The saga of former Supreme Court litigator Tom Goldstein concluded on Friday in Greenbelt, Maryland. Mr. Goldstein was sentenced to six years at ClubFed and must make restitution of $3,103,427. His bond was revoked at sentencing, and he was taken into custody.
The saga, beginning with his indictment in January 2025 to his sentencing last week, reads more like the plot of a novel than true life. Mr. Goldstein enjoyed poker. As a poker player myself, there’s nothing wrong with that. However, he played at slightly larger stakes than I do…well, far, far, far larger stakes. He won and lost millions in a session (while I might win or lose a few hundred dollars in the largest games I play).
Still, there’s nothing illegal about that. However, there’s a lot illegal about not putting your gambling wins and losses on your tax returns. There’s a lot illegal about paying for your losses as a business expense from your law firm and calling those a business expense. And it remains illegal to lie on a mortgage application.
The DOJ news release has a good summary of his actions:
Between 2016 and 2024, Goldstein repeatedly chose not to pay taxes on time, as required by law. He also assisted in the preparation of false tax returns for himself and his law firm, and he engaged in a scheme to evade taxes for 2016. Goldstein carried out the scheme by hiding millions of dollars in poker winning from the government and his accountants, diverting legal fees to his personal bank account to satisfy poker-related debts, directing people to pay his creditors instead of sending payments directly to him, channeling gambling winnings through foreign bank accounts and causing personal payments for poker debts to be falsely classified as “legal-fee” expenses on the firm’s books and records. As a result, Goldstein underreported his income and did not pay much of the taxes that he owed, while spending millions on personal expenses such as poker, travel, and luxury goods.
And that doesn’t include the mortgage fraud.
As I’ve said time and time again, it’s far, far easier to simply pay your taxes than to engage in this kind of conduct. Human nature being what it is, I expect to write about conduct like this for years and years to come.
