Justice Department Wants 97-Month Prison Sentence for Poker-Playing SCOTUS Lawyer
Thomas Goldstein (Credit: Peabody Awards via Wikimedia)
Former Supreme Court lawyer Thomas Goldstein faces up to eight years in prison after being found guilty of hiding tens of millions of dollars in income from the IRS, which included winnings from high-stakes poker. Goldstein’s defense team tried unsuccessfully to characterize the discrepancies as careless bookkeeping rather than intentional evasion.
The Justice Department urged U.S. District Judge Lydia Kay Griggsby to impose a 97-month sentence in an 84-page sentencing memorandum on June 2. That would place the punishment at the top of the federal guidelines range.
A jury convicted Thomas Goldstein in February of nine federal tax crimes and three counts of mortgage fraud. The government calculated that he hid more than $25 million in gambling and legal income between 2016 and 2023, costing the federal government over $9.5 million in unpaid taxes and more than $16 million when including penalties and interest.
Goldstein’s High Stakes Poker Career
Goldstein was a serious high-stakes poker player, often playing ultrawealthy opponents in heads-up matches. The most important year, for the case at least, was 2016. That year, he won $50 million in heads-up matches against three opponents, including private equity billionaire Alec Gores. Investors and staking partners had financed Goldstein in the matches.
He kept the records of his poker winnings away from his accountant, only sending rounded total figures without a breakdown of the calculations. This was despite Goldstein keeping an accurate poker ledger in an encrypted ProtonMail account, which proved crucial to the case against him.
Prosecutors argued that the lengths to which the 55-year-old went to hide the activity warranted a two-level sentencing enhancement. They pointed toward offshore accounts, his use of a VPN to access the Binance cryptocurrency exchange, and his diversion of legal fees directly to creditors so they never appeared in his firm’s books.
His tax issues continued into 2026, as less than two months after a jury convicted Goldstein of nine federal tax crimes, he claimed in his 2025 income tax return that he had already paid all of the $1.25 million in taxes he owed for that period, when in fact he only paid $13,500. Prosecutors said that this filing was “utterly false.”
An Impressive Track Record
Goldstein had a very distinguished appellate career, and lawyers often turned to his firm, Goldstein & Russell, P.C., for Supreme Court work. He argued about 125 merits cases before the court, a total that only three private practitioners have surpassed in modern history.
Prosecutors claimed that his legal training gave him a full understanding of the laws he was breaking and the risks he was taking. When an IRS Revenue Officer cold-called at his house in 2018, his first question was whether she was a criminal tax investigator. She testified that no taxpayer had asked her that question before.
The government quoted a Seventh Circuit ruling when writing: “Criminals who have the education and training that enables people to make a decent living without resorting to crime are more rather than less culpable.” The government is now requesting eight years and one month in federal prison for Goldstein, along with $3.1 million in restitution covering tax, penalties and interest on the specific conviction years. The sentencing hearing is set for June 16, 2026.
Image Credit: Peabody Awards via Wikimedia Commons (license)
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