A Massachusetts father and his two sons used a covert network of clerks and scratch-off winners to defraud the commonwealth’s lottery out of $20 million, The Boston Globe reported Tuesday, citing officials. The family, led by the 63-year-old kingpin Ali Jaafar, tried to dismiss the repeated winnings as good luck, but authorities stopped buying it, the Globe reported. Instead, they say they found that—starting in 2011—his family ran a scheme known as “10 percenting,” where they purchased scratch-offs at a discount from winners who wanted to avoid paying hefty taxes, child support, or to just stay anonymous. The family then took the tickets and cashed them for themselves, with convenience store clerks—who refer the Jaafar family to winners—receiving a kickback. The scheme netted the family $217,000 in the first year and grew to $1.3 million in winnings—off of 867 tickets cashed—by 2013, according to the Globe. The family’s luck ran out by 2019, however, with the lottery commission suspending the trio and convicting them of conspiracy to defraud the United States.
