Tom Goldstein, an attorney with extensive knowledge of U.S. Supreme Court cases and the publisher of a well-recognized blog that covers legal matters from the highest court in the country, has been indicted on numerous allegations of tax evasion.
On Thursday, a federal grand jury in Maryland charged SCOTUSblog publisher Tom Goldstein with filing fraudulent tax returns, failure to pay taxes owed to the government, making false statements and a number of other offenses.
Goldstein is accused of misappropriating funds from his law firm, Goldstein & Russell PC, to cover gambling debts. He is also accused of misclassifying at least four women as employees of his law firm; the grand jury said they were actually his personal love interests.
The various ruses allegedly took place between 2016 and March 2023, according to the indictment. During that time, Goldstein was said to be an “ultra high-stakes poker player,” who participated in matches and tournaments with stakes “totaling millions, and even tens of millions, of dollars.”
In some cases, Goldstein convinced other poker players to “buy a piece” of his participation in those matches and tournaments, the indictment said. The arrangements involved other poker players agreeing to cover certain buy-ins, while receiving a percentage of Goldstein’s winnings. In one case, Goldstein borrowed $10 million from a California-based businessman in order to effectuate his gambling habits.
Those arrangements are not crimes, but what supposedly happened afterward were. According to the indictment, Goldstein lost most of what he borrowed between 2014 and 2016. He sought to amend certain promissory notes over time, and he slowly paid down some of his debt using funds in a personal bank account that was under his exclusive control. He also allegedly siphoned more than $1.1 million from bank accounts associated with his law firm, the indictment said, and then filed tax returns associated with his personal and business finances that contained false information.
Some of those tax returns exaggerated the amount Goldstein lost due to his gambling habits. The IRS took note, and two years later, a revenue officer with the agency tried to collect on Goldstein’s unpaid taxes. According to the indictment, Goldstein told the office that his unpaid taxes were “attributable to a legal case resulting in a large payment to Goldstein,” but the IRS eventually determined it was due to his gambling income.
In one situation, Goldstein allegedly covered $250,000 in personal gambling debts by siphoning off legal fees that were owed to another law firm. He allegedly did the same thing with $175,000 in legal fees that were owed to a second law firm that he worked with on a case, the indictment says.
Throughout the scheme, Goldstein misstated how much he won and lost through his gambling, and filed false tax returns to that effect. Meanwhile, he continued to pay off his gambling debts by moving money away from his law firm and diverting legal fees owed to other law firms — allegedly.
Goldstein is also accused of defrauding health insurance companies by improperly listing four women as employees of his firm, even though they did “little or no work for the firm and therefore did not qualify for health insurance” under the terms of his firm’s health care policy. The women were actually people engaged in personal relationships with Goldstein at the time, the indictment says. The alleged matter was apparently separate from Goldstein’s gambling and tax-related issues, but were crimes nonetheless.
All told, Goldstein was indicted on 22 criminal charges, some of which are felonies. If convicted, he faces decades in prison, according to a U.S. Department of Justice press release, but any actual amount of time spent in custody will depend on a number of factors, including his willingness to accept responsibility and any prior criminal record.
Goldstein has retained trial attorneys John Lauro and Christopher Kise to represent him in the tax case. The two issued a statement on Thursday praising Goldstein for being “a prominent attorney with an impeccable reputation.”
“We are deeply disappointed that the government brought these charges in a rush to judgment without understanding all of the important facts,” Lauro and Kise told The Desk by e-mail. “Our client intends to vigorously contest these charges, and we expect he will be exonerated at trial.”
Goldstein left his law firm in March 2023. At the time, Goldstein attributed his retirement to the “evolving character” of the Supreme Court, according to an email sent to financial news outlet Reuters.
“I have lots of business clients with cases that aren’t ideological,” he wrote at the time. “But in the important civil rights and social cases, the court’s conservative super-majority makes it very difficult for the little guy to win.”
Goldstein said he intended to pursue “business opportunities” because he was “an entrepreneur at heart,” Reuters reported.
Still, he continued to practice law, and represented the makers of the popular game Fortnite in their civil antitrust lawsuit against Google and Apple, which involved how the tech companies control the distribution and installation of apps on their smartphones, tablets and other devices.
Goldstein also continued to be involved with SCOTUSBlog, the legal affairs publication he co-founded with litigator Amy Howe in 2022. Until recently, the blog received financial support from Bloomberg. Goldstein and Howe are still listed among the website’s editorial staff.
