A male parent and boy from Old Colony who “won” the drawing to a greater extent than 14,000 times saw their lucky streak cease Monday when they were imprisoned for drawing fraud, money laundering, and tax evasion.
Ali Jaafar, 63, and Yousef Jaafar, 29, of Watertown were what’s known as “discounters” or “ten-percenters,” operating an industrial-scale ticket-cashing connive that grossed $21 billion inwards octad years. The Jaafars and then lied on their task returns to cheating the IRS come out of around $6 million.
The Ten-Percenters
The duo purchased winning lottery tickets at a cash deduction from gamblers crosswise Massachusetts, edifice relationships with convenience stash away owners to facilitate these transactions, according to prosecutors.
In some states, authorities deduct federal assess or fry funding owed by lottery winners from wins over a certain threshold, which inward Bay State is $600.
That’s why some winners sell their tickets to an underground ticket-cashing business, typically at a price reduction of 10%, hence “discounting” or “10-percenting.”
The commonwealth drawing charge is currently inward the treat of revoking or suspending licenses of more than 40 drawing vendors who received commissions from the Jaafars for referring winners to their discounting business.
Convicted inward December 2022, Muhammad Ali Jaafar was sentenced to spend fin years inwards a federal prison Monday, patch his son received simply o'er quartet years. US District Judge Nathaniel M. Gorton also ordered the geminate to compensate $6 jillion inwards restitution and forfeit the profits from the business.
Elaborate Tax Fraud
The Jaafars world-class came to the attention of authorities inward 2019, when the Massachusetts Lottery Commission (MGC) noticed Ali Jaafar was the teetotum single(a) drawing just the ticket casher that year. His sons, Yousef and Mohammed, were 3rd and 4th respectively.
Mohamed Jaafar pleaded shamed to conspiracy to defraud the IRS inwards Nov 2022 and is awaiting sentencing.
Investigators later discovered that spell the Jaafars reported the profits on their revenue enhancement returns, they also claimed equivalent phony gaming losses as an offset.
This caseful is, at its core, an expatiate tax fraud,” said Acting United States Attorney Joshua Levy inward statement. “Over the course of instruction of a decade, this father-and-son squad defrauded the [lottery commission] and the IRS to pocket millions of hard-earned taxpayers’ dollars.
“These defendants worked unitedly to levy a astray network of co-conspirators and spread out their drawing cozenage crosswise Massachusetts, avoiding detective work past repeatedly lying to governing officials,” he added.
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