wore hooded sweatshirts and sunglasses while he held up numerous convenience stores and gas stations around Hillsborough County, waving a TEC-9 and ordering clerks and customers to the floor. He got away with cash, cigarettes, and lottery tickets.
Police arrested him in October 2010 after spotting him on surveillance footage. In 2013 he pleaded guilty in federal court and was sentenced to 32 years. An alleged getaway driver got 10 years.
The reason the sentence ran so long: at the time, federal law stacked harsh, mandatory penalties on top of each other for using a gun during a robbery. Those rules have since been softened — and that’s the opening Belli’s team is now trying to use.
The lobbyist.
Your typical lobbyist is essentially someone paid to argue a client’s case to people in government. Usually you hear about them pushing bills or chasing contracts. This is something newer: lobbyists hired to win presidential pardons.
Federal records show Belli’s family signed a contract with Beltran on Nov. 24, 2025. Beltran’s law firm is listed as the official registrant, Belli as the client, and the job as — in plain terms — lobbying for a pardon. The filing reports he was paid $15,000 in the final months of 2025.
Beltran has since written to the Trump Justice Department arguing that Belli’s sentence is based on an old, now-rejected reading of the law and is far longer than Congress would consider fair today. He sent the pardon office a six-page letter with more than 80 pages of attachments asking that the sentence be cut to time already served.
“This is a case about proportion and sentencing,” Beltran told the news outlet NOTUS, which first reported the arrangement. He says his client has turned his life around — earned an MBA behind bars, lined up a job and a place to live, and is ready to stay out of trouble.
Belli, in his own petition, says he’s not the troubled 26-year-old he was when he committed the crimes. “I know I can never undo what I did,” he wrote.
Belli isn’t alone. Since Trump returned to office, he’s granted pardons or clemency to more than 1,800 people — far more than in his entire first term. That flood has created a small industry of lobbyists charging big fees to get inmates’ names in front of the White House.
The administration waves it off. A White House official told NOTUS that the president decides pardons himself and that anyone paying a lobbyist for one is wasting their money. Watchdogs see it differently, warning that money and connections are starting to matter as much as the facts of a case. Defenders point out that hiring an advocate is perfectly legal, and that Trump has backed criminal-justice reform before.
The twist.
Here’s the part worth watching. Beltran left the Florida House in 2024, saying at the time it was for family and professional reasons. Then in May 2026 — after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a new map that turned a Democratic-leaning Tampa-area seat into a strong Republican one — Beltran seized the opportunity and jumped into the congressional race for it.
So the same attorney lobbying Trump’s administration for a convicted robber’s freedom is also asking voters to send him to Washington as a Trump ally.
His opponents have started asking the obvious questions: Why leave Tallahassee and then run for Congress? What changed? Was the friendlier new map the reason? The public timeline is clear — he stepped down, the map changed, he got in the race. What it all means is for voters to decide.
Bottom line.
The facts on paper aren’t in dispute. A man is serving 32 years for armed robbery. His family paid Beltran $15,000 to lobby for a pardon. Beltran has formally made the ask. And Beltran is running for Congress while he does it.
Whether Trump grants the pardon is anyone’s guess — the White House says it doesn’t discuss requests that may or may not exist.
Reporting drawn from the U.S. Department of Justice, the Tampa Bay Times, federal lobbying and clemency filings as reported by NOTUS, Florida Phoenix, and Ballotpedia. Current as of June 2026
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