Father and sons claimed $21 million in lottery prizes — but they didn’t win, feds say

A father and two sons in Massachussetts claimed $21 million in lottery winnings after cashing in thousands of tickets over a period of nine years. However, the family wasn’t as miraculously lucky as they claimed to be. 

Ali Jaafar and his sons, Yousef and Mohammad, cashed more than 14,000 lottery tickets on behalf of actual winners as part of a fraud scheme to avoid paying taxes known as “ten-percenting.” They would buy winning lottery tickets from ticket holders at a discount and keep 10-20% of the ticket’s value. By collecting the full cash prizes on behalf of actual lottery winners, the winners were able to get out of reporting their winnings on tax returns, and then the family would offset their claimed winnings with fake gambling losses to avoid paying federal income taxes.

Jaafar and Yousef were both found guilty of conspiring to defraud the Internal Revenue Service, conspiring to commit money laundering, and filing false tax returns. Older brother, Mohamed, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government.

For more information see Julia Marnin “Father and sons claimed $21 million in lottery prizes— but they didn’t win, feds say”, Yahoo! News, December 13, 2022

Special thanks to David S. Luber (Florida Probate Attorney) for bringing this article to my attention.