All language subtitles for American Greed s08e13 Hail to the Thief

In this episode of American Greed, hail
to the thief, Commander Bobby Thompson.

This story went from a dilapidated, run
-down duplex all the way to the White

House. Thompson's a Harvard -educated
lawyer claiming to run a $100 million

charity for veterans.

This organization had collected millions
of dollars promising to give that to

veterans who needed it, and in turn,
doing far from that.

Veterans get pennies, and the commander
uses the proceeds as a political slush

fund. Is it just politics as usual, or
is there something deeper going on? I

still don't know the answer. When his
crime is uncovered, Thompson dares

investigators to find out where he is
and who he is.

We thought we were chasing Jason Bourne.
The guy was a ghost.

I can't help but wonder, who is this
man?

He's a man who thinks he can remain a
fugitive forever using his own

intelligence training and other people's
money.

It's the mother load. More money than
I've ever seen in one spot.

April 16th, 2012.

Security cameras roll, capturing a man
as he enters a storage facility in

Portland, Oregon.

He was once an intelligence officer, a
master of disguise, who felt at home in

the corridors of power.

Now beaten down after decades on the
run, his life is a tangle of lies, and

step is a struggle.

He's on his way to Locker 646, where he
stashed the secrets to his very

survival.

To authorities, he's known as Mr. X, a
fitting name for a man cloaked in

mystery.

The mystery has not been unraveled.

It might be stranger than what we
already know.

Dr. Patrick Bray knows that service to
country involves great sacrifice.

The Navy paid for him to go to medical
school and sent him all over the world.

As a Navy doctor, I know firsthand some
of the hardships that this works on

people. You know, it's tough to be
deployed if your wife's pregnant and

not going to be there and they're having
troubles at home. It's difficult.

After leaving the military, Bray
practices medicine in Cleveland, Ohio.

In 2007, he gets a call from a
fundraiser.

I'm usually hanging up right away on a
telemarketer, but he said Navy, and that

kept me on the phone.

Representatives of a charity called the
U .S. Navy Veterans Association tell

Bray they're sending care packages to
troops and supporting local vets in

They aren't asking for much, and Bray
writes them two checks totaling $300.

Just the name was, you know, sounded
legitimate.

U .S. Navy veterans.

Who's against that?

As Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine
will later see, Bray is just one target

among thousands in a relentless
telemarketing blitz.

I think most Americans have a soft spot
in their heart for veterans and feel

that we owe them.

A lot.

Claiming a history dating back to 1927,
the U .S. Navy Veterans Association, or

USNVA, says it has 66 ,000 members, 41
state chapter offices,

and a headquarters in Washington, D .C.

Its CEO, Jack Nimitz, shares a last name
with Chester Nimitz, commander of the

Pacific Fleet during World War II.

In Ohio, Assistant Attorney General Brad
Tamero says the U .S. NBA seems like

the right organization at the right
moment.

I think at this time in our history,
there is a strong patriotic feeling.

There's a strong desire to help the
veterans that are coming back from

Afghanistan and Iraq.

The charity has been recognized by the
Department of Veterans Affairs and

granted tax -exempt status by the IRS.

41 states allow the association to
operate after it files registration

and keeps them current year after year.

Though these papers list scores of
officers, in truth, one man is behind it

Commander Bobby Thompson.

Thompson says he's a retired Navy
lieutenant commander with a background

intelligence.

He hires Helen McMurray to be the U .S.
NBA's attorney.

And she believes in him 100%. No one
loved this country more than he did. No

was a greater patriot. No one talked
more about liberty and freedom and his

appreciation for it than him.

The charity touts an 80 -year history.
But Thompson first files registration

documents in the early 2000s, not long
after showing up in Tampa, Florida.

When he first started off, there wasn't
a whole lot of money coming in.

and he was doing everything by himself.

And it wasn't until he hired those
professional fundraisers that things

seemed to take off.

The telemarketing firms Thompson hires
will eventually help his charity bring

millions.

They are allowed to pocket an astounding
85 % of what they raise, and they don't

ask many questions about Commander
Thompson.

If you want to look at it with a
jaundiced eye, so to speak, you could

were being paid a lot of money to do
what they were doing.

They asked a question. They got an
answer. The answer seemed legitimate,

they didn't dig any deeper.

As a former Ohio assistant attorney
general, McMurray once went after

cheats. Now she works for nonprofits and
telemarketers, helping them to clear

regulatory hurdles.

Bobby Thompson called me up, and he said
that, you know, these gosh darn

regulators just keep trying to tell me
what to do.

He was the most passionate person I have
ever heard talk about these issues on

anything with anybody ever.

I mean, when you're paying a lawyer
hourly, you don't sit there and talk for

hours and hours.

And that's what he did.

McMurray says she's not the only one to
hear the commander's self -serving, anti

-regulatory message.

He regularly interacted with different
important political people.

You know, the same message is that, you
know, we should be able to do what we

want whenever we want to do it, however
we want to do it. That's our right.

As the U .S. NBA grows into a
multimillion -dollar operation, Thompson

big -time donor to politicians, most of
them Republicans.

The commander has his photo taken with
presidential candidates John McCain and

Rudolph Giuliani, Speaker of the House
John Boehner, presidential advisor Karl

Rove, and President George W. Bush.

He's not afraid to share these pictures
with others.

He was trying to show he was a big shot,
that he had a lot of pull with people

due to his position with the USNBA.

By 2009, tax returns say the U .S. Navy
Veterans Association has brought in

close to $100 million.

It was a money -making business.

He had money coming in hand over fist.

If he had not had that altercation with
the reporter, he would have kept taking

the money.

Journalists ask, who is the man behind
this money -making organization?

There wasn't anything.

He might as well have landed in Tampa on
a spaceship from Mars.

In August 2009, investigative reporter
Jeff Testerman is on his way to see

Thompson about a donation he's made to a
local politician in Tampa, Florida.

My expectation was that I would talk to
this retired Navy guy.

And I'd have a nice quote for the, you
know, the bottom of my story, you know,

about this county commissioner.

It didn't go like that at all.

When Testerman gets to the commander's
home, it hardly seems a fitting place

a retired Navy officer running a
multimillion -dollar charity.

He was stuck in a hole across from a
cigar factory with barbed wire around

If you're looking to kind of keep a low
profile, no better place.

Thompson has his apartment on one side
of his duplex and the office from which

he runs his charity on the other.

His windows are covered with an odd mix
of stickers.

Inside, he scrawls bizarre messages on
nailed -up boards.

And in the kitchen, he's said to keep
tequila by the case full.

This guy was no dummy.

And yet, the place he's living is a
dump.

He might have a little bit of a screw
loose, you know.

He became openly hostile, aggressive.

He basically threw me off his property.

Intrigued, Testerman returns to his
office and discusses the strange

with the newspaper's head researcher,
John Martin.

I said, you know, I just went over to
see this guy.

And this Lieutenant Commander Bobby
Thompson was just all over me, like a

vulture on roadkill.

You know, what do you think?

They think it's time to dig deeper and
begin by looking at the association's at

times rambling website.

Among 85 names they find connected to
the charity, one sticks out, that of the

association's listed CEO.

Jack Nemeth, this famous Navy name.

let's find him, you know, let's call him
and find out what's going on.

And Jack Nemes was nowhere to be found.

Over the next few months, they continue
searching and get similar results.

They were supposed to have a board of 12
people. They were supposed to have 85

officers in state chapters around the
country.

They were supposed to have 66 ,000 dues
-paying members.

We never found anything except Bobby
Thompson.

But even information on Commander
Thompson is elusive. He's like a man

past. The sort of background that real
people, people like me, have, there

wasn't anything.

He might as well have landed in Tampa on
a spaceship from Mars.

Testerman discovers that the purported
Navy lieutenant commander has no

record. He's not the only one finding
inconsistencies.

At a breakfast meeting, attorney Helen
McMurray asks Thompson about holes in

record, and he offers a surprising
explanation.

The reason why he didn't have any
current information on file was because

actually working for the CIA, except it
was black ops.

and that this was a continuation of his
military intelligence days and had to

kind of remain somewhat invisible.

His lawyer doesn't know what to make of
the early morning confession.

Considering he was finishing up his
fourth Bloody Mary by the time he

the story, I didn't really think much of
it.

But he had so many connections that
worked out. It made a little bit of

In their reporting, Testerman and Martin
dig into these connections.

They see that while Thompson lives in
poverty, he has donated hundreds of

thousands of dollars to various
politicians.

The reporters wonder what they've
stumbled upon and come up with three

First, Thompson is a lone wolf on the
run from the law who created the

association in order to survive.

Second, the professional fundraisers are
really in charge, and Thompson works

for them.

And the third theory was, is Thompson
the tool of a pretty much right -wing

group? I mean, sort of right of the Tea
Party. We, to this day, I don't know

which theory is actually the correct
one.

Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine
received $1 ,000 from Thompson in 2006.

He offers a simpler explanation for the
con man's seemingly high -profile

connections.

I'm sure the president of the United
States had no idea who this guy was.

It was probably at a fundraiser where
he'd given some money.

Both parties do that. It's not unusual.

And it's just kind of the nature of, you
know, politics is you have to raise a

lot of money.

In March 2010, after seven months of
investigating, the St. Petersburg Times

publishes a series of articles about
Thompson's Navy vet scam.

Weeks later, a number of states across
the country open investigations.

Frying eyes are turning Thompson's
criminal world upside down, threatening

expose the true story of his hidden
past.

Next on American Greed, a U .S.
Marshal's worst nightmare, tracking an

-intelligence officer who goes
underground.

Every single lead that we uncovered just
led to another false identity. This was

somebody who was highly trained and
highly experienced.

For years, Bobby Thompson has been
running a fake veterans charity from

rundown duplex in Tampa, Florida.

He's been aided by professional
telemarketers who make millions by

for money and asking the commander very
little about the charity.

Now, a series of articles has finally
forced them to dig deeper.

In June 2010, one telemarketer calls
Thompson to Manhattan to give him the

chance to prove there's more to the
charity than just him.

The articles say there are no managers
of this organization, there's no

officers, there's no trustees.

Okay, produce them.

Miraculously, Thompson brings two
supposed board members with him.

But there's a problem.

They were appointed just days earlier.

The super -reported new board member
made everybody feel even worse than they

were before.

And so the next morning we got a
communication from the attorney, and

we're done.

And I never heard from Bobby Thompson
ever again.

Since starting the U .S. NBA,
prosecutors say Thompson has siphoned

approximately $3 million meant for
veterans.

After the ill -fated meetings in New
York, the commander begins hitting ATMs.

Then he heads up the coast to Boston,
Massachusetts.

While trying to stay ahead of
investigators, he hardly seems

After he went on the run, he started out
trying to create new charities.

He created an organization on paper
called the Plymouth Rock Society, and he

created an organization called Quakers
Penn's Landing, both of them religious

organizations.

In Ohio, donors handed over millions to
Thompson's fake charity.

And in October 2010, authorities there
indict him on charges of racketeering,

money laundering, and theft.

But Thompson is nowhere to be found, and
putting him in cuffs won't be easy.

Normally when we get a fugitive case, a
police agency comes to us and says, go

find this person. Well, in this case,
they said, go find a person. We don't

who he is.

It turns out that the name Bobby
Thompson is nothing more than a stolen

identity.

Bill Bolden leads a team of U .S.
Marshals from Cleveland, Ohio, after

on the hunt for the mystery man in late
2011.

They begin their search with three
stolen identities their fugitive has

Bobby Thompson, Elmer Dozier, and Ronnie
Britton.

As they dig deeper, this list grows
longer.

We would uncover an identity, and that
would lead us to another identity. And

we'd try to investigate that identity,
and it would overlap with another

identity. We thought we were chasing
Jason Bourne. The guy was a ghost.

Many of these identities were stolen
from Native Americans living on the

reservations of the Southwest.

What's more, some were set up years
before Thompson's crime came to light.

Marshals realize they're not dealing
with a regular fugitive.

Well, he's good at what he is doing.

He knew how to cover his tracks.

Obviously, he was trained, or he trained
himself to be very good at hiding from

the law.

Eventually, the search leads marshals to
an apartment their fugitive has rented

in Providence, Rhode Island.

Though the commander has already skipped
town, the team hunting him learns

another name he's using,

Anderson Yazzie.

There was only one Anderson Yazzie in
the country. That identity was so unique

that it was very, very easy for us to
track.

Next on American Greed, investigators
zero in and make a crucial discovery.

In early 2012, a man with a limp shows
up in Portland, Oregon, where he finds a

room in Celia Moore's boarding house.

He told me his name was Kenneth Don
Morissette.

And he said, don't call me Ken. My mom
called me Kenny when I was growing up,

and I don't like it. Just call me Don.

Morissette claims to be a retired cop
and a consultant for the Boeing company.

Often working on a computer in his room,
Moore says he was an ideal tenant, as

long as she avoided one topic of
conversation.

Well, his politics were very, very far
right -wing, and he said he was a

creationist, and just very far right.

Morissette lives quite frugally, taking
some meals at a homeless shelter, and

existing on Pepsi, string cheese,
burritos, and ramen noodles.

It's an amazing amount of lunches, like
a man who was going to stay for a while.

I thought he was staying a while.

Outside the house, Morissette spends
time visiting a rented storage locker.

Well, he mentioned that he'd been
married for 35 years and that it was a

ugly divorce and that he didn't want his
wife to know.

where he was.

That if she found him, she would take
his money away.

Now I realize that he was worried that
the U .S. government would find him, not

his wife.

Not far from Moore's home, Morissette
makes credit card purchases under the

that U .S. Marshals have keyed in on,
Anderson Yazzie.

On the night of April 30th, 2012, it's
been two years since reporters exposed

Commander Bobby Thompson's veterans
charity as a scam.

That night, he sits down at Biddy
McGraw's Irish pub on Portland's

side.

Sitting next to him is someone who has
just arrived in town.

It's one of the men tracking the scam
artist, Deputy U .S. Marshal Bill

Hoping to find clues inside their
fugitive's home, they wait and follow

Slowly. We were not going to arrest him
right away.

We wanted to find out, number one, who
he really was, and we were looking for

what we were calling the bank of Bobby
Thompson.

As he approaches his front door at 10
.30 p .m., marshals cuff him.

They finally caught the man who reeled
in millions claiming to help those in

uniform. But who is he?

We asked him his name. Sir, what is your
name?

His response was, I invoke my Fifth
Amendment rights. I'm not going to tell

my name.

Though their shadowy figure is tight
-lipped, he's carrying three separate

wallets, each containing a fully fleshed
-out identity.

In one, they find a business card for a
storage facility with a unit number

written on it.

The marshals head there, not sure of
what they'll find.

Inside, they see two suitcases.

This is stacks of birth certificates.

One contains a virtual workshop of fake
ID material.

And

inside

the second bag?

Oh, my God.

Oh, 100.

These are 100.

How much?

It's the mother load. This is, uh, we
joked. We said hopefully this storage

is the bank of Bobby Thompson.

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 team takes the loot to a secure
location, running it through cash

anxiously waiting for the final tally.

$2 ,800.

$2 ,800?

Yeah.

$981 ,650.

It's just under a mil.

It's a huge haul.

But it's just a fraction of the millions
that prosecutors will later say the

commander pocketed.

Across town, landlord Celia Moore makes
one more interesting discovery in her

tenant's rented room.

A DVD of the film Catch Me If You Can.

He thought he was like the guy in the
movie, and nobody was ever going to

him, and he was going to keep going and
doing what he was doing. Because with a

million dollars, he could have
disappeared across the border the next

But instead, he was staying and doing it
all over again.

The marshals prove they can catch their
man.

But when they lock him up in Ohio, where
he's facing state charges related to

the USNBA scam, he still refuses to say
who he is.

and signs his name with an X.

Pete Elliott, U .S. Marshal for the
Northern District of Ohio, isn't too

concerned. I thought for sure we were
going to find out his true identity once

we put his fingerprints in the national
system.

But it's not that easy.

When they search for fingerprint
matches, nothing comes up in the U .S.,

or through Interpol.

I've been in law enforcement 30 years,
and I've never seen that before.

We had no clue who Mr. X was.

For five months, Mr. X sits in a cell,
leaving Elliot and others wondering who

he is.

I always felt that Bobby Thompson was
probably somebody that did a similar

in the past, but was never arrested for
it, because if he was arrested, his

fingerprints would have been in our
national system.

To check this theory, in September 2012,

Elliot fires up his computer.

I started Googling missing Navy vets,
most wanted military fugitives,

and also most wanted fraud fugitives.

What he finds is a story that would be
unbelievable were it not true.

Next on American Greed, his past catches
up to him. Mr. X's true identity

revealed. He just was strange.

And it only got stranger as the
conversation went on.

When Marshal Pete Elliott starts
searching for the true identity of Mr.

X, he has no idea that the story of the
Navy Vets charity scam is about to

become even more bizarre.

Among the results he finds is a wanted
poster for a fraud fugitive from the

1980s named John Donald Cody.

So the first thing that popped out to me
was a picture on the far left -hand

side of John Donald Cody from 1980, and
he had a pompadour hairstyle.

And Bobby Thompson from 1990s and 2000s,
he has a pompadour

hairstyle.

Elliot notes other similarities between
the man on the wanted poster, Cody, and

the man in custody, Thompson.

The fugitive, Cody, has no tear glands.

Thompson leaves bottles of eye drops in
his room in Portland.

Cody is a former Army intelligence
captain.

Thompson claims to be a Navy
intelligence lieutenant commander.

Cody has a Harvard law degree.

Thompson is taking an active role
defending himself in the Navy veterans

Give us a breakdown, Mr. Britton, of
what you were doing in 1997.

So all these things started adding up,
but nothing's exact.

I could be as right as I could be wrong.

To prove that the man arrested for
stealing millions is actually John

Cody, Elliott needs his fingerprints.

When he calls an FBI agent working
Cody's old case, he learns that the

has a set of his prints that were never
entered into the national database.

I don't know why they were not in the
national system. The bottom line is, if

they were in the national system, then
we wouldn't have spent five months

to identify who he really was.

When Elliott receives a copy, he has
them triple -checked against Mr.

X's prints.

Then he pays the Navy vet scammer a
visit in his cell.

I go, we uncovered who you are, John
Donald Cody.

And he just looked at me with a smile on
his face.

And that was it.

Elliot has figured out the mystery man's
true identity.

But how Captain Cody became Commander
Thompson is a story that still leaves

guessing.

While many of his classmates protested
the Vietnam War, John Donald Cody

followed the call of duty.

When he graduated from Harvard Law
School in 1972, Cody was a reserve army

officer with a specialty in military
intelligence and a top -secret

He was intelligent.

He had all the opportunity he could
want.

It seemed like everything would have
been on the up and up for him.

Cody's military records show him working
civilian jobs at a variety of top

-notch law firms in the early 1970s.

They also include an offer letter from
1974 for a job with an obscure Defense

Department office in Washington, D .C.

Cody and a person once listed publicly
as an employee of the office say it was

cover for CIA agents.

Cody will later say he worked for the
agency starting in 1972.

The CIA declined to comment on his
claim.

Whether he ever had any contact with the
CIA, I have no clue. There's just no

way for us to know that.

In 1977, Cody's records say he's in the
Philippines attending graduate school.

In 1979, the year he leaves, his
employer is listed as U .S. Government

Classified.

That same year, he returns to the U .S.
and sets up his own law firm in an

unlikely place,

Sierra Vista, Arizona.

It's a dusty town along the Mexican
border and is home to an Army

base where Cody once trained.

In Sierra Vista, he befriends Terry
Sariso, who gets to know him as a

liberal Democrat.

He had a picture of Bobby Kennedy on the
wall behind his chair in his office.

He wanted equality for people, and he
was willing to fight for it.

One of Cody's secretaries, Diane
Shaughnessy, says this philosophy

to the way he treats his clients, many
of them indigents.

Important. One was not better than the
other.

And he fought hard for everybody.

Representing clients in both criminal
and civil matters, Cody racks up many

courtroom victories.

While Cody has his law office, as a
reservist, records say he also does part

-time legal duty at the intelligence
base in town.

Performance reviews from 1980 call him a
superior officer.

with a high degree of integrity.

This is a far cry from the Cody that
former prosecutor Dennis Lusk knows

the same time.

Honesty meant nothing to him.

Ethics meant nothing to him. Candor to
the court meant nothing to him if it

meant getting ahead with his clients.

Here at the Bisbee Courthouse, Lusk
prosecutes many of Cody's clients.

He says Cody viewed him and other
prosecutors through a distorted lens.

No matter how routine the case was, it
was the worst case of prosecutorial

misconduct and overstepping, and we were
trying to stomp him under the Nazi

boot. And that was a term he used fairly
frequently over the course of time that

I knew him.

In legal filings on behalf of his
clients, Cody seems at times unhinged.

Signed with a strange scrawl, he
references Adolf Hitler and compares

KGB agent.

As time went on, he seemed more and more
radical, almost to the point of being

an anarchist.

Cody lives at this simple apartment
complex, and over the years, friends

he's growing increasingly paranoid.

In 1981, he tells a reporter he fears
prosecutors may be trying to kill him.

Did he have personality disorder?

I don't know.

In late May 1984, Cody meets Sariso at
the Sari Gulch Saloon and tells her

he's involved in a secret mission.

There were a lot of drugs coming in
across the border.

He felt there were official people who
were perpetuating it, and he wanted to

bring them down.

But he said, if I can't accomplish this,
I will have to disappear.

On May 21, 1984, Cody says he's leaving
town on unexpected business.

I had no idea that this would be the
last day that I would ever see or hear

him.

I was perplexed. I thought John was
trying to do something good, and it went

bad.

But in the days to come, another story
will come out.

At the Bisbee Courthouse, Cody has been
held in contempt after he allegedly lied

to a judge.

He has skipped town with nearly $100
,000 stolen from his clients and left

Corvette at the Phoenix Airport,
unlocked with the keys in the ignition.

In 1987, Cody is indicted on federal
fraud charges related to the theft from

clients in Arizona.

The FBI poster that Pete Elliott will
eventually find says Cody is also wanted

for questioning in an espionage
investigation.

The FBI tells American Greed that
national security precludes them from

about Cody's case.

So what made Cody run?

Prosecutors in Ohio say his advancement
in the Army Reserves was not going as he

might have hoped.

But a definitive cause remains elusive.

There's nothing in his military records
that indicates anything right off the

bat that would say this happened and
therefore he's gone.

And that's the big question mark.

It's not the only one.

After leaving Arizona in 1984, Cody
remains underground until he emerges in

Florida in 1998 as the highly connected
Commander Bobby Thompson.

There's a big block of time where no one
has been able to determine what

Thompson was doing in that 15 -year
period.

How did he feel so comfortable walking
into the White House while he was an FBI

wanted fugitive?

I still think there's a lot about John
Donald Cody that we just do not know.

Next on American Greed, from his jail
cell, Cody offers up an intriguing

explanation for his Navy vet crime.

How did I drop into a Tom Clancy novel?

I mean, that's what came to my mind.

As John Donald Cody heads to trial for
running the Navy Vets charity scam, he

digs into his past as a Harvard -trained
lawyer, filing scores of handwritten

motions.

In these, he says that he worked for the
CIA beginning in the 1970s, that the

agency subjected him to hypnosis and
psychotropic drug treatment.

and even claims that until 2012, he was
working for them as a non -official

cover officer.

We can't say whether he was a CIA agent
or whether he never was a CIA agent.

According to the record, he was a
lawyer, and that's what he was.

That's what the records say.

While running his fake charity, Cody
donated hundreds of thousands of dollars

politicians.

He claims the U .S. Navy Veterans
Association was not a criminal

a U .S. intelligence community, White
House, and Republican Party manipulated

operation.

I was taking orders.

Higher -ups were telling me to do this,
and I was, you know, following orders

and this sort of thing. He put that out
there.

Attorney Helen McMurray remembers that
breakfast meeting when Cody downed

multiple Bloody Marys and told her the
association was tied to the CIA.

She still wonders if his story is one
she can dismiss 100%. I can't.

And quite frankly, the fact that when
they arrested him and his fingerprints

not turn up in any database, it really
makes you question.

But prosecutors see it another way.

It sort of goes against what would be in
the, I would guess, the spy 101 manual

to say I'm a super secret spy.

But by the way, here's a picture of me
shaking hands with the president of the

United States.

What's more, they say Cody's cloak and
dagger justification for running his

charity is a moot point.

Even if he would have been the James
Bond of Ohio.

There's no exemptions that allow a
federal officer of any kind to come into

state of Ohio or any other state and
break state laws at their own will or at

the command of someone else.

In September 2013, Thompson's Navy Vets
charity fraud trial gets underway here

at the Cuyahoga County Courthouse in
Cleveland, Ohio.

In his opening statement, Cody's
attorney, Joseph Patatus, hints at a

involving Cody's claimed CIA career.

You're going to have to ask yourself,
how does he get that close to the

president of the United States?

The prosecution presents its case first
and calls 42 witnesses.

As they finish, things turn strange.

Those in the courtroom hear the
defendant in a nearby holding cell

head against a wall.

Days later, he shows up looking
disheveled.

The magnitude of the evidence that was
presented against him was coming home.

It was a ploy for a mistrial, again to
try to manipulate the system.

After months of hitting on a defense
involving his claimed CIA career, Cody

refuses to testify, and his lawyer calls
no witnesses in his defense.

I think he didn't have any defense.

There was nothing that he really could
say.

Once you take the stand, you open
yourself up for all kinds of cross

-examination.

The jury needs only three hours before
they find Cody guilty of racketeering,

theft, money laundering, and identity
fraud charges.

One month later, Judge Stephen Gall
sentences him to 28 years in prison.

He also orders the one -time Army
captain to spend every Veterans Day in

solitary confinement.

Now, Cody sits here at an Ohio prison
where he could spend the rest of his

To this day, many are left with
questions about Cody's past, about his

to hide in plain sight, and about his
reason for stealing millions while

a life of poverty.

The game was what it was all about to
him.

The ability to walk into the White House
with a fake ID.

knowing that he was already a fugitive
when he did that.

One thing about John Donald Cody, he
always has to be the smartest guy in the

room, no matter what room he is in. He
may have been the smartest person in the

room most of the time, but somewhere
along the line, he got twisted, he got

turned, and just dropped off the deep
end.

And when he dropped off the deep end, he
went full bore.

This story went from a dilapidated, run
-down duplex, and it went all the way to

the White House.

What's going on here?

I still don't know the answer.

In Portland, Marshall's found close to
$1 million.

But it's only a fraction of the $100
million Thompson -slash -Cody said he

raised for veterans.

What happened to the rest?

A lot of this money really hasn't been
accounted for.

And I don't know if anybody knows, aside
from Thompson, where it went.

Do I think there's other storage units
out there?

If I was a betting man, I would say I
think there probably is.

Next, a devious genius gets rich quick,
printing millions at home.

The opportunity was there for them to
make easy money.

The CNBC hit series, American Greed.
Games, scoundrels, and suckers. Knack.

Don't get taken. Be a part of the
conversation on Twitter. Hashtag

Greed.