Justice catches up to ex-Ariz. lawyer

In 1984, a small-town Arizona lawyer vanished in a blue Corvette with $100,000 of his clients' money. He resurfaced nearly 30 years later as "Mr. X," the mastermind behind a $100million veterans charity fraud that bilked donors across the country.

The bizarre case of John Donald Cody ended in an Ohio courtroom last week when a judge ordered the 66-year-old, Harvard-educated former lawyer to 28 years in prison, effectively giving him a life sentence.

Cody was prosecuted under the name Bobby Thompson, an alias he adopted in Florida as director of a bogus charity called the United States Veterans Association. A jury last month found him guilty of racketeering, money laundering and identity theft.

As Thompson, Cody built a fake, 80-year history for the charity, fabricated an 84-member board of directors and used his financial support of Republican campaigns to circulate among top U.S. lawmakers. He was photographed in different settings with U.S. Sen. John McCain of Arizona, U.S. House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio and former President George W. Bush.

Authorities said Cody used his credentials as a former military officer to solicit contributions that rarely went to help veterans and more often went for his personal use. He went on the run in 2010 after an investigation by the Tampa Bay Times, which raised questions about $22million in unaccounted-for annual revenue, among other things.

He led authorities on a nearly two-year chase from Ohio to Arizona, West Virginia, New Mexico, Rhode Island and Oregon. He was featured on the "America's Most Wanted" television show, profiled on a white-collar crime website, and the U.S. Marshals Service posted his face on billboards.

The Ohio attorney general was the first to go after him in 2010. Eight other states subsequently issued warrants for the arrest of Thompson on fraud-related charges.

When U.S. marshals found him in a Portland boardinghouse, he was using another assumed name, carrying six fake identities and had $1 million in cash stashed in a rented storage shed.

Authorities said Thompson was clearly an alias, but he refused to cooperate about his true identity. A state and federal fingerprint search yielded no hits, so they dubbed him Mr. X.

Military fingerprint records ultimately gave authorities Mr. X's name and helped them piece together a 30-year time line of fraud and flight beginning in Sierra Vista, where he had a law practice in the 1980s.

Cody, who was born in Hoboken, N.J., in 1947, served in the Army as a captain in military intelligence. He graduated from the University of Virginia in 1969 and earned a law degree from Harvard Law School in 1972. In 1980, Cody moved to Sierra Vista, where he opened a law office and quickly earned a reputation as an aggressive defense attorney willing to take on cases for indigents.

According to records and interviews filed with the Arizona Supreme Court, on the morning of his disappearance, Cody was scheduled to appear before a judge on contempt charges. Instead, he instructed employees to destroy his receipt book, withdrew about $100,000 from a client's trust account and bought traveler's checks from local banks.

He drove to Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, ditched his Corvette with the keys still in the ignition and headed to Mexico, where authorities said he tried to withdraw $48,000 from a bank in Juarez. There the trail went cold.

In 1985, a panel of the Arizona Supreme Court justices found Cody guilty of 11 conduct violations, including "embezzled funds and abandoned clients."

In 1987, three years after Cody disappeared, a federal warrant was issued for his arrest out of Virginia on fraud charges. He was accused of making false statements to a Virginia bank to obtain a $25,000 loan and of illegally attempting to obtain other loans under various aliases. The arrest warrant also said Cody was wanted by the FBI for questioning in an espionage case. Authorities have refused to discuss the espionage case, which last year they described as "ongoing."

During his trial last month, Cody appeared disheveled and erratic. Although Cody was expected to take the stand in his defense, he never testified. According to media reports, Cody claimed the charity was a CIA front to promote America's military interests and that it was backed by the Republican Party and the White House.

The judge fined Cody $6.3million and ordered him to pay about $330,000 for court costs.

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

Robert Anglen and Veronica Sanchez lead the Call 12 for Action team. Reach the reporter at robert.anglen@arizonarepublic.com, Facebook and Twitter: @robertanglen.

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