High-stakes poker player who cofounded SCOTUSblog sentenced to 6 years in prison

A prominent attorney who argued dozens of cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and helped launch the popular legal website SCOTUSblog was sentenced to six years in prison for tax evasion and mortgage fraud, federal prosecutors said.

U.S. District Judge Lydia Kay Griggsby sentenced Thomas Goldstein, 56, of Chevy Chase, to the prison stint and five years of supervised release, according to a Friday statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Maryland.

In February, a federal jury found Goldstein guilty of tax evasion, assisting with the preparation of false tax returns, willfully failing to pay taxes on time and making false statements to mortgage lenders. The judge also ordered Goldstein to pay $3,103,427 in restitution.

Goldstein from 2016 and 2023 served as the sole owner of Goldstein & Russell P.C., a law firm specializing in appellate litigation. During those years he stopped paying taxes on time and participated in a scheme to evade paying his taxes for 2016.

“Thomas Goldstein built a distinguished legal career arguing that the rule of law matters. Yet, as the evidence at trial showed, he repeatedly chose to violate that very principle for his own financial benefit,” said Kelly Hayes, U.S. attorney for the District of Maryland, in the statement.

A high-stakes poker plsayer, Goldstein carried out the scheme by concealing millions of dollars in wins and losses from the government. He also diverted legal fees that were payable to his law firm to his personal bank account to cover poker-related debts, prosecutors said. He also directed people to pay creditors instead of sending payments directly to him and used the law firm’s assets to pay off poker debts

While underpaying his taxes, he spent millions on luxury items, poker and travel, prosecutors said.

Goldstein also submitted false mortgage applications in 2021 to two mortgage lending companies while seeking financing to purchase a $2.6 million home in Washington, D.C., prosecutors said.

He omitted millions of dollars in liabilities in those mortgage applications, which required him to list all of his liabilities and debts. The omissions included more than $14 million he owed at the time on two promissory notes and taxes he owed the IRS. The false statements to one of the mortgage lenders helped him obtain a $1.98 million loan, prosecutors said.

Goldstein’s attorneys were could not immediately be reached for comment Monday afternoon.