Master of Deceit

How a Veteran Con Man Scammed His Way into the White House

By: Jodi Andes

Narrated by: Jodi Andes

The conman and master chameleon thought of himself as a modern-day Frank Abagnale, the fraudster behind the book and movie Catch Me If You Can. It was a stark cry from how investigators saw him. To the feds chasing him, John Donald Cody was more like Jason Bourne - a fictional character on the silver screen who slips in and out of aliases and remains one step ahead.

Of course, such comparisons don’t really matter. Cody used so many aliases, he can’t remember. It’s how the hell he did it all, that is hard to comprehend.

Cody is best known as Lt. Commander Bobby Thompson - who was the face of the US Navy Veterans Association. The USNVA, as it was more commonly called, claimed to be a long-standing nationwide charity that cared for veterans and troops with an army of volunteers. No one noticed that the association was fake - not even the 43 government agencies which regulated it. It had no members, no offices, no board of directors and worse yet, it provided virtually no assistance for service members past or present.

Instead, Thompson used some of the proceeds to funnel large donations to politicians who gave him unparalleled access to our national leaders in return. When a reporter stumbled onto the scam, Thompson fled in 2010 while state attorney generals scrambled to figure out who Thompson really was and where the money went.

It took a special task force led by the US Marshals, though, to catch him and determine who he really was. Thompson was born in Hoboken, New Jersey, as John Donald Cody - a Harvard-educated lawyer and former military spy. While in the service, Cody had top-secret clearance and was loaned to a US proponent agency so clandestine that the agency was never named in military records. However, in 1984 Cody snapped and disappeared.

When he re-emerged, he began committing a string of frauds, using more than a hundred aliases.

Master of Deceit is a scintillating, narrative nonfiction look at his life and crimes and the hunt for him.

©2021 Jodi Andes (P)2021 Jodi Andes