John Lambert is one of the founders of Students for Trump, a youth political organization founded in 2015 with the mission of getting former President Donald Trump elected in 2016 and reelected in 2020.
Lambert was arrested in 2019 on charges of wire fraud after he posed as a patent lawyer and offered legal advice to unsuspecting clients, posing as Eric Pope of the sham law firm Pope & Dunn.
The New York Daily News reported that Lambert—who falsely claimed to have 15 years' experience in patent law despite being only 25 years old—charged a total of nearly $50 thousand, but provided only minimal substantive counsel to his clients unsupported by the expertise he claimed to have. Lambert defrauded the victims for nearly two years between 2016 and 2018.
U.S. District Judge Valerie Caproni sentenced Lambert to 13 months in prison, and didn't mince words when handing down the sentencing.
Judge Caproni said Lambert was
"a cold-blooded fraudster who cared not a whit about the victims of his fraud."
She went on to skewer Lambert for not even having the "common decency" to advise one client to seek another attorney.
Lambert told Judge Caproni:
"I lost focus on who I was. My ignorance was a disrespect to the law and my country. My life will be forever marked by this poor choice at a young age."
People weren't surprised to see a prominent Trump supporter grifting the public.
Some weren't mad to see justice handed down.
Ryan Fournier, who co-founded Students for Trump with Lambert, was also listed as a co-conspirator in the scheme, but reached a cooperation deal.
