Call Me Commander: My Washington Times 'On Crime' Column On Conman Who Ran Fraudulent Navy Veterans' Charity

 The Washington Times ran my On Crime column on Call Me Commander. 

As a Navy veteran, I was interested in Commander Bobby Thompson, a crook who operated a fraudulent Navy veterans’ charity. His crime story is covered in Jeff Testerman and Daniel Freed’s most interesting book, “Call Me Commander: A Former Intelligence Officer and the Journalists Who Uncovered His Scheme to Fleece America.”

 

I reached out to co-author Jeff Testerman and asked him about Bobby Thompson.

 

“Bobby Thompson is the identity stolen by John Donald Cody as he relocated to Tampa in 1997 and set up the elaborate hoax known as the United States Navy Veterans Association. For the next decade, Cody called himself “Commander Bobby Thompson,” and claimed he was the director of the 66,000-member veterans’ charity which used telemarketing companies to bring in tens of millions of dollars from unsuspecting donors,” Jeff Testerman replied. 

 

“Cody succeeded in his scam for years, in part, because he was highly educated, trained in military and intelligence matters and adept in the art of persuasion. Cody joined the ROTC at the University of Virginia, where he was a star on the debating team. He then earned a law degree at Harvard and was promoted to captain in the U.S. Army Intelligence corps. He also had connections to the CIA before launching a successful law practice in Sierra Vista, Arizona, where he is remembered as the smartest guy in town. Cody believed he could persuade anyone of anything, and most of the time, he was right.”

 

Cody ingratiated himself with politicians from the local mayor to the president of the United States with hefty campaign contributions and promises of support from his supposedly huge veterans’ membership. 

 

“He filed dozens and dozens of tax returns for his charity and its state chapters, all falsified, but sufficient to pass muster from an overworked and undermanned IRS,” Mr. Testerman explained. “And, if anyone had questions about the history, membership or good works of the Commander’s charity, all they had to do was dial up his website, an intricate 2,500-page site that included just enough truth to keep hesitant donors or skeptical regulators guessing.”

 

Jeff Testerman was working on a St. Petersburg Times story about a Tampa city councilman who claimed to have an exemplary Navy career but served only for five weeks. He discovered the councilman had received a $500 contribution from a group that he had never heard of. 

 

“I thought I would seek out an official of this veteran’s group and seek a quote or two about donating to a politician who had lied about his Navy career. Lo and behold, a director of the charity, Commander Bobby Thompson, lived a 15-minute drive from the newspaper office,” Mr. Testerman said. 

 

“I drove out to see him. And here is where a newspaperman’s instinct kicked in. Nothing seemed right. Thompson was living in a dilapidated duplex. He had had a couple of beers by 10 in the morning when I showed up. And he was downright hostile to the sudden appearance of a man he knew from reading the papers was an investigative reporter.” 

 

After months of research, the newspaper published a series on the dubious charity and Thompson disappeared.

 

You can read the rest of the column via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/may/4/book-review-call-me-commander/  

FBI: The Case of the Corrupt Coin Dealer

The FBI website released the below story:

Financial fraud comes in all shapes and sizes. And while corporate criminals, inside traders, and Ponzi schemers often cause their victims to lose millions of dollars, the case of the crooked coin dealer from New York illustrates that even relatively small-time fraudsters must answer for their crimes.

Chrysanthos Nicholas, a 55-year-old rare coin and precious metals dealer, will be spending the next 27 months in federal prison for stealing more than $260,000 from some of his elderly customers.

Nicholas had been a coin dealer for a number of years and had developed relationships with collectors around the country. He persuaded three elderly clients—all well into their 80s—to send him coins with the promise that he would value them, hold them, and sell them for the clients on their request.

“Such arrangements are not uncommon in the coin collector world,” said Special Agent Shane Ball, who investigated the case from the FBI’s Minneapolis Division. But after the dealer had received coin collections from the men, “he promptly stopped returning their calls,” Ball said. “He completely dropped off the radar.”

In one case, according to court documents, Nicholas entered into a contract with a client in rural Minnesota to evaluate, store and sell the client’s coins. In 2010, at Nicholas’ direction, the client mailed his coins—valued at more than $130,000—to Nicholas in Southold, New York.

Later, after Nicholas stopped answering or returning the client’s calls, the victim went to his local sheriff’s office and made a complaint. Because the coin dealer lived outside of Minnesota, the sheriff’s deputy called the FBI for assistance. Ball, a 20-year veteran of the Bureau, explained that agents regularly offer assistance to local law enforcement in these types of matters that cross state lines.

Ball, in turn, requested assistance from the FBI’s New York Field Office, and Special Agent Zacharia Baldwin was dispatched to interview Nicholas.

“My belief is that Nicholas picked these particular victims because they were elderly and he thought he could get away with it,” Ball said. For their part, the victims had all done business with Nicholas in the past with no problems. “They had every reason to suspect that this was another business deal that would go well,” Ball added. “But Nicholas used the trust he had built up over the years to steal from them.”

Meanwhile, Nicholas sold the coins and used the money for his personal benefit. When he was charged with mail fraud in July 2014, nothing remained of his victims’ collections. At his sentencing last month, a federal judge ordered Nicholas to pay nearly $250,000 in restitution to his victims after he completes his jail term.

Although the money Nicholas stole from his clients is small compared to some financial frauds, Ball is quick to point out that it represented a great deal to the victims—it was one man’s life savings. “Our goal is always to seek justice for victims,” he said, “whether they are corporate shareholders or individuals from small-town America.”

Mister X: U.S. Marshals Arrest Suspect In Navy Charity Scheme

ABC News reports on the arrest of the alleged con artist who is suspected of ripping off veterans through charity schemes.

Authorities revealed today that they believe "Bobby Thompson," the man accused of using a fake veterans charity to swindle more than $100 million and to rub shoulders with top-level Republicans, is actually a former military intelligence officer named John Donald Cody.

Officials said Cody has been on an FBI watch list for 25 years after being accused of various frauds and was wanted for questioning related to an espionage investigation.

U.S. Marshal Peter Elliott told reporters that he discovered Cody while searching through old FBI Wanted posters. He said details about the two identities kept matching up, from his unusual hairstyle, his history in the state of Arizona, and his knowledge of the law. Cody, Elliot said, had graduated from Harvard Law School.

The Marshal said Cody spent years evading arrest before he assumed the Thompson persona.

You can read the story and watch the news report via the below link:

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/feds-notorious-alleged-con-man-bobby-thompson-military/story?id=17365035