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The three-week trial of ‘Lottery Lawyer’ Jason Kurland has began within the US District Courtroom in Brooklyn (pictured) with the protection counsel stating his shopper was “one of many victims.” [Image: Shuttetstock.com]
A “horrible mistake”
The three-week trial of ‘Lottery Lawyer’ Jason Kurland has began in a Brooklyn federal court docket with the accused’s lawyer describing him as “one of many victims.”
Talking on Wednesday, Kurland’s counsel — Tim Kasulis of Morvillo Abramowitz Grand Iason & Anello PC — addressed the jury in his opening remarks. He argued that prosecutors had made a “horrible mistake” by wrongly charging his shopper of defrauding purchasers out of $80m.
a scheme to swindle lottery winners
Prosecutors from the US Legal professional’s Workplace for the Japanese District of New York (USAO-EDNY) indicted Kurland for his function in a scheme to swindle lottery winners again in August 2020. Kurland constructed his follow round giving authorized and monetary recommendation to lottery jackpot winners, directing them in the direction of conventional routes to speculate their funds.
Assistant US Legal professional Louis Pellegrino mentioned in his opening argument Wednesday, nonetheless, that after Kurland received his purchasers’ belief, he started to promote them on “sure various investments” for his personal acquire. “The defendant by no means instructed the purchasers that he was one of many homeowners of the companies that he was invested in, and the defendant by no means disclosed the 1% kickback charge that he was receiving,” Pellegrino defined.
Kickbacks and Ponzi schemes
Prosecutors initially charged Kurland with conspiracy, wire fraud, and cash laundering, accusing him and his companions in Cheddar Capital of bilking three lottery winners out of tens of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} by steering them to speculate unknowingly right into a $200m Ponzi scheme run by Lengthy Island jeweler Gregory Altieri.
In accordance with a 2020 DOJ press launch, Altieri confessed to wire fraud for duping over 80 traders in a two-year $200m rip-off involving “nonexistent wholesale jewellery offers.”
According to the New York Daily News, one of many victims supposedly duped by Kurland, $245m Powerball jackpot Lotto winner Nandlall Mangal, spoke in the course of the listening to on Wednesday. In response to a query from the protection, he mentioned “it might have made a distinction” to him on the time had he identified Kurland was getting an alleged 1% kickback.
“And if [Kurland] was getting paid, it wasn’t due to my greatest pursuits,” Mangal mentioned in the course of the trial’s opening day. He turned to the self-declared “lottery regulation professional” after his huge win in 2018, citing lack of economic data relating to the place to speculate the money. Mangal mentioned Kurland made him really feel “very comfy.”
Russo testifies
Kurland’s Cheddar Capital companions, Francis Smookler and Frangesco Russo, are each cooperating witnesses within the three-week trial having already pled responsible to fraud, cash laundering, and extortionate lending. When Russo took to the stand on Thursday, he mentioned Cheddar Capital filed a confession of judgment for $68m {dollars} in opposition to Altieri and his enterprise, however “he by no means paid us again.”
borrowing from Peter to pay Paul”
By the point the companions entered a sketchy deal to promote private protecting gear to California on the top of the primary outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020, Cheddar Capital, in response to Russo’s testomony on Thursday, had entered right into a tailspin, “borrowing from Peter to pay Paul.”
“At this level, the FBI was knocking on doorways of [Kurland’s] purchasers,” Russo instructed the jury in New York. “He began to change into frantic.”
Kurland’s lawyer, nonetheless, maintains his shopper is as a lot of a sufferer because the lottery winners he’s alleged to have tricked. Kasulis mentioned Kurland was conned by Russo and Smookler, who stole from him, lied about it, and had been heard in a wiretap belittling the lottery lawyer as a dupe.