Tom Goldstein, publisher of a blog about the Supreme Court, was indicted Thursday in a multimillion-dollar scheme to evade federal income taxes and use money from his law firm to cover gambling debts from high-stakes poker games. Goldstein, 54, of SCOTUSblog, who has argued 44 cases before the high court, took part in poker games in Beverly Hills, Asia and elsewhere involving millions of dollars, hid winnings, concealed losses and misrepresented expenses, said the 22-count indictment filed in Maryland federal court, reports the Associated Press. Prosecutors said Goldstein submitted false applications to two lenders when seeking a mortgage for a $2.6 million house in Washington, D.C., omitting from one more than $14 million he owed at the time. He allegedly had his firm pay salaries and health insurance premiums for women with whom he had personal relationships, but who did little or no work for the firm.
The allegations span seven years, from 2016 to 2022, a period in which Goldstein was regularly appearing in front of the high court. In 2016, Goldstein understated his gambling winnings by $3.9 million, the indictment said. Two years later, he returned from Macau to a Washington-area airport with nearly $1 million in cash in a duffel bag. Although he acknowledged to a customs officer that the cash represented gambling winnings, he failed to report the money on his tax return for that year, the indictment said. John Lauro and Christopher Kise, lawyers for Goldstein, called him "a prominent attorney with an impeccable reputation and said, "We are deeply disappointed that the government brought these charges in a rush to judgment without understanding all of the important facts." The blog’s website says Goldstein retired from appellate advocacy in 2023. He has taught Supreme Court advocacy at Harvard’s and Stanford’s law schools.
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