There’s still another 25% out there that I just don’t know.
[00:00:26] Will Johnson: Welcome back to AARP - The Perfect Scam.
I’m Will Johnson your host.
I’m here with my co-host, AARP’s Fraud Watch connection Ambassador, Frank Abagnale.
And we’re going to talk about Bobby Thompson again, Part 3 of this story.
Uh, they knew I was doing all this.
My fingerprints were left everywhere, but they didn’t know who I really was.
Obviously, an American male, he’s not a foreigner, who’s never been fingerprinted?
So that was the exact thing that came in my case that took them awhile to figure out.
And their fingerprints, it’s probably not changed though over the years, right?
You still have to go dust and do all that stuff, right?
That’s how it’s done?
[00:02:46] Frank Abagnale: Right, yeah.
Agents have their man.
What they didn’t have was his true identity.
His fingerprints didn’t turn up a match, and he would sign documents only as Mr. X.
And what about the millions of dollars that his fake charity raised?
Where had it all gone?
Pete Elliott, the US Marshal for the Northern District of Ohio led the hunt for Thompson.
For him, the case was only half solved.
[00:05:44] Will Johnson: What Pete Elliott finds next gets his heart racing.
He remembers the day and the date.
Hair color and eyes, same.
Approximate age and date of birth, same.
He also learns that John Donald Cody had been an attorney.
It’s at that moment that things really start to click.
I’m head of the US Marshal Service in the Northern District of Ohio.
Would you talk with me about this Don Morsette you’ve had there?"
I said, “Sure, what do you want to know?”
And “does, does he have a college degree?
Do you think he’s smart?
Do you think he’s stupid?”
He just kept asking all these strange questions and I would answer them.
And one day, and he’d hang up.
And then he called the next day.
And we kept doing this day after day after day.
“No, but he wears cheaters.”
“Oh, okay.”
And he said, “You still got them?”
“Yeah, I got them.”
“Well that’s interesting.”
[00:08:50] Pete Elliott: Now why is that important?
And he would have this stuff running down his face.
[00:09:16] Pete Elliott: Bingo, all good, all really good.
That one little, that one little thing.
He told me later, he said he got up from his desk and he did a dance.
Next step, we needed to, to find fingerprints.
Elliott doesn’t waste any time reaching out to them.
Can you do me a favor.
Is there any possibility that you guys have any fingerprints whatsoever?"
He matched John Donald Cody’s fingerprints to Bobby Thompson’s saying they’re one and the same.
They are one and the same."
[00:11:38] Will Johnson: Elliott has his proof.
He takes it right away to the county jail where Bobby Thompson is being held.
[00:11:44] Pete Elliott: Walked over to him.
And he just very casually nodded his head back and forth, very carefully.
[00:12:37] Pete Elliott: Well, welcome everybody.
Much has developed within the last 72 hours.
Bobby Thompson is wanted fugitive, John Donald Cody.
[00:12:56] Will Johnson: Elliott has his man.
But the details of Cody’s life are astonishing.
Brad Tammaro with the US Attorney’s Office is eventually the lead prosecutor at Thompson’s trial.
[00:13:14] Brad Tammaro: He’d graduated from the University of Virginia undergraduate.
[00:13:29] Pete Elliott: Served under US Army, is a Captain of military intelligence.
He traveled the world and spoke a number of different languages.
He got passed over a second time, and then they uh, they discharged him.
Things started getting out of control.
[00:14:23] Jodi Andes: He lived an unremarkable childhood really.
I mean he grew up in a middle class family in New Jersey.
His mom was a bookkeeper, um, his father worked, got, was a bank clerk.
His high school friends never, never thought that this would happen.
He was a quiet, he was studious, he was kind of like the teacher’s pet.
Um, so a lot of his classmates were shocked.
But he eventually reemerged as Capt.
Bobby Thompson, and he wasn’t afraid to flaunt it.
Um, and he was, he was just confident.
That’s just the way he is.
And then he started looking for different things to attempt to get a mistrial.
He would, he would give a shot to pull some kind of antics.
Unfortunately, when he did that, the jury wasn’t in the room.
He didn’t know that, and he came walking out.
[00:17:40] Brad Tammaro: He was trying to make it that.
[00:18:08] Helen MacMurray: So I kept trying to make eye contact with him.
And uh, that was very satisfying for me.
I wanted him to know that uh, I was glad I was there.
[00:18:36] Brad Tammaro: And it was a difficult thing.
I mean there was multiple charges with multiple uh, uh sentencing ranges in there.
[00:18:54] Brad Tammaro: The final result was 28 years.
On appeal, they reversed one set of charges, his sentence only went from 28 years to 27.
I believe he was 66 went he went in.
He was very smart in how he did this.
He hired professional fundraisers to do it.
And to this day, nobody knows where that money is or what, what basically happened to it.
He’s the only one that’s going to know the answer to that question.
He’s not going to tell anybody.
[00:20:26] Will Johnson: Investigative reporter, Jeff Testerman is still wondering what happened to the money.
And honestly, to this day there are elements of all three of those theories that attach to him.
[00:22:35] Will Johnson: The case still bugs a lot of people.
What those callers were doing was entirely legal.
But it was, it was just morally bankrupt.
Uh, but he didn’t care about that because it wasn’t his money.
[00:23:36] Brad Tammaro: There was no real person other than him.
Uh, we found job applications that he had.
He’d make the name up and attach other people’s personal identification information to it.
He was very detailed in how he, he created a whole world.
[00:24:14] Will Johnson: Today, John Donald Cody is sitting in jail, still filing appeals.
And there’s still a lot we don’t know about him.
His childhood, his upbringing, like the missing money perhaps only John Donald Cody knows.
She wouldn’t tell the police anything.
She refused to cooperate.
But one of the things he had there was the um, movie,Catch Me If you could.
He kind of probably fancied himself as being the guy that can never be caught.
But one person he has let into is Jodi Andes.
[00:25:46] Jodi Andes: For about the past year I’ve been visiting him in prison.
[00:26:05] Jodi Andes: I really wasn’t sure what to expect the first time.
He comes out and he is much thinner than you’ve seen in any pictures.
And he, his limp has gotten a lot worse.
And um, he comes over, he’s very cordial at first.
Um, and he’s very guarded.
Uh, but he’s very chatty, um, on things he wants to talk about.
[00:26:42] Jodi Andes: I don’t have any kind of emotion for him or against him.
Ultimately, I would just like to get to the bottom of the story.
[00:26:57] Jodi Andes: There are several different things that I wanted to, to find out.
One, where did the money go?
That was part of my goal of trying to determine where the money went.
Alright, Frank, so we, we finally have Bobby Thompson behind bars.
So I’m going to tell you what he asked.
And they’d slip into the seat and just sit there.
[00:29:53] Frank Abagnale: I was thinking one thing.
[00:29:56] Frank Abagnale: Right.
[00:30:09] Will Johnson: You were going to go into full confession mode.
You did your research.
So I picked up a lot of that.
And the first time they get that question, you go, “Yeah, I know Robert.
Uh, I met Robert a few times.”
[00:31:27] Will Johnson: Right, like that’s an old trick, right?
[00:31:27] Frank Abagnale: Right.
[00:31:37] Will Johnson: Well it has been quite a saga to hear about Capt.
Bobby Thompson, aka John Donald Cody.
Frank, as always, thanks for your, your feedback, your stories, your thoughts.
Be sure to find us on Apple Podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts.
When a Florida journalist uncovers that the charity is a scam, Thompson goes on the run.
Eventually, he starts a new life as Don Morsette, in Portland, Ore.
But the marshals arrest him outside his home,ending their two-year manhunt.
Thompson refuses to give his real name, signing court documents as Mr. X.
Who is John Donald Cody, and what led him to steal money meant for veterans?
Federal investigators are determined to answer these questions.
For instance, if you are looking for a job you are more vulnerable to a work-at-home scam.
