He was born in New Jersey, of Italian heritage, and raised Catholic. Graduated from high school, then got an undergraduate degree from the University of Virginia. He moved onto law school, and later set up a small independent law practice. And then years later, he got deeply involved in conservative politics.

The facts above describe John Donald Cody, who now sits in an Ohio jail cell, awaiting trial for fraud and other felony charges. Until recently he was known under an alias, “Bobby Thompson,” founder of the scam outfit known as the U.S. Navy Veterans Association. It raised tens of millions of dollars from good-hearted unsuspecting givers. And under that fake name “Thompson” he contributed at least $180,000 to politicians across the United States. Almost all of them were ultra conservatives.

You can read more about him and his background, and his bizarre career, in the Tampa Bay Times.

Coincidentally, the same set of facts in the first paragraph above also are true for Virginia Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli. Read more »

Multnomah County Sheriff/U.S.Marshals

Feast your eyes on John Donald Cody, aka U.S. Navy Veterans Association scammer Bobby Thompson, who gave tens of thousands in campaign contributions to Virginia lawmakers.

He’s a former military intelligence officer and  apparent former Arizona attorney who claimed a degree form UVa.

The Tampa Bay Times has the details:

For all his sterling credentials, colleagues at the courthouse found Cody to be more than a little strange. He wore outdated bell bottoms and his hair in a pompadour that everyone swore was a wig. He’d spout wild conspiracy theories and once accused county prosecutors of wanting to kill him. He’d bring a big jar of Vaseline into the courtroom, then slather it on his face during presentations.

In May 1984, after a judge threatened to cite him for contempt for making false statements, Cody vanished. His Corvette was found at the Phoenix airport weeks later, keys in the ignition.

Prosecutors initially charged Cody with skimming nearly $100,000 from clients’ accounts and trying to get a $25,000 loan in Virginia using false identities. But three years later, in May 1987, a federal warrant was issued for his arrest. In addition to fraud, he was wanted by the FBI for espionage.

Queue the jokes on “military intelligence.”

'Bobby Thompson' with House Speaker John Boehner, in the good old days before Boehner became Speaker and before Thompson was charged with running a multi-million fraud.

The U.S. Navy Veterans Association con man whose name remains unknown is still in jail in Ohio. But now he’s facing new charges, and he has a new court-appointed lawyer.

And on Monday, in a Cleveland courtroom, the new mouthpiece actually asked that a judge release the man with no name on $1 million bond.

From Cleveland.com:

[Thompson's new] charges now include identity fraud, engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity, complicity to aggravated theft, money-laundering and tampering with records. Thompson was represented today by a new court-appointed attorney, Joseph Patituce, who asked Judge Robert C. McClelland to set bond at $1 million. Patituce noted that the charges are as yet unproven allegations, and said he needed Thompson out of jail to assist in review of more than 150,000 pages of documents involved in the case.

Ha! The request for bond suggests Thompson might actually be able to raise it, despite being caught with nearly $1 million in cash back when he was arrested in Portland.

His new lawyer obviously possesses a healthy amount of chutzpah, given that there is no way in the world any judge would release someone who has thus far refused to disclose his actual identity. If I was his lawyer I wouldn’t have even bothered to make the request.

But it makes you wonder: Where is the storage locker where ‘Thompson’ has his other nest egg stashed? I’d want to bid on that one when the rental comes up overdue.

AP Photo

On Friday, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli shilled for George Allen in a bizarre episode of “gotcha” and truth-stretching that was so clumsy it left just about everybody rolling their eyes and asking “what was Cuccinelli thinking?”

On Monday, the irony reached new heights, when our sue-happy AG tried to help Mitt Romney squeeze away from the Bain Capital/tax return jam the putative GOP presidential nominee seems caught in.

Acting as a Romney surrogate, ‘The Cooch’ tried to change the conversation. He attacked the Obama Administration’s so-called pattern of “crony capitalism” and actually preached ethics. Ho, ho.

In doing that, The Cooch stepped into an even bigger pile. For anyone who’s been watching his act closely, it was time to hold your sides tightly and roll on the floor with laughter.

From Talking Points Memo:

The attorney general seemed to suggest that, like Romney, Congress should also take a voluntary “I’ll-know-corruption-when-I-see-it” approach to ethics. He said that Romney might veto bills he felt had been swayed by special interests.

That’s simply priceless, coming from Cuccinelli. Because in 2009 and 2010 he was at the center of the two most obvious “pay-for-play” issues to hit the Virginia General Assembly. Read more »

'Bobby Thompson' with House Speaker John Boehner, one of many Republicans he plied with tens of thousands in campaign cash while he was running the phony charity, U.S. Navy Veterans Association.

That comment, from the alleged con man who won’t reveal his real identity but who is known as “Bobby Thomson,” is one of many interesting tidbits you can find on Cleveland.com.

It’s in comes a story about Thompson’s public defender quitting Thursday, after he went into a 10-minute tirade about Ohio courts’ policy of appointing only one public defender per indigent defendant.

Stanton got removed as Thompson’s attorney during a pretrial hearing in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court after the lawyer delivered a 10-minute tirade about the courts’ ineffectiveness.

Stanton argued that a single attorney would not be enough to represent Thompson, who faces up to 80 years in prison if convicted.

“I reluctantly, begrudgingly and, quite honestly, disdainfully had to file that particular motion,” Stanton exclaimed in front of Judge Annette Butler.

The prosecutor in the case estimated he’s got more than 50,000 pieces of evidence against “Thompson,” who when he was finally caught had a suitcase stuffed with almost $1 million in cash;  and who is charged with defrauding Ohio citizens of more than $2 million through his phony charity, the U.S. Navy Veterans Association. But there’s more! Read more »

The con man known as 'Bobby Thompson' during his high-flying days as a major Republican political donor (left) and shortly following his capture in Portland, Ore. by U.S. Marshals Monday night. He contributed $67,500 to six Virginia lawmakers in 2009 in a successful effort to get a law passed by the Virginia General Assembly in 2010. | Photos courtesy the Ohio Attorney General and the U.S. Marshals Service.

Following a manhunt that lasted nearly two years, U.S. Marshals arrested ‘Bobby Thompson’ without a whimper Monday night after he left a bar in Portland, Ore.

Authorities still don’t know the alleged Florida con man’s real identity. They believe he’s in his mid 60s. He’s charged with defrauding Ohio citizens of $2 million for his phony charity, the U.S. Navy Veterans Association. It reportedly raised $100 million across the country and spent a pittance on veterans.

For that and other reasons, the feds also are investigating. And if Thompson’s capture is causing some gut rumbles in Richmond, it’s not hard to understand why.

Because it was here in the Old Dominion that the Florida man pulled off one of his most audacious flimflams. He bought himself a law in the 2010 Virginia General Assembly that would benefit his scam.

And many questions remain about how he was able to manage that.

READ THE REST OF THIS COLUMN HERE.

Karl Rove and "Bobby Thompson" | Ohio Attorney General's Office

Update #5: Authorities found a suitcase with almost $1 million in cash and another suitcase full of different identity documents when they searched a storage locker linked to Thompson in Portland. They still don’t know who he is.

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Update #4: Much more about “Thompson’s” capture, his habits, and the room he was letting in Portland, in the Tampa Bay Times.

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Update #3: “United States Marshal Pete Elliott for the Northern District of Ohio was contacted by former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray and asked for his assistance in locating “Thompson.” Note from Dan: This dovetails well with stuff the telephone tipster told me two weeks ago. That called identified ‘Thompson’ by what the tipster said was Thompson’s real name — the initials were K.W. We shall see if that turns out to be the case.

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Update #2: In Portland, he was using the name Anderson Yazzie. He had lived until March 2011 in Boston where he was setting up another scam, in Rhode Island, the “Plymouth Rock Society of Christian Pilgrims.” One of the states in which marshals had tracked him was West Virginia (see the stuff from the tipster I talked to 2 weeks ago, below).

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UPDATE #1: ‘Thompson’ was spotted in Portland, Ore., outside a bar, where officials found him walking with a cane and carrying a knapsack that had an undisclosed amount of money, according to Cleveland.com. He also had a bunch of fake ID with him.

Still no word on his actual identity. Booking photo from Oregon is below

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Update #2: In Portland, he was using the name Anderson Yazzie. He had lived until March 2011 in Boston where he was setting up another scam, in Rhode Island, the “Plymouth Rock Society of Christian Pilgrims.” One of the states in which marshals had tracked him was West Virginia (see the stuff from the tipster I talked to 2 weeks ago, below).

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Little is known so far about the circumstances of the arrest of the fugitive known as “Bobby Thompson,” the false identity of the man who allegedly headed up the U.S. Navy Veterans Association scam.

He was nabbed at 10:30 p.m. Pacific time Monday night somewhere on the West Coast by the U.S. Marshals, based on leads they were working on.

The week before last I had a long conversation with an out-of-state caller who said Thompson was a farmer outside Lewisburg, W. Va. The caller gave me a name, pointed me to a picture on the Internet,  and told me the man was a Navy veteran. But the evidence seemed thin. The man in the photo did not appear to be a dead ringer for ‘Thompson.’ We shall soon see whether that tipster was right.

And it looks like, in the coming months, we will also learn more about the fascinating $55,500 in contributions that ‘Thompson’ made to Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s 2009 election campaign.

Cuccinelli got more than any of the scores of right-wing politicians in the country that Thompson handed out campaign money to. And the big money — a $50,000 check, came in August 2009 after Cuccinelli called Thompson and asked him for a donation.

You can bet that the feds are going to want to know all about that, as well as more about how ‘Thompson’ engineered a law through the Virginia General Assembly that would allow him to continue scamming Virginians.

In the comments below, tell us the questions that you would ask the alleged scammer, if you were a federal agent.

ABC News | Multnomah County Sheriff/U.S.Marshals

'Bobby Thompson' with House Speaker John Boehner

TV station report says the U.S. Navy Vets con man was hiding in New Mexico

From a report by KRQE in Albuquerque:

U.S. Marshals said he has lived in Albuquerque and knows the area. Recently new information pointed to him hiding out here.

“He is known for his ability to blend in or change his appearance or something. So he may not really be low profile he may just be using an alias.”

[Deputy Ben]Segotta said they want him in handcuffs badly, “He solicited hundred of millions of dollars from people in order to help veterans and betrayed that trust between people and our military.”

Thompson is a fake name and officials don’t really know who this guy is. For a while he had actually assumed the identity of a New Mexico man who ran a local veterans group.

He’s 5 feet 8 inches about 160 pounds and said to be a heavy and often violent drinker.

From the Associated Press:

Authorities say he has used several aliases, including Ronnie Brittain and Elmer Dosier. He also has shown an ability to alter his appearance by changing his hair and wearing glasses.

It’s not hard to imagine how the capture of U.S. Navy Veterans Association founder “Bobby Thompson” could be a nightmare for the GOP in an election year. Especially with all the pictures of the con man and other high-profile Republicans that are floating out there.

AP Photo | Steve Helber

The Virginia Attorney General’s office yesterday issued a press release regarding the U.S. Navy Veterans Association scam.

It was more remarkable for its omissions than for the news contained in it.

Here’s what it says:

1) A fundraising firm linked to the fraudulent U.S. Navy Vets has agreed to return $16,780 in contributions it solicited from 812 Virginians on behalf of the Navy vets AFTER the organization (under pressure of the state) agreed to stop soliciting in Virginia in 2009. The outfit, Association Community Services, already has returned $32,500 it solicited from 1,500 other Virginians.

2) ACS also has agreed to return $9,053 for funds it illegally solicited for another veterans outfit, American Homeless Veterans, which was not registered with the state Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.

3) ACS has also agreed to pay $40,000 in civil penalties and attorneys fees for the above violations, although ACS admits no wrongdoing.

4) The Attorney General’s Office continues to work with local, state, and federal law enforcement authorities to bring Thompson to justice but it cannot be any more specific about those matters because they are under investigation.

Now here’s what it doesn’t mention: Read more »

The Associated Press

Richard Cordray, the new chief of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (who President Obama appointed over howls and teeth-gnashing by Republicans), isn’t wasting any time going after crooks who steal from the poor.

From Talking Points Memo:

. . .the CFPB today announced a new program aimed at ensuring that non-bank actors — mortgage lenders, pay day lenders, and other financial entities — comply with existing consumer protection laws.

Additionally, the CFPB is revisiting a host of regulations it inherited from other agencies — many of which were written years ago and have failed — and will act against financial firms that break the law.

“The consumer bureau will make clear that there are real consequences to breaking the law,” Cordray said in his prepared remarks. “We have given informants and whistleblowers direct access to us. We took over a number of investigations from other agencies in July, and we are pursuing some investigations jointly with them. We have also started our own investigations. Some may be resolved through cooperative efforts to correct problems. Others may require enforcement actions to stop illegal behavior.”

About time, eh?

You’ve still gotta wonder WHEN Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is going to see to it that his scam artist campaign contributor, Bobby Thompson, is brought up on criminal charges in the Old Dominion for stealing $2 million from Virginians.