Lottery income unreported
One male in McClellandtown, Pa, won $481,000 in the lottery. The 69 year old male, Sherman W. Friend, was indicted for this on April 4.
Friend faces two counts of tax evasion, and will be arraigned on April 26. He evaded paying, between 2009 and 2010, about $132,000 in income tax because of this. Friend was able to go under the radar a little bit because he had his pals cash the winning tickets for him.
Coming from state lottery
The number of times Friend really won is unknown, but is it known that he played the Pennsylvania State lottery quite a bit. A survey done by Bloomberg Rankings showed that the most often played form of gambling in the nation is the lottery. Evidently it paid off because Friend got most of his 2009 and 2010 income from the lottery, according to an unnamed lottery official who spoke to the AP.
Playing the lottery gets costly. Installment payday loans are a sure thing.
Attempting to keep the cash hidden
Friend was able to keep away from tax evasion for a long time by having his friend’s cash in little winning tickets separately. Because they were small tickets, they ended up avoiding taxes on the money also. The court documents say that Friend earned $379,000 last year from lottery winnings and $102,000 in 2009.
It was not specified whether the people cashing in tickets for Friend received a percentage of the winnings for their help.
Games he played
Most of the winnings that he got came from 50 cent daily Big 4 game tickets. The winnings can be as high as $2,500, and a ticket costs as low as 50 cents, although players can invest anywhere from 50 cents to $5 for each game. The chances of winning are 10,000 to 1, but that evidently did not stop Friend, as he won a multitude of them.
Dropping odds
Your odds do not have to be so bad at the Big 4 game though. In fact, by “boxing” combinations of four digits, your odds drop to 417-to-one. All you have to do is bet on 24 numeric combinations. You are much more likely to win when the odds drop so much.
Should have just paid
The IRS will not forget and will almost always catch those who evade taxes. That is the one thing that Friend forgot in spite of the truth that his plan seemed foolproof.
Sources
Pittsburgh Live
Beaver County Times
The Republic
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