Feds Arrest “Students For Trump” Co-Founder On Fraud Charges, Allegedly Posed As Attorney, Faces 20 Years

Law.com reports:

A Tennessee man charged by New York prosecutors with pretending to be a Manhattan lawyer and taking thousands from would-be clients was the co-founder of Students for Trump, a national group that mobilized college campuses in the run-up to the 2016 election and plans to do so again in 2020.

John Lambert, 23, was arrested last week and charged by Southern District of New York prosecutors with wire fraud for having invented a lawyer persona named “Eric Pope” that he used to solicit legal work online.

Before he allegedly posed as a lawyer, Lambert was in college when he co-founded Students for Trump. As the group’s vice chairman, he appeared on NBC and Fox News and shared a stage with the hard-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos.

From the Justice Department:

LAMBERT and at least one co-conspirator perpetrated a scheme to defraud consumers of legal advice and services by falsely representing through web-based platforms for freelancing services, websites, emails, phones calls, and other means, that they were experienced attorneys who had attended elite law schools, when in fact they were not attorneys and had never attended law school. Having misled their victims into believing they were highly qualified attorneys, LAMBERT and his co-conspirator then attempted to, and in some cases did, provide legal advice and services to their victims in exchange for which their victims paid money.

As alleged, LAMBERT used the alias “Eric Pope” when communicating with the victims, and falsely represented to at least some of them that he was an attorney at a law firm called “Pope and Dunn;” had attended an elite law school; was an expert in corporate, finance, and property law; had worked with hundreds of clients, including “tech moguls” and “entrepreneurs” in the United States and Europe; and was located in New York City. But according to the Complaint, LAMBERT was not and had never been an attorney, and was not located in New York City.

LAMBERT, 23, of Bristol, Tennessee, has been charged with one count of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, each of which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. The maximum potential sentences in this case are prescribed by Congress and are provided here for informational purposes only, as any sentencing of LAMBERT will be determined by a judge.


(Tipped by JMG reader BK)