SCOTUSBlog Publisher Indicted for Tax Evasion, Accused of Misusing Funds to Cover Gambling Debts
AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File
Tom Goldstein, the publisher of the popular Supreme Court news site SCOTUSblog and veteran practitioner before the nation’s highest court himself, was indicted Thursday for tax evasion related to a stunning series of alleged schemes to use funds from his law firm to cover millions of dollars of gambling debts, Law360 reported.
Goldstein’s biography on the SCOTUSblog website says that he earned his undergraduate degree from UNC Chapel Hill and his law degree from American University’s Washington College of Law, as well as receiving an Honorary Doctorate from that institution.
His practice included arguing more than 40 cases at the Supreme Court, including a landmark copyright case, Google v. Oracle. Goldstein retired from appellate practice in 2023 from the law firm he founded, Goldstein & Russell; the firm subsequently rebranded as Goldstein, Russell & Woofter, with partners Kevin Russell and Daniel Woofter in charge.
The criminal charges relate to alleged actions before Goldstein’s retirement, taking place between 2016 and 2022, describing the attorney as an “ultrahigh-stakes poker player” who bet on games with “stakes totaling millions, and even tens of millions of dollars,” reported Law360’s Phillip Bantz. The indictment was filed in Maryland federal court, due to Goldstein’s law firm being located in Bethesda, and accuses him of conducting a scheme to “evade the assessment of taxes, file false tax returns and fail to pay his tax obligations when they were due.”
As the sole owner at the time of the law firm, Goldstein “allegedly used millions of dollars in funds” from the firm “to cover gambling debts and other personal debts and falsely understated his gambling winnings by millions of dollars in tax filings, according to the indictment,” wrote Bantz, adding additional scandalous accusations against the lawyer:
He also is accused of entering into sham employment arrangements with four women who he was in “intimate personal relationships with” or was pursuing. Goldstein allegedly listed the women as “employees” of his law firm, paid them hundreds of thousands of dollars and set them up with health insurance policies through the firm, while they “performed little or no work for the firm.”
The indictment says that Goldstein allegedly owes “substantial amounts of money to the IRS.”
Goldstein’s previous law firm has already rebranded again to Russell & Woofter LLC on its website, removing most mentions of Goldstein. Court filings and blog posts on the firm website show it was using the name “Goldstein, Russell & Woofter LLC” through 2024.
Law360 updated its original article “to clarify the number of women with whom Goldstein is accused of entering sham employment relationships,” and this article has also been updated accordingly.
UPDATE 5:45 pm ET: Trial counsel for Mr. Goldstein, John Lauro of Lauro & Singer and Christopher Kise of Continental, reached out to Mediaite with the following statement:
Mr. Goldstein is 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. Our client intends to vigorously contest these charges and we expect he will be exonerated at trial.
The indictment can be read below:
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