Washington
Supreme Court blog publisher indicted on tax evasion charges
WASHINGTON (AP) — The publisher of a prominent blog about the Supreme Court was indicted Thursday in a multimillion-dollar scheme to evade federal income taxes and use money from his law firm to cover gambling debts from high-stakes poker games.
SCOTUSblog publisher Tom Goldstein, who also has argued 44 cases before the high court, took part in poker games in Beverly Hills, Asia and elsewhere involving millions of dollars, hid winnings, concealed losses and misrepresented expenses, according to the 22-count indictment filed in federal court in Maryland.
Prosecutors said Goldstein, 54, also submitted false applications to two lenders when seeking a mortgage for a $2.6 million house in Washington, omitting from one more than $14 million he owed at the time. He also had his firm pay salaries and health insurance premiums for women with whom he had personal relationships, but who did little or no work for the firm, according to the indictment.
The allegations in the indictment span seven years, from 2016 to 2022, a period in which Goldstein was regularly appearing in front of the nation’s highest court.
In 2016, for example, Goldstein understated his gambling winnings by $3.9 million, the indictment said.
Two years later, he returned from Macau to a Washington-area airport with nearly $1 million in cash in a duffel bag. Although he acknowledged to a customs officer that the cash represented gambling winnings, he failed to report the money on his tax return for that year, the indictment said.
In 2020 and 2021, he denied on his tax filings making any trades in cryptocurrency, despite more than $10 million in such transactions, according to the indictment.
John Lauro and Christopher Kise, lawyers for Goldstein, released a statement Thursday night saying: “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.”
A biography on the blog’s website notes that Goldstein retired from appellate advocacy in 2023. He has taught Supreme Court advocacy at Harvard’s and Stanford’s law schools.
Georgia
Sealy Mattress company is sued after man was found dead inside a locked trailer
ATLANTA (AP) — A Georgia man suffering a mental health crisis wandered onto a Sealy Mattress facility, and his body was found locked inside the back of a truck there about a week later, his family says in a wrongful death lawsuit filed this week.
Relatives had been frantically searching for 38-year-old Joshua Armour late into the night after he disappeared in October. Location data from his phone showed that he was somewhere on the property in Conyers, Georgia, southeast of Atlanta.
After the family told a supervisor at Sealy that Armour appeared to be there, employees were instructed to close and lock all of the trailers out of concern that someone was on the property, the lawsuit states. Armour’s brother and sister say they were told to leave and were not allowed to search the area.
Once the trailers were locked, they could not be opened from the inside, and “Sealy did absolutely nothing to locate or protect Joshua,” the lawsuit says.
Representatives of the company did not immediately respond to requests for comment Friday.
The company had enough information to save Joshua’s life, the lawsuit states.
“Tragically, Sealy chose to act only to protect its own property, while consciously choosing to disregard the life of Joshua and the pleas of his family.”
A news conference announcing the lawsuit was scheduled for Friday. The family of Armour, who had two children, is requesting a jury trial.
Defendants in the suit include the Sealy Mattress Manufacturing Co. LLC; Tempur-Pedic North America LLC; and Tempur Sealy International Inc. The family is represented by the Atlanta law firm Sinton Scott Minock & Kerew; and Kenneth S. Nugent P.C.
Colorado
FTC sues property manager it says used hidden fees to swindle renters out of millions
DENVER (AP) — U.S. property management company Greystar swindled renters across the country out of hundreds of millions using deceptive advertising and hidden fees, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and Colorado.
The lawsuit arrive as renters gasp for air in America’s squeezed housing market and federal officials move to intervene. The Biden administration last week accused several major landlords and property managers, including Greystar, of scheming together to keep rents high in a sweeping lawsuit.
For years, rents have inexorably climbed, leaving half of U.S. renters — some 21 million households — spending more than a third of their income on the monthly bill. Within that group are people who are postponing doctor appointments to the pay their energy bills, removing groceries from the bag at the cash register or asking friends for a small loan.
Greystar, which the FTC said manages some 800,000 rental units across the country, posted an unsigned statement on it’s website in response to the lawsuit.
“The FTC has opted for headline-grabbing litigation in the waning days of the current administration,” the statement reads. “The complaint is based on gross misrepresentations of the facts and fundamentally flawed legal theories.”
The lawsuit accuses Greystar of not revealing fees — such as trash or package delivery services — on websites where the apartments they managed were advertised, such as Zillow, even when those rental marketplaces had sections to list those types of fees.
Many people applying to the rental properties, the lawsuit said, couldn’t learn of the fees until they filled out inquiry forms or clicked through small-print hyperlinks. In several cases, the FTC alleges that Greystar didn’t reveal the fees until applicants paid the application fee, and that the extra chargers were buried in lease agreements reaching 60-pages long.
Greystar, in their statement, said: “No resident at a Greystar-managed community pays a fee they have not seen and agreed to in their lease.”
The five members of the bipartisan commission unanimously voted to file the lawsuit, which accuses the management company of violating the FTC ACT as well as the Colorado Consumer Protection Act, according to a press release from the agency.
“To the extent that other corporate landlords are not advertising their all-in pricing and are engaging in similar tactics, they are on notice that such conduct is illegal,” Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said in a statement.
Georgia
DOJ sues county, saying elections violate rights of Black voters
SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — The U.S. Justice Department sued a Georgia county Thursday, alleging that its method of electing county commissioners discriminates against Black voters.
Houston County, home to 163,000 people south of Macon, uses countywide elections to fill each of its five commission seats.
The civil lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court says those at-large elections violate the Voting Rights Act by unfairly diluting the influence of Black voters, who make up nearly one-third of the Houston County’s electorate.
“White voters cast their ballots sufficiently as a bloc to defeat Black voters’ preferred candidate” in countywide elections for Houston County commissioner, the lawsuit said.
The Justice Department said Houston County has elected just one Black commissioner since the end of the Civil War. All of the current commissioners are white, including Chairman Dan Perdue. His father is Sonny Perdue, the former Georgia governor and U.S. agriculture secretary who now oversees Georgia’s public universities.
Black candidates would have a fairer chance of winning if the county was divided into districts, with each district electing its own commissioner, the Justice Department said.
The department wants a judge to prohibit Houston County from conducting further countywide elections for commission seats and order officials to choose a new, fairer system for electing commissioners.
Though largely rural, Houston County is home to Robins Air Force Base, Georgia’s largest industrial complex with a workforce of 22,000 military service members, civilians and contractors.
Commissioners said in a statement Thursday they are investigating the Justice Department’s allegations. They pledged that county officials “will always follow the law.”
“If we agree with DOJ regarding a possible violation of the Voting Rights Act after reviewing all of the documents and evidence, we will take appropriate action at that time,” the commissioners said.
Georgia
Bo Jackson gives up $21M judgment in extortion suit
MARIETTA, Ga. (AP) — Former professional football and baseball player Bo Jackson is giving up a $21 million judgment against his niece and nephew, whom he said harassed and tried to extort money from him.
A judge in February ruled in Jackson’s favor in the suit he had filed in April 2023 against Thomas Lee Anderson and Erica M. Anderson, also known as Erica Anderson Ross. Jackson, a running back who won the Heisman Trophy at Auburn and also played in both the NFL and MLB, Jackson had alleged in his lawsuit that his relatives tried to extort $20 million from him through harassment and intimidation.
In addition to the monetary award, last year’s ruling included a permanent protective order barring his niece and nephew from bothering or contacting him and his immediate family. It also said they must stay at least 500 yards (meters) from the Jacksons and remove social media posts about them.
Cobb County Superior Court Judge Jason D. Marbutt said in his February order that neither Jackson’s niece and nephew nor their attorneys rebutted Jackson’s claims or participated in the case after a May 2023 hearing, when they consented to a temporary protective order. The judge found the Andersons to be in default, accepting as true all of Jackson’s allegations.
After that ruling was issued, a new lawyer for the Andersons filed a motion in March to set aside that judgment and to dismiss the lawsuit, according to court filings. In a filing Tuesday, Jackson and the Andersons jointly asked the judge to throw out February’s order, withdraw the Andersons’ pending motions and enter a consent judgment.
“In the meantime, the Parties have conducted two mediations and have reached a private agreement resolving this dispute,” the filing says.
Marbutt on Wednesday issued an order vacating his February ruling at the request of Jackson and his niece and nephew.
That consent judgment finds in Jackson’s favor on several counts and dismisses others, awards no damages either to Jackson or his niece and nephew and says the parties shall pay their own attorneys’ fees. It also says the Andersons must not harass or intimidate Jackson and his wife and children and stay 500 yards (meters) away from them, except in certain circumstances, including court appearances, sporting events and family functions. The Andersons are also not to have any contact with Jackson and his wife and children.
Jackson, 62, had alleged that the harassment began in 2022 and included threatening social media posts and messages, public allegations that put him in a false light. He also alleged that public disclosure of private information was intended to cause him severe emotional distress. With the help of an attorney, the Andersons demanded $20 million to stop. He said he feared for his own safety and that of his family.
Supreme Court blog publisher indicted on tax evasion charges
WASHINGTON (AP) — The publisher of a prominent blog about the Supreme Court was indicted Thursday in a multimillion-dollar scheme to evade federal income taxes and use money from his law firm to cover gambling debts from high-stakes poker games.
SCOTUSblog publisher Tom Goldstein, who also has argued 44 cases before the high court, took part in poker games in Beverly Hills, Asia and elsewhere involving millions of dollars, hid winnings, concealed losses and misrepresented expenses, according to the 22-count indictment filed in federal court in Maryland.
Prosecutors said Goldstein, 54, also submitted false applications to two lenders when seeking a mortgage for a $2.6 million house in Washington, omitting from one more than $14 million he owed at the time. He also had his firm pay salaries and health insurance premiums for women with whom he had personal relationships, but who did little or no work for the firm, according to the indictment.
The allegations in the indictment span seven years, from 2016 to 2022, a period in which Goldstein was regularly appearing in front of the nation’s highest court.
In 2016, for example, Goldstein understated his gambling winnings by $3.9 million, the indictment said.
Two years later, he returned from Macau to a Washington-area airport with nearly $1 million in cash in a duffel bag. Although he acknowledged to a customs officer that the cash represented gambling winnings, he failed to report the money on his tax return for that year, the indictment said.
In 2020 and 2021, he denied on his tax filings making any trades in cryptocurrency, despite more than $10 million in such transactions, according to the indictment.
John Lauro and Christopher Kise, lawyers for Goldstein, released a statement Thursday night saying: “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.”
A biography on the blog’s website notes that Goldstein retired from appellate advocacy in 2023. He has taught Supreme Court advocacy at Harvard’s and Stanford’s law schools.
Georgia
Sealy Mattress company is sued after man was found dead inside a locked trailer
ATLANTA (AP) — A Georgia man suffering a mental health crisis wandered onto a Sealy Mattress facility, and his body was found locked inside the back of a truck there about a week later, his family says in a wrongful death lawsuit filed this week.
Relatives had been frantically searching for 38-year-old Joshua Armour late into the night after he disappeared in October. Location data from his phone showed that he was somewhere on the property in Conyers, Georgia, southeast of Atlanta.
After the family told a supervisor at Sealy that Armour appeared to be there, employees were instructed to close and lock all of the trailers out of concern that someone was on the property, the lawsuit states. Armour’s brother and sister say they were told to leave and were not allowed to search the area.
Once the trailers were locked, they could not be opened from the inside, and “Sealy did absolutely nothing to locate or protect Joshua,” the lawsuit says.
Representatives of the company did not immediately respond to requests for comment Friday.
The company had enough information to save Joshua’s life, the lawsuit states.
“Tragically, Sealy chose to act only to protect its own property, while consciously choosing to disregard the life of Joshua and the pleas of his family.”
A news conference announcing the lawsuit was scheduled for Friday. The family of Armour, who had two children, is requesting a jury trial.
Defendants in the suit include the Sealy Mattress Manufacturing Co. LLC; Tempur-Pedic North America LLC; and Tempur Sealy International Inc. The family is represented by the Atlanta law firm Sinton Scott Minock & Kerew; and Kenneth S. Nugent P.C.
Colorado
FTC sues property manager it says used hidden fees to swindle renters out of millions
DENVER (AP) — U.S. property management company Greystar swindled renters across the country out of hundreds of millions using deceptive advertising and hidden fees, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and Colorado.
The lawsuit arrive as renters gasp for air in America’s squeezed housing market and federal officials move to intervene. The Biden administration last week accused several major landlords and property managers, including Greystar, of scheming together to keep rents high in a sweeping lawsuit.
For years, rents have inexorably climbed, leaving half of U.S. renters — some 21 million households — spending more than a third of their income on the monthly bill. Within that group are people who are postponing doctor appointments to the pay their energy bills, removing groceries from the bag at the cash register or asking friends for a small loan.
Greystar, which the FTC said manages some 800,000 rental units across the country, posted an unsigned statement on it’s website in response to the lawsuit.
“The FTC has opted for headline-grabbing litigation in the waning days of the current administration,” the statement reads. “The complaint is based on gross misrepresentations of the facts and fundamentally flawed legal theories.”
The lawsuit accuses Greystar of not revealing fees — such as trash or package delivery services — on websites where the apartments they managed were advertised, such as Zillow, even when those rental marketplaces had sections to list those types of fees.
Many people applying to the rental properties, the lawsuit said, couldn’t learn of the fees until they filled out inquiry forms or clicked through small-print hyperlinks. In several cases, the FTC alleges that Greystar didn’t reveal the fees until applicants paid the application fee, and that the extra chargers were buried in lease agreements reaching 60-pages long.
Greystar, in their statement, said: “No resident at a Greystar-managed community pays a fee they have not seen and agreed to in their lease.”
The five members of the bipartisan commission unanimously voted to file the lawsuit, which accuses the management company of violating the FTC ACT as well as the Colorado Consumer Protection Act, according to a press release from the agency.
“To the extent that other corporate landlords are not advertising their all-in pricing and are engaging in similar tactics, they are on notice that such conduct is illegal,” Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said in a statement.
Georgia
DOJ sues county, saying elections violate rights of Black voters
SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — The U.S. Justice Department sued a Georgia county Thursday, alleging that its method of electing county commissioners discriminates against Black voters.
Houston County, home to 163,000 people south of Macon, uses countywide elections to fill each of its five commission seats.
The civil lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court says those at-large elections violate the Voting Rights Act by unfairly diluting the influence of Black voters, who make up nearly one-third of the Houston County’s electorate.
“White voters cast their ballots sufficiently as a bloc to defeat Black voters’ preferred candidate” in countywide elections for Houston County commissioner, the lawsuit said.
The Justice Department said Houston County has elected just one Black commissioner since the end of the Civil War. All of the current commissioners are white, including Chairman Dan Perdue. His father is Sonny Perdue, the former Georgia governor and U.S. agriculture secretary who now oversees Georgia’s public universities.
Black candidates would have a fairer chance of winning if the county was divided into districts, with each district electing its own commissioner, the Justice Department said.
The department wants a judge to prohibit Houston County from conducting further countywide elections for commission seats and order officials to choose a new, fairer system for electing commissioners.
Though largely rural, Houston County is home to Robins Air Force Base, Georgia’s largest industrial complex with a workforce of 22,000 military service members, civilians and contractors.
Commissioners said in a statement Thursday they are investigating the Justice Department’s allegations. They pledged that county officials “will always follow the law.”
“If we agree with DOJ regarding a possible violation of the Voting Rights Act after reviewing all of the documents and evidence, we will take appropriate action at that time,” the commissioners said.
Georgia
Bo Jackson gives up $21M judgment in extortion suit
MARIETTA, Ga. (AP) — Former professional football and baseball player Bo Jackson is giving up a $21 million judgment against his niece and nephew, whom he said harassed and tried to extort money from him.
A judge in February ruled in Jackson’s favor in the suit he had filed in April 2023 against Thomas Lee Anderson and Erica M. Anderson, also known as Erica Anderson Ross. Jackson, a running back who won the Heisman Trophy at Auburn and also played in both the NFL and MLB, Jackson had alleged in his lawsuit that his relatives tried to extort $20 million from him through harassment and intimidation.
In addition to the monetary award, last year’s ruling included a permanent protective order barring his niece and nephew from bothering or contacting him and his immediate family. It also said they must stay at least 500 yards (meters) from the Jacksons and remove social media posts about them.
Cobb County Superior Court Judge Jason D. Marbutt said in his February order that neither Jackson’s niece and nephew nor their attorneys rebutted Jackson’s claims or participated in the case after a May 2023 hearing, when they consented to a temporary protective order. The judge found the Andersons to be in default, accepting as true all of Jackson’s allegations.
After that ruling was issued, a new lawyer for the Andersons filed a motion in March to set aside that judgment and to dismiss the lawsuit, according to court filings. In a filing Tuesday, Jackson and the Andersons jointly asked the judge to throw out February’s order, withdraw the Andersons’ pending motions and enter a consent judgment.
“In the meantime, the Parties have conducted two mediations and have reached a private agreement resolving this dispute,” the filing says.
Marbutt on Wednesday issued an order vacating his February ruling at the request of Jackson and his niece and nephew.
That consent judgment finds in Jackson’s favor on several counts and dismisses others, awards no damages either to Jackson or his niece and nephew and says the parties shall pay their own attorneys’ fees. It also says the Andersons must not harass or intimidate Jackson and his wife and children and stay 500 yards (meters) away from them, except in certain circumstances, including court appearances, sporting events and family functions. The Andersons are also not to have any contact with Jackson and his wife and children.
Jackson, 62, had alleged that the harassment began in 2022 and included threatening social media posts and messages, public allegations that put him in a false light. He also alleged that public disclosure of private information was intended to cause him severe emotional distress. With the help of an attorney, the Andersons demanded $20 million to stop. He said he feared for his own safety and that of his family.
