By day, Thomas C. Goldstein was in high demand for his legal acumen, representing a Who’s Who of famous and deep-pocketed clients before the Supreme Court, as varied as Al Gore and Google.
By night, Mr. Goldstein, who is also a founder of the popular SCOTUSblog website, began moonlighting as an “ultrahigh-stakes poker player,” yielding him millions of dollars in winnings that a federal jury determined on Wednesday he had not paid taxes on.
On the third day of deliberations in his tax evasion and mortgage fraud trial, one that stupefied the legal world and featured testimony from the “Spider-Man” actor Tobey Maguire, a poker player himself, a jury convicted Mr. Goldstein on 12 of 16 criminal counts in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt, Md.
Mr. Goldstein, 55, of Chevy Chase, Md., who gave up his law practice in 2023, is awaiting sentencing on the charges, which carry the possibility of dozens of years in prison.
“Mr. Goldstein is a sophisticated attorney who concealed millions of dollars in income, manipulated his law firm’s books and deceived lenders — all to fund his gambling and lifestyle,” A. Tysen Duva, an assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, said in a statement on Thursday.
It was not clear if Mr. Goldstein, who testified in his own defense and maintained his innocence, would appeal the verdict.
A lawyer for Mr. Goldstein did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.
In a 50-page indictment filed in January 2025, federal prosecutors said Mr. Goldstein had won more than $50 million playing poker in 2016 but had used an elaborate scheme to hide his income — and his gambling debts — from the federal government over a period that continued until 2023.
Investigators said Mr. Goldstein diverted legal fees from his law firm to his personal bank account to help pay off his gambling debts.
While speaking to The New York Times Magazine for a December 2025 profile, Mr. Goldstein acknowledged that funds from his law firm had been used on occasion to cover his personal expenses, including gambling debts. But he argued that the payments were errors made by his office manager or his accountant.
Federal prosecutors also said Mr. Goldstein had directed people who owed him money to send payments to his creditors instead.
Among them was Mr. Maguire, the actor, who testified in January that he had enlisted Mr. Goldstein in 2020 to help him collect a $7.8 million gambling debt owed to Mr. Maguire by a Texas billionaire, Bloomberg Law reported.
But instead of paying a $500,000 fee directly to Mr. Goldstein, Mr. Maguire, who was not accused of wrongdoing, recalled that Mr. Goldstein had him wire the money to a real estate mogul. It was to help cover one of Mr. Goldstein’s gambling debts.
Mr. Goldstein’s debts from his double life of overseas poker trips and luxurious trappings were so extensive, according to federal prosecutors, that he fudged his liabilities on two mortgage applications that he made for a $2.6 million home purchase in 2021 in Washington. He eventually obtained a loan for $1.98 million, committing what the federal authorities said was mortgage fraud.
During the case, the Justice Department said Mr. Goldstein had been involved in or had pursued intimate relationships with at least a dozen women from 2016 to 2022 to whom he transferred hundreds of thousands of dollars while owing taxes.
Four of the women were hired by his law firm, even though they did little to no work, federal prosecutors said.
Mr. Goldstein’s legal travails presented a stunning blow to his once-sterling legal career, one that frequently put him in the spotlight of the Supreme Court and was propelled by the kind of résumé-building case top litigators dream of.
It was the year 2000. The case? Bush v. Gore, one in which the court ruled that the battleground state of Florida was not required to complete a recount in the presidential election despite a dispute over punch marks in paper ballots. The court sided with lawyers for George W. Bush, the Republican governor of Texas, who won Florida and the presidency.
Mr. Goldstein was one of the lawyers representing Al Gore, the Democratic vice president, his name appearing on a respondents’ brief in the landmark election case.
In another high-profile case, Mr. Goldstein represented Google in a 2020 copyright infringement dispute against the technology company Oracle over the use of Oracle’s computer code in Google’s Android operating system smartphones. He successfully argued that Google had made “fair use” of the platform, saving the company potentially billions of dollars in damages.
In a world where every argument and brief is dissected, Mr. Goldstein also achieved acclaim with the website that he co-founded, SCOTUSblog, which is known for its comprehensive coverage of the nation’s highest court.
When the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act in 2012, preserving President Barack Obama’s signature health care overhaul, as many as one million people followed the website’s live blog.
Neil Vigdor covers breaking news for The Times, with a focus on politics.
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