Georgia Inmate Sentenced 11 Years for Stealing $11 Million—While In Prison

Cofield was sentenced to 11 years after impersonating Sidney Kimmel and fraudulently obtaining $11 million from his Charles Schwab account.

Arthur Lee Cofield Jr. 31, was convicted of conspiracy to commit bank fraud and money laundering for stealing $11 million while in a Georgia maximum-security facility

According to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, U.S. District Court Judge Steve Jones sentenced Cofield 135 months in federal prison on Friday, Feb. 9. The convicted felon must also pay more than $12.5 million in restitution to replace the $11 million that he stole from the Charles Schwab account of Sidney Kimmel, a 94-year-old billionaire movie producer.

Cofield also has to repay $1.2 million stolen from an unnamed Alabama resident and $391,000 from an unidentified bank.

“If you had put the intelligence you have to legal and positive things, you would have been very successful in life,” Jones told Cofield when sentencing him.

Cofield and his two accomplices, Eldridge Bennett and his 27-year-old daughter, Eliayah Bennett, pleaded guilty in April 2023.

It was initially reported that Cofield was accused of impersonating billionaire Kimmel and fraudulently obtaining $11 million from his bank account. Cofield reportedly obtained access to the funds to purchase gold coins used to buy a mansion in Buckhead, Atlanta. Cofield reportedly purchased the coins and then had them transported from Idaho to Atlanta on a private plane and used part of the haul to buy a $4.4 million mansion.

The crime he committed was described as “potentially one of the biggest heists ever pulled off from inside an American prison,” as he was able to do so while being imprisoned at the Georgia Department of Corrections’ Special Management Unit, a maximum security facility built to accommodate the state’s most hardened criminals.

Cofield has been in prison since 2008. The then 16-year-old was arrested for taking $2,600 from a bank in Douglasville, Georgia. He received a 14-year prison sentence after he pleaded guilty to armed robbery.