Lottery Tickets Cheats – Scamming The Lottery And The Tax Office
Family Charged In $21m Massachusetts Lottery Tickets Scam
Over an 8-year period, a father and his two sons were able to cash in over 13,000 winning lottery tickets. These were worth a staggering $21 million. Right now, Ali Jaafar and his boys are facing some serious prison time. Their charge sheet lists money laundering, fraud, and tax evasion. In order to hang onto their ill-gotten gains, they even were falsifying their tax returns. They were pretending that they had in fact made 6 to 7 figure losses from their gambling activities. Interestingly, they all pleaded not guilty via video conference in the Boston Federal Court.
The three family members consist of a 63-year-old father, Ali, and his two sons, Muhammad Jaafar, 31, and Yusuf Jaafar, 28. All face over 12 counts of fraud, money laundering, and tax evasion. The police dubbed the case as “the ticket caching scheme.” All in all, they managed to bag over 13,000 winning lottery tickets. Yusuf must have begun his scamming career exactly when he reached the legal age to gamble. We have to admit that was a very successful scheme indeed.
The End Of An Eight Year Winning Spree
The unsealed indictments in the US District Court of Massachusetts show that the crimes took place over an 8-year period. According to the latest lottery news, the prosecutors say that the vast majority of these 13,000 winning tickets came from scratch-off lottery tickets. These are normally on sale at convenience stores and petrol stations around the country. The indictment says that the Jaaffars were able to claim these winning tickets instead of the actual winners themselves. As a result, the real winners were unable to have their winnings garnished for State Federal taxes and child support. You can miss out on all this drama, by simply playing online with TheLotter. They have tickets to all the big progressive jackpot lotteries from every corner of the globe.
Lottery Tickets Checks On The Winners Debts
The state of Massachusetts requires that anyone who’s cashing in a winning lottery ticket worth over $600 has to have the lottery officials check whether they owe any unpaid taxes or child support. If the officials find that such dues still need paying, then the amount is coming out of the winnings. If the tax and child support is too much for the winner to pay out, then they can simply sell their winning ticket to someone else. According to The New York Times, this transaction is known as “ten-percenting.” It means that the person who cashes in the winning ticket to someone else will be able to sell it for just 10% to 20% of his winning total amount.
What Taxes?
After buying the tickets in this manner, the greedy Jaffar’s made the profits even greater by falsifying their tax returns. In some US states, gamblers are able to report gambling losses and use them against their total annual tax bill. Thanks to reporting fictitious six and seven-figure losses from their gambling profession, they saw their taxes lowered considerably. So in some ways, they were playing the game from both ends. They were saving money by ten-percenting. And also saving money by lying about their taxes. Definitely not one of the best jackpot winning strategies.
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Charges Against The Jaafars
Initially, the father and his son Muhammad were under arrest. Then later in the day, the Massachusetts State Police were able to pick up Yusuf. They have since been out on bail. Later all made the decision to plead not guilty in the Boston Federal Court. The chargers are one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States, plus another of money laundering. There were also five counts of filing false tax returns, that apply to Ali and Mohammed. With Yusuf being served with three of these.
Ticket-Cashing Kings
Interestingly enough, this isn’t the first time that the name Jaafar appears in court records in connection with state lottery tickets. In fact, the fraudulent family was under the suspicion of the Massachusetts Lottery officials a few years back, according to the State Prosecutor. In 2019, everyone could see that Ali Jaafar topped the charts as the “top individual lottery cashier.” Coming up behind him were Muhammad and Yusuf making it a loving family affair. This was showing that the family were the top dogs in the state of Massachusetts for ticket caching. The Boston news outlet WBUR says that since 2014, “Ali Jaafar has been the winningest person playing the Massachusetts State Lottery.” What are the odds of that happening?
They were all under suspension in 2019. This stops them from partaking in any of the best lotteries to play in the state, by the Massachusetts State Lottery Commission. There was later an unsuccessful challenge from the Jaafar’s in The Superior Court of Boston.
A Family Of Lottery Tickets Wins
But reading the recent indictment shows that it was Ali Jaaffar who was topping the fraud family charts. According to the Federal Prosecutors, Jaaffer senior “earned” over $15m in lottery winnings. Yet paid under $24,500 in federal taxes. To add salt to the wound, he even claimed a tax refund of $886,000. This was for fictitious losses between 2011 and 2019. Coming up in second place, we have Mohammed. He took in $3.3m in winnings and paid less than $21,000 in taxes. Finally, we have young Yusuf coming up at the rear, having received $2.4m in winnings. And yet paying less than $10,700 in taxes.
Winning Lottery Tickets: Anything But Luck
In July 2018, the Massachusetts government introduced the state policy designed to target people who are winning the lottery on a regular basis. Especially those deemed to be “factually or statistically impossible.” From that point on, Jaafar’s lottery winning days were doomed. Both the state lottery officials and Federal Prosecutors say that in these affairs, the $21m lottery winnings certainly were not from being lucky. Lottery news now quotes Michael R Sweeney, the director of the Massachusetts State Lottery told The New York Times that while a “statistician will say that there’s some astronomical odd […] the reality is, it’s zero.” You’d have a better chance of winning by playing TheLotter online. They cover every lottery draw happing all over the world.
Not Just Scammers In The US
On a related matter, Italy Guardai Financier Special Cucurrency Police recently broke up lottery jackpot fraud worth more than $28 million. In the process, they saw the arrest of 12 people who were playing four different lotteries. In the winning scheme, the lottery staff had inside knowledge as to where the winning lottery tickets would be on sale. They would send their relatives and family members to purchase the lottery winning tickets across the country at these different local retail locations.
It’s interesting to note that if these fraudsters simply carried out their fraud once, then no one would probably have noticed. But by being greedy, and constantly trying to game the system, especially by using the same method, will always come to the attention of some sharp-eyed official.
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