108. The Commander (Bobby C. Thompson)

Support for swindled comes from Simply Safe.

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The damage is done.

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Olivia loves a challenge.

It's why she lifts heavy weights

and likes complicated recipes.

But for booking her trip to Paris, Olivia chose the easy way with Expedia.

She bundled her flight with a hotel to save more.

Of course, she still climbed all 674 steps to the top of the Eiffel Tower.

You were made to take the easy route.

We were made to easily package your trip.

Expedia, made to travel.

Flight-inclusive packages are at all protected.

This episode of Swindled may contain graphic descriptions or audio recordings of disturbing events which may not be suitable for all audiences.

Listener discretion is advised.

Federal agents took Kevin White off to court this morning in handcuffs.

The former Hillsborough County Commissioner is facing a list of 10 felony criminal charges.

They include bribery, conspiracy, and lying to the FBI.

According to the 28-page indictment, White used his power as chairman of the Public Transportation Commission to solicit bribes.

Listen, I know a way for us to get back on the list, George Hondrelles told a fellow tow truck company owner in September 2009.

The list in question was the list of city-approved towing companies used by law enforcement in Tampa, Florida, for a tow truck operator.

Being on that list was lucrative, up to $200,000 a year.

But George Hondrelles, the owner of Tampa City Towing, and his associate Pete Rockefeller, the owner of Pete's towing, hadn't been on the list in years.

Hondrellis was removed when city officials discovered his criminal record, and Rockefeller lost his spot after too many customer complaints.

But, as Hondrelles explained to Rockefeller, ever since Hillsboro County Commissioner Kevin White took over as chairman of the Public Transportation Commission in 2006, a spot on the list could be purchased.

I know several people who've done it, Hondrelles urged.

All they had to do was create a dummy corporation with a new name, grease Kevin White's palm a little bit before reapplying, and they were back in business within days.

A few weeks later, in October 2009, George Hondrellis and Pete Rockefeller set up the first of a series of meetings with Commissioner Kevin White at a series of steakhouses in Tampa.

It brought along its father, Gerald White, the puppet master, apparently.

Kevin's gonna do what Gerald says, Hondrellis promised Rockefeller afterward.

That's the guy who can tell Kevin what the fuck to do.

We know George Hondrellis used that exact phrasing because every word of those meetings was recorded.

Pete Rockefeller had tipped off the authorities and agreed to wear a wire.

Give me a loan of $2,000, Gerald White suggested, and your application should, quote, fly through.

Before long, Pete Rockefeller was introducing the Whites to another friend who had expressed interest in landing a spot on the towing list.

Over lunch at Ruth's Chris Steakhouse, Daryl Wilson, an importer-exporter, explained to the county commissioner and the county commissioner's father that he was looking to expand his business.

In reality, Darrell Wilson was FBI agent Darryl Williams.

That day, he loaned the Whites $1,000 to keep him in mind.

Darrell Wilson followed up with Commissioner Kevin White on the phone several weeks later.

I'm in heavy campaign mode, White explained.

Nobody would get on the list if he weren't re-elected.

He told Daryl that he needed to come up with $10,000 in the next two weeks.

I'm trying in the next two weeks, I'm trying to beat the street to 10.

That's what I got to get raised to beat the shit out of these people.

It's a two-way street, Daryl replied.

This is a two-way damn street, you know.

Kevin recognized that, responding.

I tell you what, drop off the application and make sure my people get it.

I'm going to do whatever I can to walk it straight to the hill through.

Walking straight to hell through.

I'm going to try to come with you.

I I should have my shit together at least with half of that up front.

Maybe another half after we finish.

Daryl Wilson agreed to pay $5,000 up front and $5,000 when it was done.

Adding, do we need to take the sheriff out to dinner?

The sheriff, I mean, do we need to take the sheriff out to dinner or something?

Or?

I don't know.

Let's just get

the application.

We'll go from there.

On June 4th, 2010, Kevin White climbed into the passenger seat of Darrell Wilson's car in the parking lot of a Longhorn steakhouse.

I want to take care of you for taking care of me, Williams told the commissioner while handing him the $5,000 down payment.

The small camera hidden behind the rearview mirror caught it all on video.

I want to take care of you for taking care of me now.

You said you needed 10.

I'm going to give you 5.

Within days, Kevin White, the chairman of the Public Transportation Committee, called the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office to personally request that Darrell Wilson's company be included on the towing list.

However, that November, Kevin White lost in the primary during his bid for re-election.

The scheme fell apart, but it wasn't forgotten.

The FBI knocked on Kevin White's door the following March, 2011.

At multiple points during their interview, they asked the former Hillsboro County Commissioner if he had ever accepted payments for spots on the county's towing list.

Kevin White denied it every time.

At 6.45 this morning, FBI agents arrived at Mr.

Kevin White's residence in Riverview and they affirmed a federal arrest warrant.

46-year-old Kevin White was arrested at his home on June 15, 2011.

He'd been charged with accepting $8,000 in cash bribes.

plus a used 2003 Lincoln Navigator for his father, Gerald.

64-year-old Gerald White was not charged for his role because he died a few months earlier awaiting a heart transplant.

Such a shame, Kevin's defense team noted, because it was Gerald White, the client's father, who was the true master manipulator.

It certainly wasn't George Hondrellis, the owner of Tampa City Towing.

He had been charged with bribery as well, but his case was dismissed after a judge ruled him mentally incompetent.

Kevin White stood alone.

The former chairman of Hillsborough County's Public Transportation Transportation Commission was ultimately convicted on seven charges, including conspiracy, bribery, and wire fraud.

He was acquitted of the charges for the payments received by his father.

Kevin White was sentenced to three years in prison.

What do you do from here?

Just focus on my family.

Your family?

That's surprising.

At his sentencing hearing, Kevin White blamed his family for his current predicament.

I always wanted a relationship with my father, he told the court.

But I see where that's gotten me.

Prison, that's where it got him.

And for those who had watched Kevin White's political career, it was an entirely predictable conclusion.

A suspicion has swirled around Kevin White, a former policeman, since he entered politics in 2003.

And to the disappointment of those who voted for him, those suspicions often turned out to be true.

Kevin White was born into one of Tampa, Florida's most famous black families.

There's a street named after his grandfather, Moses White, who was a civil civil rights leader and owner of a popular barbecue restaurant.

And Kevin's father, Gerald, was a college football star.

Kevin's life would be rife with opportunity.

The only problem was that Kevin was born out of wedlock.

His father was already married to a different woman when Kevin's mother became pregnant with him.

The Whites never accepted Kevin White as part of the family.

In fact, according to the Tampa Bay Times, Kevin White didn't see his father Gerald again until he was 10 years old.

Gerald reportedly dropped off a bicycle for the disowned boy that Christmas, which the police confiscated the following day because it was stolen.

Kevin White vowed to make it on his own, and he did.

He joined the U.S.

Navy and then became a cop in 1990, but four years later, he resigned from the Tampa Police Department after violating the car chase policy and causing an accident, which resulted in the city being sued.

Kevin White moved on to an even less respected profession by becoming a finance director at an auto dealership.

In 2002, he reached the final form of scumbaggery and decided to become a politician.

He ran for a seat on the Tampa City Council.

Kevin's opponent in the primary was his aunt, Bernadine White King.

Gerald White endorsed his sister over his son in that race, a move that, quote, cut me more deeply than anyone will ever know, Kevin said at the time.

Kevin White defeated his aunt, won the city council seat, and eventually reconciled with his father.

It was like a made-for-TV movie, but the honeymoon ended three months into Kevin's term when he pushed for the council to give themselves a 23% raise during a closed meeting.

But that little bump in the road didn't slow down his political aspirations.

In November 2006, Kevin White was elected to a seat on the Hillsborough County Commission, again defeating his aunt, Bernadine White King.

And again, almost immediately, controversy arose.

It was discovered that Kevin White had spent more than $6,000 of campaign funds on custom-tailored Italian suits and then lied about it on disclosure forms.

The Florida Elections Commission fined him almost $40,000 for 14 violations of state election laws.

Kevin White caught the public's attention again soon after, when he launched a limousine service immediately after he was named chairman of the Public Transportation Committee, which regulates limousine services.

Additionally, it was rumored that Kevin White had personally interfered with a traffic stop involving his goddaughter, and the commissioner openly admitted to carrying guns into government buildings.

99% of the time, Kevin said, sometimes two or three.

But worst of all, in the eyes of many, in 2009, Kevin White was accused of repeatedly sexually harassing his 22-year-old intern.

The intern said Kevin White was persistent, propositioning her during every business trip, every lunch meeting at Outback Steakhouse, and once during a memorial service for a deputy sheriff killed in action.

The intern rejected his his advances.

This resulted in Kevin White giving the intern a poor rating on her six-month job performance review.

The intern would probably lose her job unless Commissioner White could make the review disappear.

And he could, he promised, but only if she was willing to give him a chance romantically.

She wasn't, and she sued, and she was awarded $75,000.

To tell you the truth, I'm not even focusing on that.

I'm focusing on my future.

Like I said, I'm focusing on my family, and I'm focusing on the positives that I've been able to bring to this district.

That case cost Hillsborough County almost $500,000 in court fees, which Kevin White would be forced to reimburse.

He would be dead broke afterward, which might explain why he started selling spots on the law enforcement towing list soon after.

However, according to another criminal, Kevin White had been open to bribes.

long before then.

Four years earlier, in November 2006, a real estate mogul named Matthew Cox was arrested for committing a 10-plus million dollar fraud involving almost 100 properties in multiple states.

As part of his plea bargain, Cox told FBI agents about payments he had made to then Tampa City Council candidate Kevin White in exchange for a rezoning request.

You helped me get elected, and I'll vote in your favor every time, White had promised.

Matthew Cox said he paid thousands of dollars to Kevin White's campaign, disguised as donations from other people.

Kevin White discounted the accusations as, quote, the jailhouse rumblings of a reputed con man, telling the St.

Petersburg Times in 2008, quote, he's just lying.

That's all there is to it.

As a Navy veteran and a former police officer, I've made my life and career by serving others.

Mr.

Cox has made his life out of lying, cheating, and stealing, so the public can determine who's lying here.

Kevin White was never charged for those questionable campaign donations.

However, a year later, a different set of questionable donations paid to Kevin White would open the door to a different set of questions entirely.

In August 2009, Jeff Testerman, a veteran investigative reporter at the St.

Petersburg Times, decided to check some facts about Mr.

White, whose re-election campaign for the Hillsborough County Commission seat had just begun.

On the commissioner's website and campaign flyers, Kevin White often referenced his distinguished Navy career.

Testerman checked the records and discovered that White had only served for a total of 56 days.

Kevin White's military records said he was honorably discharged because he had, quote, enlisted in error.

This is Jeff Testerman on C-SPAN.

And I said, that's a story.

He's exaggerated his Navy career.

Now let me see if I can round this out.

And I began to look at some other papers connected to this councilman in Tampa, by the way.

And I found that he had received a campaign check for $500 from a group I'd never heard of called the United States Navy Veterans Association.

Jeff Testerman decided to warn the United States Navy Veterans Association about Kevin White's exaggerations.

It would be a shame for a veterans charity to waste its strictly prohibited campaign contributions on a fraud.

And what luck?

The journalists learned that the charity's director, Navy Reserve Lieutenant Commander Bobby C.

Thompson, lived right there in Tampa.

Testerman could just drive over to his house and maybe get a quote for his story.

That's how Jeff Testerman found himself in a rough area of Ybor City, parked in front of a dilapidated duplex across from a cigar factory.

This must be the place, Testerman told himself after seeing the bush chain again.

Security provided by Smith Wesson bumper stickers in the window.

Just then, an odd-looking man appeared on the front porch.

The smell of booze filled the air.

Lieutenant Commander, Navy Reserves, retired, is how Bobby Thompson introduced himself.

And that's as pleasant as the interaction would get.

Jeff Testerman described his encounter with Bobby Thompson that day as almost combative.

His answers were terse and evasive.

He didn't seem to care that Kevin White was overstating his service.

Thompson also claimed his organization never made any political contributions and that any background check on him would be inaccurate because his credit reports had been corrupted.

It would list four separate people, Thompson warned.

The journalist hadn't asked.

Jeff Testerman returned to the Times office that day with his reporter's instincts tingling.

He explained the encounter to his research partner, John Martin, and together they started researching the man and his charity.

That chance encounter ultimately set off a chain of events that would unravel over the next four years.

The mysterious operator of a fraudulent veterans charity is exposed as an imposter on this episode of Swindled.

They bribed government officials to find accounting for clear violations of

state law.

That we have its books and records in the high ballot.

Support for Swindled comes from Simply Safe.

For the longest time, I thought home security meant an alarm going off after someone broke in.

But if the alarm is already blaring, it's too late.

The damage is done.

That's a reactive approach, and it leaves you with that awful feeling of violation, even if the intruder runs away.

That's why I switched to Simply Safe.

They've completely changed the game with Active Guard outdoor protection, designed to stop crime before it starts.

Their smart, AI-powered cameras don't just detect motion.

They can tell you when there's a person lurking on your property.

That instantly alerts SimplySafe's professional monitoring agents in real time.

And here's the game changer.

The agents can actually intervene while the intruder is still outside.

Talk to them through two-way audio, hit them with a loud siren and spotlight, and call 911 if needed.

It's proactive security, and that's real security.

I trust SimplySafe because there are no long-term contracts, no hidden fees, and a 60-day money-back guarantee.

They've been named best home security systems by U.S.

News and World Report for five years in a row, and I can see why.

Get 50% off your new SimplySafe system at simplysafe.com/slash swindled.

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There's no safe like SimplySafe.

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The world is old, but from a man's point of view, it is always young when you go down to the sea in ships.

When you join the fraternity of seafaring men older by thousands of years than this very nation,

you never know how well a ship or a man will measure up.

Time, as we have said, will tell.

The United States Navy Veterans Association, or the USNVA, traces its roots back to Mobile, where, under Alabama's summer sun in 1927, a small group of decorated Spanish-American War and World War I naval veterans came together and associated themselves into an affiliated group of five veteran organizations.

The Pensacola Navy Airmen, the Northern Florida Association of Navy Veterans of the Spanish-American War, the Northern Florida Naval Veterans of the Great War, the Alabama Naval History Association, and the Jacksonville League of Naval Preparedness.

This is all according to the nearly 3,000-word written history on the association's website.

In summary, after a few wars, those five Navy veteran organizations melded into one, just in time for a few more.

The United States Navy Veterans Association, like other veteran organizations such as the American Legion, was not officially affiliated with the government.

It was in no way, shape, or form a military organization.

No, the USNVA was a qualified tax-exempt charity with incredible reach.

There were 66,000 members across 41 state chapters, plus Puerto Rico and Panama.

The association's purpose?

To aid, quote, needy Navy veterans and their families by collecting millions of dollars in donations over the phone, because the world's largest military budget isn't enough, apparently.

The USNVA used the money for various projects like sending care packages to troops stationed overseas.

The charity was headquartered in Washington, D.C., and overseen by an 84-member board of directors.

The CEO was Jack Nimitz, a retired naval reservist turned investment banker with an admirable admiral's last name.

Bobby Charles Thompson was the director, a retired lieutenant commander who performed his duties in Tampa, Florida, where he was a lifelong resident.

Bobby Thompson, or the commander, as he preferred to be called, was an interesting fellow.

He styled his obvious hair implants into a pompadour with a ponytail that was unlike anything you'd ever seen before.

Just an all-around general unkemptness about his look.

But his wax-hardened handlebar mustache somehow tied it all together.

The commander was the kind of guy who would have multiple bloody Marys for breakfast, which is probably part of the reason he didn't own a car.

He had been renting the same Ebor City duplex for a decade, where he lived alone on one side and used the other for his U.S.

NBA's office.

His neighbors would agree.

Bobby Thompson was an interesting fellow.

St.

Petersburg Times reporter Jeff Testerman certainly thought so too.

He couldn't stop thinking about the man since meeting him at his roach-infested property.

Testerman surmised that there was more to the commander than meets the eye, and what met the eye was concerning.

That's not how a retired Navy commander is supposed to look.

That's not how he's supposed to act, and that's not supposed to be where he lives.

And I said, there's something strange about this.

And John said, why don't we take a look?

Jeff Testerman and John Martin's journalistic investigation began in August 2009.

Immediately, things didn't add up.

According to the United States Navy Veterans Association website, the group had a long, storied, 80-year history.

But according to public documents, the U.S.

NVA didn't file for tax-exempt status until 2002.

Quite quizzical.

As was the fact that the address to the group's Washington, D.C.

headquarters belonged to a mailbox at a UPS store.

No wonder nobody ever answered the phone.

This is the Washington, D.C.

office of the United States Navy Veterans Association.

The St.

Petersburg Times also discovered that the testimonials from active Navy members featured on the U.S.

NVA's website were copied and pasted from a different organization's website with only the names changed.

The website also showcased an award for acts of public bravery that, according to an official at the awarding organization, there was no record of the U.S.

Navy Veterans Association ever receiving.

Nor was the USNBA accredited and given a prestigious honor with GuideStar, a database that serves to verify nonprofit organizations' data.

In fact, just the opposite was true.

GuideStar said it rejected the US NBA's application after it received incomplete financial information.

The CPA that signed off on US NBA's submitted audit was determined not to exist.

And she wasn't the only one.

Jeff Testerman and John Martin at the St.

Petersburg Times spent six months trying to talk to anyone at the United States Navy Veterans Association other than Commander Bobby Thompson.

It proved impossible.

Of the 85 directors, chapter heads, and executives listed on the USNBA's tax filings, formation documents, etc., not one of them could be found.

There were no boats, wrinkles, and Alaska, no CEO Jack Nimitz, no Gaither Longfellow managing the Alabama chapter.

There was no Alabama chapter, at least not physically.

All of the addresses listed for the state chapter seemed to lead to P.O.

boxes or empty plots of land.

The people didn't even exist on paper.

The only one that did was Commander Bobby Thompson, but there were no military records for the man.

Who was he, really?

More concerningly, Where's all the money?

If there were no people to pay, no facilities, and all its good deeds were plagiarized.

What happened to the millions of generously donated dollars the nonprofit had accepted?

An estimated $100 million

was unaccounted for.

The St.

Petersburg Times was able to answer some of those questions.

For starters, the journalists discovered that up to 90% of those earnings were kept by the telemarketing companies with whom the US NVA had partnered.

The charity, at best, netted only 15%.

Still, that's tens of millions of dollars.

And the Times found where at least $182,000 of those dollars went.

Lobbying.

Even though nonprofit organizations are required to remain non-partisan, Bobby Thompson had created his own political action committee called Navy Veterans for Good Government, NAVPAC for short.

NAVPAC's website, which referred to President Obama as, quote, the voice of fascism, taken directly from the likes of Mussolini and Castro, donated heavily to prominent Republicans around the country.

John McCain, Mitt Romney, Mitch McConnell, original orange man John Boehner, and the soulless-eyed Michelle Bachman, remember her?

They all received campaign contributions from Bobby Thompson and NAVPAC.

One of the only Democrats Thompson donated to was fellow Navy veteran Hillsboro County Commissioner Kevin White.

Bobby Thompson got around.

Most notably, he was able to successfully lobby the state of Virginia to pass a bill exempting veterans' charities like the U.S.

NVA from the state's annual charity registration requirements.

Thompson had made campaign contributions to several Virginia state lawmakers over the years, including Governor Bob McConnell, who was later convicted on corruption charges, which you can hear all about in an upcoming bonus episode of Swindled, valued listener.com.

Sign up today.

Thanks to his generous donations, Commander Bobby Thompson was eventually invited to the Oval Office in 2008 when President George W.

Bush was on his way out.

Thompson gave Bush a playful slug in the arm as if they'd known each other for years.

Photos of that meeting would later appear on the commander's Christmas cards and coffee mugs he kept in his office.

Jeff Testerman at the St.

Petersburg Times asked Bobby Thompson and the United States Navy Veterans Association to clarify these discoveries.

The organization replied through its lawyer, a real person.

Her name was Helen McMurray, the state of Ohio's former charity regulator.

McMurray, that's Helen McMurray, who used to serve under McGomery at the Attorney General's office as the head of the consumer division, protecting the very consumers her client is cheating.

The U.S.

NVA never made anyone available to the journalist, opting rather to defend itself by sending a printed-out copy of its 2,500-page website to the newspaper.

noting that it would be simply impossible for one man to maintain such a vast project as the newspaper seemed to be alleging.

In additional correspondence, Bobby Thompson, using various pseudonyms, attacked Jeff Testerman, calling him a draft dodger and a Pulitzer Prize wannabe.

Thompson criticized the newspaper Testerman worked for and its parent company, claiming the St.

Petersburg Times was leading a, quote, psychobabble-based attack.

He claimed nobody at the U.S.

Navy Veterans Association wanted to participate in a, quote, character assassination and McCarthy-like witch hunts.

In each and every case, your investigation is flawed, flawed, Thompson wrote.

You haven't the tools or the ability to come up with the right organization, contacts, or information.

People don't want to talk to you because of your disreputable tactics and stories and biases.

Many of the people you do talk to don't have the resources to give you accurate information.

And regardless of whether you are working off accurate or inaccurate inputs, your conclusions are always accusatory against your target, as opposed to being the result of objective analysis.

Meanwhile, throughout the correspondence, NAVPAC, Bobby Thompson's political action committee, quietly shut down.

Eventually, the US NBA sent a letter to the Times saying the association had conducted a thorough review of itself and found no wrongdoing.

The group demanded Testermer's resignation and $36,099 to pay for the legal bill caused by the newspaper's investigation.

The charity also claimed that two volunteers had suffered emotional distress and physical pain because of messages left for them by the Times.

Quote, future attempts to contact them may be considered criminal stalking, the association warned.

On March 21st, 2010, the St.

Petersburg Times published the first of an award-winning series of articles by Jeff Testerman and John Martin called Under the Radar, which exposed Bobby Thompson and his charity.

Testerman has also recently released a book about the case titled, Call Me Commander, so check that out too.

The fallout from the articles was rather immediate.

Many of the politicians named as recipients of donations from the association declined to comment but quietly returned or redonated the money they had received from the United States Navy Veterans Association.

Boehner and the other Republicans have since given the money away after the scam was first reported by the St.

Petersburg, Florida Times.

Behind the scenes at the US NVA, Bobby Thompson was trying to keep it together.

In June 2010, he met with his telemarketing partners in New York City.

They were uncomfortable with the recent attention.

To ease their worries, Thompson brought two Navy Vet board members with him.

They had been appointed just days earlier.

The telemarketers decided to end the partnership.

The U.S.

Navy Vets Association lawyer also dumped the organization.

Helen McMurray had represented the charity for three years.

Throughout that term, she says she was only allowed to communicate with Bobby Thompson.

When the Times articles were published, McMurray says she asked Bobby about the phony mailbox office accusations.

To prove to his lawyer that actual offices existed, Thompson sent her a photo of what was obviously a UPS store with a U.S.

Navy Veterans Association logo taped to the wall.

McMurray had been misled too.

It's a scam wrapped in patriotism called the U.S.

Navy Veterans Association.

The appeals on his website to help U.S.

Navy vets have brought in more than $100 million in charitable contributions in the last eight years.

99% of that money is unaccounted for.

New Mexico was the first state to begin its own investigation.

New Mexico's Attorney General, Elizabeth Corizmo, took the allegations personally because her father was a Navy veteran.

We found nothing but some dirt and some mesquite, Corizmo reported after trying to locate the address listed for US NBA's New Mexico headquarters.

And Howard Bonifacio, the head of the state chapter, was not in the white pages of New Mexico, nor was he in the white pages anywhere in the U.S.

Until Mr.

Bonifacio comes to talk to us, Corsmo said, I'm going to assume he doesn't exist.

Eight more states followed suit.

Ohio was the most aggressive.

Ohio residents had reportedly donated more than $3 million to the United States Navy Veterans Association, whose footprint in the state was again revealed to be nothing more than bank accounts and a rented mailbox.

The Ohio Attorney General's Office obtained obtained a $4.9 million default judgment against the USNVA, suspending its fundraising activity and freezing its bank accounts, from which about $101,000 was recovered.

This is Ohio AG Richard Cordry on June 24th, 2010.

Thank you for coming.

I first want to thank John Stoner and Joe Jennings, who are leaders of the Buckeye State Council of Vietnam Veterans of America, for being here today.

Joe and John represent represent a truly legitimate and good non-profit group that helps veterans.

The group I'm here to talk about, though, we believe, is not.

The U.S.

Navy Veterans Association is a group that claims to be a legitimate charitable organization.

However, we have every reason to believe now that it is a phony outfit that is simply using the good name of our armed forces and veterans organizations in order to cheat Ohioans and other patriotic Americans.

Several other states are investigating this organization as well.

The U.S.

Department of Veterans Affairs and the Internal Revenue Service were also investigating the association.

The IRS eventually raided the home of a U.S.

NVA volunteer, one that actually existed.

They seized association documents and books on charity law, but found no financial records.

He says Contreras was listed as acting treasurer for the U.S.

Navy Veterans Association.

Prosecutors say that charity was a fake, and that Blanca's boss, who called himself Bobby Thompson, amassed millions of dollars by using telemarketers to solicit donations meant for vets.

Blanca Contreras was a 39-year-old Mexican immigrant who lived two doors down from the commander.

She was a former strawberry picker with an eighth-grade education.

She was listed as the US NBA's acting treasurer.

In other words, Thompson used Blanca to cast checks for him.

Her principal role was as a conduit for the money.

In October 2010, Blanca Contreras was indicted by the state of Ohio.

She ultimately pleaded guilty to theft and other charges to spare her two daughters who had assisted her on the job.

Blanca Contreras was sentenced to five years in prison.

I would like to apologize to the courts and my son.

I'm proud to be here in the presence of you all today,

and then I would like to express my deepest remorse for each and every victim that was involved.

Commander Bobby Thompson had also been charged in Ohio with identity theft, fraud, and money laundering.

Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordry announced the charges on October 15, 2010.

We think we can prove that more than $1.9 million was stolen from Ohio citizens, money that they either should have kept for themselves or or would have presumably given to legal and legitimate veterans organizations in our state.

It's very aggravating to us to know that that much money was diverted out of Ohio and to find that it was going to an array of corrupt activities, including potentially fraudulent political contributions to political candidates.

It is trading on the good name of our armed forces and patriotic Americans to solicit funds that it says will be used to assist veterans directly.

Instead, we have reason to ask whether some of those funds are actually going to political campaigns.

This is in the charitable sphere what Bernie Madoff did in the investment sphere.

It's shocking.

Bobby Thompson would pay for these crimes just as soon as they could find him.

The commander abandoned his beloved duplex in mid-June 2010, about 90 days after the St.

Petersburg Times began publishing stories about him.

He was last seen in July that year, withdrawing $500 from an ATM in New York City.

The state of Ohio issued a nationwide arrest warrant.

Let the manhunt begin.

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Ohio authorities have now launched a national manhunt for Bobby Thompson, who failed to show up in court earlier this year and was last seen in the lobby of a luxury hotel here in New York City.

He is wanted on charges of identity theft, money laundering, and engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity that robbed needy veterans of almost $100 million.

How much is missing?

$99 million.

Where was Bobby Thompson and his charity's missing millions?

The search for the man would only deepen the mystery.

Using facial recognition software on driver's license databases across the country, the U.S.

Marshals in Ohio uncovered a string of stolen identities used by the commander in nine different states.

There was Ronnie Britton, a 55-year-old disabled veteran who lived in New Mexico.

Ronnie had a driver's license featuring Commander Bobby Thompson's face.

It was issued by the state of Indiana in the early 2000s, a state where the real Ronnie Britton had never lived.

Elmer Dozier had an Indiana license with Thompson's photo as well.

Dozier was a Vietnam veteran and former police officer who suffered a heart attack and died in 1999 while chasing a suspect on foot in Tennessee.

Apparently, Thompson had used the deceased man's birth date and social security number to create a new identity for himself.

There was Thomas W.

Mader, a 63-year-old retired naval submarine captain who lived in California, but was also living and possibly voting in Florida unwittingly.

Thomas Mader's registered address in Florida pointed to the Ybor City duplex where Bobby Thompson lived and worked.

The same place another man named Morgan Cleveland from Arizona was also registered to vote.

Then, of course, there was Robert Thompson, a man in Cincinnati whose name and address had been attached to campaign contributions to various Ohio Republicans.

Not a chance, Mr.

Thompson told news station WCPO when asked if the donations came from him.

He can't be my twin.

They're looking for for a white guy.

If I do give my money away, I give it to a Democrat.

But not even that Robert Thompson in Cincinnati was the real Bobby Thompson.

The real Bobby Thompson, whose identity was stolen and used by the commander for over a decade, was a 65-year-old retiree that lived in Washington state.

He, like everyone else affected, had no idea that his information had been compromised.

But that's not the only thing the victims had in common.

Many of the commander's stolen identities belonged to people who lived or worked on Native American reservations at some point in their lives.

The real Bobby Thompson, for example, was a full-blooded Choctaw who had worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs for several decades.

Many of the stolen identities had connections to New Mexico where U.S.

Marshals thought the commander might have returned.

His face was plastered on billboards across the state, and the case was also featured on America's Most Wanted.

But so far, after a year and a half of searching, the commander had not turned up.

However, there were some promising leads.

Back in July 2010, shortly after he fled Tampa, the commander was spotted at an ATM in Boston, and there he had rented a P.O.

box using one of his stolen aliases.

Thompson was gone by the time authorities found it, but the mail kept coming.

And eventually, information about an apartment to rental in Providence, Rhode Island was delivered addressed to someone named Lance Martin.

Authorities found the real Lance Martin living in a Navajo community in New Mexico.

It was the commander's newest identity, but again, he remained one step ahead.

When the marshals arrived in Providence in February 2012, the commander was nowhere to be found.

His landlord did confirm from a photo that Lance Martin was the person they were looking for, but he had abandoned the property suddenly after three months without saying a word in March 2011, almost a year earlier.

and what he left behind was fascinating.

The commander had outfitted his apartment with a chapel, a podium, and pews.

There were religious artifacts on the wall, and electrical cables hanging from the ceiling.

Investigators theorized the fugitive was broadcasting some kind of church service over the internet as part of his newest charity, the Plymouth Rock Society of Christian Pilgrims.

The commander's former landlord also handed over a bag of belongings found in the apartment.

It included a pocketknife, camouflaged shorts, and beef jerky.

But most importantly, the landlord handed over the email address the commander had used to rent the place.

Soon after, the marshals discovered that that email address had also been used to sign up for a customer loyalty card at a Providence supermarket using the name Anderson Yazzie.

Like many of the commander's stolen identities, the real Anderson Yazzie lived on Navajo land in New Mexico.

But unlike many of the commander's stolen identities, the fake Anderson Yazzie had made a mistake.

Signing up for a membership rewards program to save a few bucks fit the commander's character profile to a T.

Despite presumably having access to millions of dollars, the frugal fugitive often shopped at Walmart, paid at homeless shelters, and always paid in cash.

Well, almost always.

The supermarket customer loyalty card stored the commander's purchase history.

The marshals found that, as Anderson Yazzie, he'd used the card to buy multiple prepaid debit cards, and they were able to access those purchase histories as well.

The most recent transactions had occurred at a convenience store a few weeks earlier in Portland, Oregon.

The U.S.

Marshals were closing the gap.

They immediately got on a plane.

When Deputy U.S.

Marshals Bill Bolden and Tony Gardner and Special Deputy Marshal Mike Caruso arrived in Portland on Monday, April 30th, 2012, they met with local authorities and they headed towards the northeast neighborhood where the commander's recent purchases were concentrated.

A clerk at the supermarket that the commander frequented confirmed seeing the fugitive less than 24 hours earlier and was able to share what he was wearing.

Within hours of landing, the marshals had closed the gap even further.

Their next stop was the commander's favorite watering hole, Biddy McGraw's Irish Pub.

When Deputy Marshal Bill Bolden entered alone, the place was basically empty except for two people sitting at the bar.

One, a lady who the Tampa Bay Times reports was double-fisting a tequila shot and coffee, and the other, an older man nursing a beer, wearing the exact outfit the store clerk had described.

Lo and behold, it was the commander, clean-shaven, walking with a cane, but unmistakably the commander.

Bill Bolden casually sat down next to him, gave a head nod, and texted the other members of the task force who waited outside.

It's him, Bolden wrote.

He's sitting right next to me.

The marshals chose not to take the commander into custody immediately because they wanted to find out where he was staying, and he would lead them there eventually, but not before a few pit stops.

When the commander left Biddy McGraw's, he hobbled to a nearby grocery store and sat down on one of those motorized carts, creating the potential for one of the slowest pursuits in law enforcement history.

Instead, the marshals held back and waited in the parking lot.

The commander exited the store with a bag of groceries and a money order for his rent, boarded a bus, and stopped at another bar.

The commander re-emerged around 10:30 p.m.

and started walking again.

Ten plainclothes officers tracked him at a safe distance.

When the commander reached the steps of his house, the cops rushed in.

Did you ever think you'd get caught?

Deputy Marshal Tony Gardner asked him.

Hope.

Spring's eternal, the commander replied.

We have shocked and surprised when we ran up on him, but

he was

living a lifestyle of always on the move and having all different identifications.

When asked his name, the commander invoked his constitutional right to remain silent.

Celia Moore, the landlady of the room where he had been living for $600 a month, divulged everything she knew about her Craigslist source tenant.

He told her his name was Kenneth Morset.

He was a retired Mountie, part Cree Indian, recently divorced after 35 years of marriage.

He told her he was hiding himself and his money.

from his ex-wife.

Kenneth Morset also shared with Celia Moore that he walked with a cane because he he had injured his knee kickboxing in the 80s.

He'd worked a day job as a security consultant for Boeing, even though he always smelled like he was at the bar drinking all day.

He'd also been spotted eating free meals at the homeless shelter within walking distance.

And he didn't own a car.

Kenneth Morset was a very conservative man, Celia Moore discovered.

He was a creationist, anti-government, libertarian.

A pleasure to talk to, though, she noted, if you avoided those topics.

Otherwise, a perfect roommate, except for the smell of Ben-Gay that overwhelmed the house every morning.

I did see a wad of cash one time.

He said he didn't like to use checks and paper because of the ex-wife.

What I learned, I now understand, were all lies.

In Kenneth Morset's room, the Marshals found packages of ramen and a recently purchased paper shredder.

There were eight pairs of non-prescription glasses.

and a DVD copy of Catch Me If You Can, starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

In his pockets were two bottles of eyedrops and three separate wallets.

Each one housed a resident alien card from Canada, one for Kenneth Morset, one for Anderson Yazzie, and one for Alan Rhys Lacey.

The Alan Lacey wallet also contained a business card for a local storage facility.

There was a unit number and an access code scrawled on the back.

At Rose City Storage the following morning, The authorities entered unit number 646.

Its only contents were two briefcases.

The first briefcase contained everything one could possibly need to steal the identities of dozens of people.

Birth certificates, credit reports, identification cards, etc.

The second briefcase was full of cash, mostly hundreds, bundled with hair ties and wrapped in newspaper from 2008.

The total was $981,650.

How much?

It's the motherboard.

This is, uh, we joked.

We said, hopefully this storage unit is the Bank of Bobby Thompson, and this is it.

We're talking these are mostly hundreds.

50s, 100s.

There's obviously a lot of 20s as well, but this is more money than I've ever seen in one spot.

The commander was extradited to Ohio three days after his arrest in Portland.

According to the Tampa Bay Times, Deputy Marshal Tony Gardner and Special Deputy Marshal Mike Caruso sandwiched the commander on the flight.

The marshals were working on a crossword puzzle in the N-Flight magazine when Caruso turned to the commander for help.

Hey, Bobby, what's another name for swindlers?

One of the nation's most elusive fugitives has been tracked down by federal marshals.

He's accused of running a phony veterans charity, bilking donors out of millions of dollars.

This is the man federal agents say has been using the name Bobby Thompson while operating the U.S.

Navy Veterans Association.

They're still trying to figure out his real name.

Thompson was arrested in Portland, Oregon last night following a nationwide search.

Pete Elliott, U.S.

Marshal from Northern Ohio, and Mike DeWine, Ohio's recently elected attorney general, jointly announced the discovery to the public that after nearly two years on the run, the man known as Bobby Thompson had been taken into custody.

We still don't know the true identity of the man known as Bobby Thompson, who has used the identity of several other people throughout the years.

But we commend the teamwork with our federal partners in this case.

This case sends a strong message that we will not tolerate scam artists in Ohio, Elliot said.

Back in Ohio, the commander refused to identify himself, and a state and federal fingerprint search yielded no results.

Authorities started referring to him as Mr.

X, which is what he signed on court documents.

Mr.

X, initially representing himself, refused even to share what level of education he had completed so as not to help reveal his true identity.

Your honor, that's with all due respect to the court, that's an identification question.

The state has alleged identity staff as part of the complaint.

I believe, Your Honor, that the state has the burden of proof as to that, Mr.

X told the judge.

We'll prosecute him by whatever name he's known as.

If he wants to go by the name Mr.

X, we'll prosecute him by the name of Mr.

X.

He is the individual that did the crime.

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A prosecutor says a former fugitive accused of operating a $100 million cross-country scam sold millions through ATM withdrawals and by writing checks to himself.

The man calls himself Bobby Thompson, but prosecutors say he is Harvard-trained lawyer and former military intelligence officer John Donald Cody.

Thank goodness for Google, U.S.

Marshal Peter Elliott said at a press conference on October 1st, 2012.

After four months in custody, a series of Google searches had finally helped positively identify the man, formerly known as the commander, Bobby Thompson.

Peter Elliott said he just started searching terms that might point him in the right direction.

Missing vets, major fraud fugitives, military fugitives.

Those searches ultimately led to an insider listicle article headlined, The 10 Most Intriguing White-Collar Fugitives.

And number two on that list was a man named John Donald Cody,

who says clickbait is worthless.

I began conducting Google searches, simple Google searches, on things I knew were similar to Thompson on the internet.

We always knew that there was a reason that Thompson signed his name as Mr.

X and did not want to be identified.

And we know now why.

I Googled such things as missing vets, fugitives from the military who were on the run, major fraud fugitives, etc., and a list of the 10 most wanted fraud fugitives came back.

It was then that I found an FBI-wanted

poster in the name of John Donald Cody

from 1987.

According to that FBI wanted poster from 1987, John Donald Cody was wanted for various fraud charges and wanted for questioning related to a federal espionage investigation.

The photos featured a man with an unusual pompadour-style haircut who looked strikingly similar to the commander.

Of course, this was pre-hair implants, plastic surgery, and dental work.

But still, the common features were uncanny, including but not limited to, the fact that the FBI poster noted that John Donald Cody was an avid user of eye drops, an unusual quirk shared by the commander, Bobby Thompson.

U.S.

Marshal Peter Elliott was convinced.

But they needed more substantial evidence, and luckily they found it.

John Donald Cody was a former military intelligence officer.

and his fingerprints were still on record with the military more than 40 years later.

The marshals requested a comparison.

It was a match.

Bobby Thompson and John Donald Cody were indeed one and the same.

And within the last 72 hours, we received from our friends at the FBI the evidence that we needed.

I spoke to the case agent in Washington, who had the military fingerprints of Cody from the Department of State in 1969.

and he sent those those over to us.

The Cuyahoga County Sheriff's Office to Sheriff Bob Reed and Captain Bova had a fingerprint examiner at our office awaiting those fingerprints.

They matched Cody and Thompson to being the same person.

John Donald Cody was the brilliant son of a bookkeeper and a bank teller in Hoboken, New Jersey.

He was president of his high school's honor society and debate team.

In the yearbook, he listed pizza and apple pie as some of his favorite things, but quote, not together.

John Donald Cody was an interesting fellow.

After high school, he joined the Army, but Cody's active service was deferred until he graduated from Harvard Law School in 1972.

He began practicing law in places like New York, Hawaii, and Louisiana, while reportedly serving as a military spy in places like Angola, the Congo, and the Philippines.

John Donald Cody ended his service when the U.S.

Army refused to promote him to the rank of major.

People who knew him theorized that this moment of disappointment triggered a change in the man, a change that revealed itself in Arizona.

John Donald Cody started his own law practice in Sierra Vista, Arizona.

He was the only Harvard-educated, multilingual, fiercely liberal Democrat lawyer to be found in the small town.

And that's not the only reason he stood out.

John Donald Cody wore bell bottoms a decade after they'd gone out of style.

He had this Elvis Presley pompadour that most assumed was a toupee.

His face was always always greased with petroleum jelly, and he was constantly pouring eye drops into his eyes because his tear ducts had reportedly been destroyed by radiation exposure in the Philippines.

None of these eccentricities affected Cody's performance in court though.

Most memorably, the lawyer got a man who had stabbed someone 20 plus times off death row by reason of insanity, and got another woman acquitted for self-defense.

after she had shot her boyfriend in the face while he was eating cereal.

But as the years passed, John Donald Cody became increasingly manic and difficult to deal with.

He'd accused prosecutors of wanting to kill him.

One time he smuggled hair dye into a client's jail cell so a witness couldn't identify him.

According to the St.

Petersburg Times, Cody started sleeping less and missing court dates.

He'd lock himself in his office and emerge with, quote, white powder on his nose.

Eventually, John Donald Cody found himself in trouble with the law.

In May 1984, he was scheduled to appear before a judge on contempt charges, but instead, he skipped town.

Before he left, Cody withdrew a little less than $100,000 from the estate trust of two women he was representing.

He sent flowers to his mother for Mother's Day, and no one, including his mother, ever saw him again.

John Donald Cody's blue Corvette was found later at the Phoenix airport.

The keys were in the ignition.

Authorities tracked him to Mexico immediately after, where the fugitive tried and failed to withdraw $48,000 from a bank in Juarez.

Cody resurfaced again in 1987, this time in Alexandria, Virginia.

He tried to obtain a $25,000 loan using the identities of former clients, but was denied.

And for those attempts, John Donald Cody was charged with fraud, but disappeared again before he was arrested.

And then the trail went cold.

A decade later, in 1997, he was presumed dead by his own mother, who believed the government wanted to, quote, make him disappear.

We now know that in 1998, John Donald Cody reappeared with a new name.

Bob Red Bear launched a new company, Totem Security, in Portland, Oregon.

He advertised job openings near Native American reservations in New Mexico.

Some of the men who applied included Kenneth Morset, Anderson Yazzie, and Alan Rhys-Lacey.

Bob Red Bear, aka John Donald Cody, would save those men's information to use at a later date.

In August 1998, Bobby Charles Thompson registered to vote in Tampa, Florida.

In July 2002, he was listed as the founding director of the United States Navy Veterans Association on its tax-exempt application.

And in September 2013, the commander would stand trial for some of his crimes, though he still would not admit that John Donald Cody was his real name.

This is his defense attorney, Joseph Patatouce.

I can actually tell you with all honesty, his name is Bobby Charles Thompson as of today.

During opening statements, the prosecution told the jury that John Donald Cody, or Bobby Thompson, was, quote, simply a thief who could not tell the truth.

That patriotism, deception, and greed paved the way for a massive charitable fraud.

Cody's defense disagreed with that assessment.

There was no deception, Patatouce claimed, because the commander was upfront about the organization's lobbying efforts, and he hadn't fled or run from anything.

He was just job hopping.

I don't believe he was actually on the run at all.

I think he was going from one job to the next.

And when I say job, I don't mean that in a criminal sense.

In fact, his client's charity was far from a criminal operation, and they would prove it, Patatouce promised.

The United States Navy Veterans Association was actually part of a secret CIA operation to promote America's military interest and curry political favor.

The commander was merely a government agent, or quite possibly, the victim of some kind of MK Ultra brainwashing experiment.

This is according to the commander himself, who filed more than 100 handwritten documents to the court detailing the conspiracy.

John Donald Cody's trial lasted six weeks and featured 17 days of testimony from 42 witnesses, including the real Bobby Thompson and other people whose identities he had stolen.

Not appearing on the stand were any of the politicians who accepted the commander's money.

People like George W.

Bush and John Boehner were subpoenaed, but Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine, who had also received campaign contributions from NAVPAC, made those subpoenas disappear, deciding that the commander's political generosity was, quote, kind of a sidebar to the scam that wasn't really an essential part of proving the elements of the crime of him taking the money.

Right, because the motive of a crime is never important.

George W.

Bush may have not testified at John Donald Cody's trial, but he did make an appearance.

The coffee mugs that the commander had printed, featuring the photo of himself chumming it up with the former president, were entered into evidence.

The prosecution then fashioned those coffee mugs into pencil holders for the remainder of the trial.

Another person who did not testify was John Donald Cody himself.

The day before he was scheduled to take the stand, a loud thumping could be heard coming from a room adjacent to the courtroom.

The next day, it was revealed that the thumping was John Donald Cody slamming his head against the concrete wall of his holding cell in an apparent suicide attempt.

Absolutely, his mental health deteriorated.

If you look at his forehead, he has actually an indentation in his forehead from when he

was banging his head off the wall.

So, I mean, there's some mental health issues there, certainly.

The next time the commander appeared in court, those mental health issues were on full display.

Or was it a calculated performance?

Either way, disheveled is an understatement.

His tie was missing.

His white shirt was almost completely unbuttoned, revealing his chest and stomach.

His hair was a greasy mess.

Judge Stephen Gaul scolded him like a child.

Mr.

Thompson, you are going to button up your shirt and clean up your hair right now.

You're not going to appear before a jury like that.

The prosecution rested its case.

On November 14th, 2013, after only three hours of deliberation, the jury found John Donald Cody, aka Bobby Thompson, guilty of 23 charges, including identity theft and money laundering.

On December 16, 2013, the 66-year-old was sentenced to 28 years in prison and fined $6 million.

The judge also ordered John Donald Cody to spend every Veterans Day during his prison stint in solitary confinement.

To date, according to Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine, Nearly $1 million seized from John Donald Cody has been redistributed to legitimate veterans organizations, including $10,000 cash that his former Portland landlady later found stashed in the wheel wells of a suitcase he left behind.

It is difficult to try to measure the amount of harm your greed has caused, Judge Gall told the commander.

All the worthy organizations that count on small donations from good citizens to help further their cause, they are now struggling for money because people are afraid to give.

Before his sentence was handed down, John Donald Cody addressed the court.

I understand what the court is doing by referring to me as Mr.

Cody, he said.

But Bobby Charles Thompson is my name.

A judge in Cleveland hands down a prison sentence to a Harvard law grad who used a bogus charity to cheat veterans out of millions.

The man who calls himself Bobby Thompson received a 28-year sentence this morning.

He must also spend each veteran's day in solitary confinement.

Prosecutors say he's actually John Donald Cody.

They say Cody took money from the fake charity he ran called the United States Navy Veterans Association, and he cheated $100 million out of donors in 41 states.

In June 2015, John Donald Cody's sentence was reduced by a year related to 11 counts of identity fraud, which an appeals court ruled the Cuyahoga Common Pleas Court had no jurisdiction to consider.

The judge also overturned the punishment of having to serve every Veterans Day in solitary confinement.

All further appeals from John Donald Cody have been denied.

If he lives to serve his full penalty, the commander will be released from prison at age 91.

The last we heard from John Donald Cody came courtesy of Jodi Andes, who worked at the Columbus Dispatch.

She interviewed the commander in prison at least a dozen times for a book she wrote about the case called Master of Deceit.

Apparently, the former head of the U.S.

Navy's Veterans Association still has money on his mind.

Someone had told him about the book that it was available for $17, Andes revealed in a Q ⁇ A with her former newspaper.

He was angry.

He said his story is worth more than $17.

Swindled is written, researched, produced, and hosted by me, a concerned citizen, with original music by Trevor Howard, aka DeFormer, aka Boats Wrinkles.

For more information about Swindled, you can visit swindledpodcast.com and follow us at Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok at SwindledPodcast.

Or you can send us a postcard at PO Box6044-AUSIN, Texas, 78762.

But please, no packages.

We do not trust you.

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And we plan to keep it that way, but we need your support.

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