Crime

Donald Trump's Lawyer, Former Lawyer, Judge, And The Guy Who Stole Millions While Inside A Maximum Security Prison

If Donald Trump ends up in prison, he has a new role model.

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trapped in room prison cell jail cellDonald Trump recently hired Steve Sadow — noted Atlanta criminal defense attorney — after firing  Drew Findling — also noted Atlanta criminal defense attorney — to represent him in his Georgia RICO prosecution overseen by Judge Scott McAfee. But Sadow, Findling, and McAfee all play prominent roles in a completely different matter: the story of a man who stole millions off of billionaires all while he sat inside a maximum security prison.

That’s quite the feat. If Trump’s hoping to win office from prison, he might have found a new role model here.

Charles Bethea of the New Yorker has an engrossing long-form story about Arthur Cofield, a Georgia inmate put away at the age of 16 for armed robbery after hitting up a bank for $2600 at gunpoint and getting caught almost immediately. Cofield got a 14-year sentence for this bumbling attempt, and embarked on a career at the crime finishing school that is the American prison system.

He’d become a much better thief from the inside.

Using smuggled cell phones and accomplices on the outside, Cofield managed to get financial institutions to transfer massive amounts from the accounts of billionaires. Here’s one of the stories — and the one that first brought Trump’s current judge to the case when McAfee was the AUSA on the case.

Having identified a likely suspect in Georgia, the Secret Service turned the case over to Scott McAfee, an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the state’s Northern District. In August, 2020, one of McAfee’s investigators was contacted by the brokerage firm Charles Schwab. Two people, working in tandem, had successfully impersonated the ninety-five-year-old clothier and Hollywood producer Sidney Kimmel and his wife, Caroline Davis. Kimmel, who had recently executive-produced “Crazy Rich Asians,” reportedly had a net worth of around one and a half billion dollars, and had several accounts with Schwab. Cofield created an online brokerage account in Kimmel’s name, then called Schwab, claiming to be Kimmel, in order to connect the new account to a checking account. Over the phone, he provided Kimmel’s Social Security number, his mother’s maiden name, his date of birth, and home address. Three days after that, someone claiming to be Kimmel’s wife called Schwab and asked about making a wire transfer. Half an hour later, Cofield submitted a signed form authorizing such a transfer. The transfer was for eleven million dollars. It was used to purchase gold coins.

And that’s only one of the stories. We’re not getting into the murder allegations, the architecture nerds, or the late night gold transfers on a tarmac.

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When authorities figured out what was going on, Cofield hired Sadow and Findling, bringing all our Trump case figures together in one tale.

Becoming a criminal mastermind usually happens before you go to prison. The whole article reads like Scarface meets Benjamin Button.

How a Man in Prison Stole Millions from Billionaires [New Yorker]

HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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