You know that old saying about how the house always wins? Well, it turns out the IRS does too.
Thomas Goldstein, a 56 year old Washington attorney who argued over 40 cases before the highest court in the land, got slapped with handcuffs in a Maryland courtroom on Friday. As Conservative Brief reported, a federal judge handed him six years behind bars for tax evasion and financial fraud tied to a secret high stakes poker habit. Nothing says "officer of the court" quite like hiding millions from Uncle Sam while playing cards for a living.
Goldstein, a Democrat and co-founder of the popular legal news outlet SCOTUSblog, stood before U.S. District Judge Lydia Griggsby in Greenbelt, Maryland, and basically asked if he could pretty please just stay home and promise to be good. His lawyers pitched supervised release so he could "repay his debts, address his gambling addiction and contribute to society." Griggsby was not having it.
"Every American understands that they have an obligation to pay taxes," the judge told the courtroom before dropping this gem: "I don't think this is a close case." Prosecutors wanted more than eight years. The defense wanted zero years. The judge landed on six, which is the judicial equivalent of saying "you're both wrong."
Here's where the numbers get absolutely wild. Prosecutors alleged that Goldstein hid over $25 million in income between 2016 and 2023, leaving more than $9.5 million in federal taxes unpaid. That's not forgetting to report a few poker nights with the boys. That's a whole second career worth of hidden cash.
After a six week trial, a jury convicted him in February on 12 out of 16 charges, including eight felony counts covering tax evasion, bogus tax returns, and mortgage fraud. The judge ordered him surrendered immediately because she considered him a flight risk. Apparently being brilliant enough to argue before the Supreme Court also makes you smart enough to potentially disappear.
Goldstein was also ordered to pay $3.1 million in restitution and serve five years of supervised release after prison. Prosecutors summed up his motivation with zero subtlety: "His motivation was singular: pure, unrelenting greed."
Before all this unpleasantness, Goldstein was considered one of America's premier appellate attorneys. His firm, Goldstein and Russell, was a big deal in Washington legal circles. He even served on Al Gore's legal team during the disputed 2000 presidential election. So yeah, this guy had quite the resume before he decided to become a professional poker player on the side without telling the government.
His defense team tried the addiction angle, arguing this was about compulsion rather than calculation. They acknowledged he "spent many years gambling with money he didn't have, and gambling away money that he won." Judge Griggsby called him "brilliant by all accounts" but said she was disappointed, adding that brilliance doesn't give you a free pass on fraud.
Turns out you can win 40 cases at the Supreme Court and still lose the biggest one of your life.
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