Posted on 01/27/2012 5:17:13 AM PST by jjotto
By coincidence, within the last few hours I happened to speak to someone who works for the Iowa Lottery off the record (I live in Des Moines). Shaw did not provide required trust documents or a federal EIN, and Shaw indicated the money would be sent to Belize (the country).
Denying the payout wasn’t a judgment call. It usually takes a few minutes to furnish the necessary information. None was forthcoming.
And the criminal investigation is very serious, though I wasn’t told what was suspected.
That's your interpretation. And, I'm not trying to convince you otherwise -- I'm just pointing out that your interpretation isn't supported by the law.
The Iowa Lottery's own code effectively says that a "legal entity" like a trust is the same as a person. So, they are obligated to treat it like a person, without imposing any additional requirements. So, as long as the trust isn't on the list of prohibited players or subject to garnishments, then the trust is entitled to the prize.
BTW, you added "judgements" to the potential obligations, which isn't even in the law. And neither is just any "lien": what the law says is that other claimant agencies (which I interpreted as government agencies, but feel free to find otherwise) can provide a list of people to the lottery that owe money to them. Given these outright errors, how should I consider the rest of your interpretation?
Of course, that doesn't exclude the beneficiary from the obligations: as someone noted in the first thread on he subject, the IRS will eventually know who the actual beneficiary is, as will the equivalent agency in Iowa. The income to the trust eventually passes through to the beneficiaries. It will be confidential by law, but if there is evidence a crime was committed, I'd be almost certain they would pursue it.
Beyond that, You raise a whole lot of “”IF”.... You can wish in one hand, and crap in the other - and in reality, you know what you’ve got.
Look, I've tried to be nice to you -- giving you hints about where to look and how other states handle this situation. I've given you plenty of opportunity to provide a citation for your position, and you have come up empty.
But, now you are just acting like an jerk. Do you really want a civil discussion, or do you just want to abuse people that disagree with you?
>>> I’m just pointing out that your interpretation isn’t supported by the law.
in YOUR OPINION, INTERPRETATION, whatever...
Other state’s don’t mater. The Iowa Lottery follows IOWA LAW. And they have. If you don’t like that, well - tough toenails.
>>>But, now you are just acting like an jerk.
Giving what I get.
>>>Do you really want a civil discussion, or do you just want to abuse people that disagree with you?
You’re good at dishing out abuse...
Aha! Thank you! That's the smoking gun, right there.
I'll go back to the law:
If no EIN was provided, then it's not even a valid trust. If he didn't have the necessary documents creating the trust, I wonder if it even exists.
I think you suggested earlier that the lawyer was incompetent, and I believe you are exactly right. I'm surprised the Des Moines law firm got involved. They had to know the information was required, and missing.
Identifying the beneficiary (someone in Belize, or was it another company?) was also a breach of trust by the attorney. But, my guess is that whoever is behind this shopped this around to several attorneys, and this guy was the only person that would touch it.
Guess what... THE IOWA LOTTERY FOLLOWED IOWA LAW....
Imagine that...
Yes, that's correct. But, unlike you, I provided cites for my opinion.
Other state’s don’t mater. The Iowa Lottery follows IOWA LAW. And they have. If you don’t like that, well - tough toenails.
Then you should be able to cite Iowa law, chapter and verse? But, you didn't -- all I read were your summaries, which were easily shown to be in error.
You’re good at dishing out abuse...
I just went back and looked at every post I've made on this thread to you. Please show me where I've been abusive.
The only thing I can even fathom as "abusive" is where I've asked you to answer a question or provide a citation. Is that bad because you couldn't or didn't want to answer?
Yes, they did. But, not the law you cited.
Had you told me that no EIN was provided for the trust, I would have agreed with you -- and cited the excerpt above. However, until now, we didn't have that piece of information, did we?
Apparently, you chose to disregard where I said the Iowa Lottery was acting appropriate based on taking the statutes as a whole... smh.
I suspect tax evasion, at the least. If they are trying to transfer the money offshore without paying any withholding tax (which is why the EIN is required), then that's likely.
And apparently, you chose to disregard where I said that the statutes didn't authorize them to do so.
Had this been a legitimate trust, with a competent attorney as trustee, he would have been compelled by fiduciary duty to pursue this in court. Ultimately, a judge would decide. Unless the lottery can prove that the ticket was stolen, they really don't have reason to deny payment.
The judge may agree with you. But, it's been my experience that judges generally follow the law, because they really hate being overturned on appeal.
Any statement of law is basically worthless without an enforcement mechanism. And that's what is missing from the existing law: an enforcement mechanism to do what you claim: decompose a trust into individuals. The law basically says the the trust is the person.
I was looking through the statues earlier, and noticed a curious omission.
Does the Iowa Lottery prohibit employees of the lottery from buying tickets? I know that other states have this prohibition, but I wasn't able to find anything like that in the lottery code or statutes.
I did find some stuff prohibiting conflict of interest -- using vendors that were related to lottery employees. But, the ticket sales requirements:
99G.30 TICKET SALES REQUIREMENTS -- PENALTIES.
..do not have a prohibition against lottery employees playing. It does prohibit people less than 21 years old, which I also find curious, since it's 18 in my state.
Is it elsewhere, and I'm just not finding it?
Never mind, I did find it. It was here:
It goes further:
h. No ticket or share issued by the authority shall be purchased by and no prize shall be paid to any officer, employee, agent, or subcontractor of any vendor or to any spouse, child, brother, sister, or parent residing as a member of the same household in the principal place of residence of any such person if such officer, employee, agent, or subcontractor has access to confidential information which may compromise the integrity of the lottery.
That's what I expected to find -- it was just in a different place.
Long ago, I knew someone that simply maintained the mainframe computers used by (another) state lottery, and he told me that he was prohibited from playing the lottery.
Let’s add some more intrigue.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/01/27/sleuths-to-face-many-layers-in-iowa-lottery-probe/
“Shaw’s lawyers told the Lottery that Shaw was retained by an attorney who was representing the ticket purchaser — whose identity was unknown, even to Shaw. Shaw agreed to represent the purchaser’s attorney on the condition that both of their identities and all discussions would remain secret because of attorney-client privilege, they said.”
But it gets better....
“a wealthy enclave where Shaw lives on the property of his daughter and son-in-law Gregory Fleming, the president of Morgan Stanley Investment Management.”
Did you see the post above by jjotto? The attorney reportedly didn't even show up with proper documents for the trust, or a federal EIN.
It makes me wonder if the trust was anything but the figment of someone's imagination. Have you seen any report that someone actually confirmed the trust exists and is registered with the state of NY (or maybe it was NJ)?
“Based in Belize”?
http://news92fm.com/abc-news/abc-news-radio/lotto-jackpot-deadline-passes-as-crime-probe-starts/
...Shaw said that the ticket and winnings belonged to the Hexham Family Trust, but misspelled the name on the ticket, writing “Hexam.” Shaw said he could not disclose who his client was and only confirmed that the trust he represented was based in Belize...
Yeah, one has to wonder what he was up to.
RummyChick posted a link to another article: there are a couple of other nuggets of info there:
Shaw is not even the trustee for the trust. He's actually representing ANOTHER attorney, who may or may not be the trustee. And they are using attorney-client privilege to shield the other attorney's identity, and so on.
And, Shaw owes a couple of million bucks to someone, and they were already gearing recover any of the winnings that went to Shaw, individually.
It sounds like the trust is actually in Belize. Here's some info about those:
http://www.incorporatebelize.com/belize-offshore-trust.php
It is probably an asset protection trust, where you move assets out of the reach of creditors in the US. But, doing so to defeat existing creditors is considered fraud.
Therein lies the problem here: without a federal EIN, they can't withhold US taxes. There may be backup withholding rules for federal taxes, but I wonder if Iowa has backup withholding rules.
I read where he did provide info on the trust.
Which is why the lottery official called it a blind trust
“But would it have been responsible to pay millions of dollars to a blind trust that benefits a corporation in Belize without any of the basic information we needed? No.”
Not sure he provided the Tax number. Maybe there isn’t one.
I can’t remember where I read it but the lottery official said they weren’t making the trust documents public yet because of the investigation.
As for who owns the lottery ticket...here is a case for you.
http://www.lotterypost.com/news/241712
Person who threw it away?
Person who said don’t take our trash?
Or person who found it?
http://www.lotterypost.com/news/241742
Shaw presented lottery officials with a copy of the Hexham trust agreement, but lottery officials say it did not give them the information they needed to release the prize.
Lottery officials declined a Des Moines Register request to release both the video and the trust document, citing the ongoing investigation.
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