Inside the $20 Million Lottery Scheme of the Massachusetts Family Mob

For over a decade, the noto­ri­ous Jaa­far fam­i­ly ran a sophis­ti­cat­ed lot­tery laun­der­ing net­work across Mass­a­chu­setts, cash­ing in on over $20 mil­lion in illic­it winnings. 

Ali Jaa­far, a cun­ning Lebanese immi­grant, uti­lized his army of com­plic­it con­ve­nience store own­ers and phan­tom win­ners to game the sys­tem for immense fraud­u­lent pay­outs. With sons Yousef and Mohamed soon induct­ed into the crim­i­nal enter­prise, the crim­i­nal con­gre­ga­tion swelled their ranks, col­lect­ing over 1,000 taint­ed tick­ets per year under Ali’s mil­i­tant direction.

To bypass tax­es and scruti­ny, the oper­a­tion employed the “10-per­cent­ing” grift, recruit­ing straw buy­ers to secret­ly prof­it off legit­i­mate win­ners’ luck. Before long, their rack­et had thor­ough­ly cor­rupt­ed the state’s lot­tery, with Ali alone rak­ing in approx­i­mate­ly $10 mil­lion in untaxed loot. 

How­ev­er, their down­fall began in 2019 when sus­pi­cious reg­u­la­tors exposed the fam­i­ly busi­ness’ “sta­tis­ti­cal­ly improb­a­ble” results. A sprawl­ing inves­ti­ga­tion by the Lot­tery Com­mis­sion and IRS soon closed in on the crooked crime cabal. 

After a nail-bit­ing tri­al, Ali and Yousef received prison sen­tences for mas­ter­mind­ing the auda­cious sev­en-fig­ure lot­tery scam. The tan­gled tale serves as a cau­tion­ary case of greed run amok and the immense risks of gam­bling with the government.