Christopher Goffard is an author and a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times. A Los Angeles native with an English degree from Cornell University, he started at The St. Petersburg Times in 1998, where he covered cops, city hall, and courts. His work on the Tampa courts beat gave rise to "The $40 Lawyer," which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in feature writing. Since January 2006, he has been a general assignment reporter at the LA Times, writing about everything from border warriors and prison gangs to the legacy of Watergate. He was part of the reporting team that chronicled the Bell scandal in 2010, coverage which won the newspaper a George Polk Award for local reporting, the Selden Ring Award for Investigative Reporting, and the American Society of News Editors Distinguished Writing Award for Local Accountability Reporting. His newest book is "Dirty John and Other True Stories of Outlaws and Outsiders."