The Lottery Lawyer Jason Kurland was arrested on August 18, 2020,
alongside his three friends.
Why?
They’ve been ripping off lottery winners across the US for MILLIONS of dollars, under
the disguise of offering legal and investment advice.
Jason on his part had branded himself as the go-to guy for lottery winners.
In his own words, he was there to help quote “to secure their wealth for generations”.
He had a simple pitch.
He’d help big winners navigate the lottery system and protect them from predators coming
for their cash.
Instead, HE was the giant predator!
What he did instead was overcharge winners tens of thousands of dollars in fees.
Then he’d turn around and steal from the winners some more, such as putting their money
in what might as well be fake investments setup by members of the mob!
In total, Kurland along with his mob associates are alleged to have scammed lottery winners
of $107 MILLION dollars!
How did the self-proclaimed savior of lottery winners turn out to be such a huge scammer?
And why were the lucky winners giving him and his associates so much money?
Who’s Jason Kurland?
Kurland graduated back in 2001 from Law School at Hofstra University, so he’s been a lawyer
for almost 2 decades.
He HAD been a partner at the Rivkin Radler Law Firm.
But the key word here is had.
His partners have severed ties with him since the fraud allegations came to light.
Representatives for his old firm talked to the press.
They of course said that they had no knowledge of what was going on and the news came as
a complete surprise to them.
At Rivkin Radler, Kurland dealt in real estate, zoning, and land use.
But those areas were more of side hustles to him by 2020.
At least from 2011, he branded himself as a lottery lawyer complete with a Twitter account
and a website.
He also seemed to be a great member of the Long Island community.
For example, he would volunteer and give out free legal advice at a charity called Interfaith
Nutrition Network.
They were a nonprofit focused on providing for homeless people in Long Island.
His time as a lawyer didn’t go unnoticed and by 2011, he was featured on the Top 40
Under 40 list by his local paper.
Lottery Pivot So how did Kurland get around dealing with
lottery winners?
He actually randomly fell into it.
His very first lottery client won a jackpot in Connecticut.
That client wasn't sure where to go, and he worked for one of Kurland’s clients at that
time.
So Kurland’s client referred the winner to him, and Kurland found out how easy it
was to make money off lottery winners.
So for nearly a decade, he did as much he could to make himself THE lawyer to call after
someone won the lottery.
He branded himself the “Lottery Lawyer”.
He tweeted at any lottery winners he could find, always with the hashtag, #callme.
He began doing a lot of interviews talking about the lottery.
The Lottery Lawyer Kurland was constantly called on by the media
to offer his insight.
This wasn’t just about the legal side of wins.
They’d ask him about some of the things he would see lottery winners do, such as the
biggest mistakes, how different states handle the wins, and the very first thing lottery
winners ought to do.
He became THE authority on how lottery winners should conduct themselves after suddenly becoming
rich.
Seeing him on TV endeared him to a lot of lottery winners around the US.
It was only a matter of time before one of them sought his services.
And he didn’t leave that to chance.
One of his biggest repeated lines about a mega-jackpot win was “hire an attorney”.
And we don’t disagree with him here.
But you definitely have to be able to hire an attorney you can trust!
For Kurland, it was the perfect hook to send any lottery winner running his way.
He made it easy to find him with his easy to remember but now-defunct website thelotterylawyer.com.
Mr. Kurland’s dealings with lottery winners For players, the good news was the big win.
For Jason Kurland it meant a new potential high-paying client.
A simple phone call meant that he was getting more money.
If someone called, this meant that they were already sold at that point.
For Kurland, it was easy.
The phone call was all about repeating some of the tips he had given in interviews.
Don’t tell anybody, sign the back of the ticket, make a copy, and keep it somewhere
safe.
The Fees Once the winners agreed to work with him,
Kurland charged an up front retainer fee that ranged between $75,000 and $200,000 dollars.
And on top of that, he required a monthly fee that ranged anywhere from $15,000 to FIFTY
THOUSAND dollars!
For what though?
What do lottery winners need a lawyer every month for?
The rates obviously weren’t a problem to the megawinners.
After all, they had hundreds of millions of dollars.
They just thought that those fees were what were required to help secure the rest of their
money.
He worked with dozens of winners.
The cumulative total in wins for his clients totaled in the billions!
For example, just 3 of his clients who were scammed as part of his scheme collectively
won $3 billion dollars.
One guy was a guy from South Carolina who won $1.5 billion dollars in the Mega Millions
lottery in 2019!
Earned Trust While his fees were already high enough, Kurland
wasn’t just gonna let the billions he had access to slip past him.
Initially, he would make traditional investments that got modest returns.
That won him the clients’ trust.
And that’s exactly when he would start making his moves.
Kurland would convince the lottery winners to invest in companies that were owned or
controlled by his friends.
Christopher Chierchio is a reputed soldier in the Genovese crime family.
Frangesco Russo and Francis Smookler were his supposed underlings.
Kurland would get a big kickback whenever clients would invest in the mob associated
businesses.
“Interest” Payments Just to keep the lie going, they funneled
money back to the winners and marked them as interest payment.
But in reality, there was extremely little going on as far as investments were concerned.
Kurland and his mob friends just mostly straight up spent the funds on their lifestyle!
They went all out blowing the money on luxuries such as exotic vacations, golf club memberships,
private jets, and luxury cars.
They even went as far as buying two yachts!
Chierchio paid to be chauffeured around in a Cadillac Escalade and he also rented an
$11,000 dollars per month apartment in Manhattan.
He lived this lifestyle all while claiming to run a plumbing business!
That’s the irony.
Kurland was always vocal about how lottery winners shouldn’t be buying all the nicest
things.
He always insisted on winners laying low for a while to maintain some normalcy.
It turns out that he couldn’t take his own advice!
The Investments When they did actually try to do some business,
they weren’t exactly great.
For example Chierchio invested some of the funds in personal protective equipment because
of the pandemic.
They had actually made an $800-million deal with an unnamed state.
But for some reason, that state backed out of the deal.
So that left Chierchio and his other partners with over $40 million dollars worth of PPE!
Russo and Smookler, on the other hand, decided to invest some of the cash with Gregory Altieri,
a jewelry merchant.
They gave him $250,000 thousand dollars at a sky high interest rate.
According to investigators, they expected Altieri to repay a whopping $400,000!
But Altieri couldn’t pay up.
So what did they do?
Obviously, they threatened to get a hold of people close to him, his wife and son!
A total of $107 million dollars were alleged to have been mishandled by Kurland and his
mob associates by the time the authorities got involved.
FBI Recordings As Kurland and his mob buddies continued with
their scamming, the FBI was closing in on them.
And they could feel it.
They were caught completely on tape discussing how to cover up their scam.
And Kurland warned his partners about potentially getting busted because they were way too reckless.
But that didn’t seem to be much of a bother to Chierchio.
He honestly didn’t care.
He was caught on tape rambling on about not being afraid of the FBI, according to phone
recordings.
To be fair, he might have been genuinely unbothered since he knew a thing or two about getting
off the hook.
This wasn’t his first time brushing shoulders with the law.
In 2004, he pleaded guilty to falsifying business records and in 2019, he was acquitted at trial
of bid-rigging charges on a construction contract.
Chierchio’s legal battles aside, the phone recordings also exposed Russo’s and Smookler’s
threats against Altieri.
But besides the gutsy declarations of violence, Russo and Smookler were open to the idea of
getting charged with fraud.
Smookler, in particular, hoped for just a fine instead of jail time.
They were also caught on tape not feeling sorry at all for stealing money from lottery
winners.
Chierchio said on tape quote, “Remember, you and I didn’t hit the Lotto for $1.5
billion”.
On August 18th of 2020, their worries about getting by the Feds came true.
Legal Trouble In total, these partners in crime faced 21
charges that could see them serve long sentences.
All of them were charged with wire fraud, wire fraud conspiracy, money laundering, and
money laundering conspiracy.
Kurland on his part was also charged with honest services fraud for the loss of his
clients’ funds.
Smookler and Russo picked up a few additional charges for their threats against the jewelry
business owner and his family.
All four of them denied the charges, and all of them, except Russo, are out on bail Russo
was a bit unlucky because of his threats to Altieri.
Investigators had also found a gun under his bed that obviously could be very well interpreted
as his willingness to carry out any of his threats.
Of course, Russo’s lawyer defended his client saying the threats weren’t to be taken seriously.
He said that Russo was simply trying to get back their cash in desperation.
So far, 13 bank accounts connected to Kurland, Chierchio, Russo, and Smookler have been seized.
The government has also placed liens on three properties under Smookler’s and Russo’s
names allegedly purchased and renovated with the stolen funds.
Winners Outcome For the winners, this is great news for the
time being.
At least there’s a chance for them to get back some of their millions.
In many of his media appearances, Kurland always had a lot to say about lottery winners
getting scammed.
According to him, many of the lucky players weren't sophisticated to spot the scams.
But the real question is, how long was he ripping off his lottery clients?
From the very beginning?
Or was it somewhere in between?
The Feds were only able to uncover roughly a year worth of fraud.
He was already making a lot of money.
Why did he ultimately start ripping off his clients?
It’s sad that Kurland ultimately was part of the scam world he preached against so much.
Here’s what’s next!