Hedge Fund Trio Claim $254MM Lotto

I would feel so stupid if I won!

 

Friend claims Greenwich trio is fronting for real Powerball winner

A long-time friend of one of the winners says a trio of Greenwich financiers are merely fronting for the real winner of Connecticut's $254 million Powerball drawing.

Tom Gladstone, a Greenwich resident and family friend of lottery winner Brandon Lacoff, said Tuesday morning that Lacoff -- who claimed credit for the ticket along with colleagues Greg Skidmore and Tim Davidson of Greenwich-based Belpointe LLC -- told him that the trio did not purchase the ticket, but are fronting for the winner in order to keep the press and others off the real winner's back.

"I called him last night and said, `Brandon, I saw you on Friday and you did not tell me that you won the lottery.' He said, `we are just representing the guy,'" said Gladstone, whose account of the events was first reported Tuesday morning by the Daily Mail of London.

As a family friend of over 30 years and the person who leased Lacoff the Belpointe office space on W. Putnam Avenue, Gladstone said, "If Brandon won the lottery I would have known."

Gladstone, who owns Gladstone Properties in Greenwich, did not want to explain further.

"I'm friends with the guys and they don't want me to tell," he said. "I think they are smart guys and they are doing the right thing," he said.

Gladstone said he understands that lotto winners get hassled. By putting the money into a trust the real winner can take advantages in the area of estate planning.

He said he was not sure if the winner was a client of Belpointe when the ticket was purchased, "but he sure is now," he said.

According to Gladstone, Lacoff's father, Marty, has been in the investment business for decades and shares office space with his son on W. Putnam Ave.

Marty Lacoff worked on Wall Street and did everything from public offerings to brokerage and was very active in the investment field, Gladstone said.

On Monday morning, lottery officials in Rocky Hill issued a check to the Greenwich trio and said the winning ticket had been purchased at a BP Station on Shippan Point in Stamford.

The tight-lipped trio of winners, who referred all questions to their lawyer, opted to collect an after-tax lump sum of $108 million.

"The one thing that we do know is that a significant amount is going to be going to Connecticut charities," said the spokesman, Jason Kurland, a Long Island, N.Y.-based attorney.

Kurland declined to comment on the circumstances surrounding the purchase of the winning ticket.

Frank Farricker, a fellow Greenwich resident who is chairman of the Connecticut Lottery Corp., presented a poster-sized check to the trio during a news conference Monday.

"To their credit, they did show up to Rocky Hill in a very large stretch limo," Farricker said. "They were in suits."

The winning combination was 12-14-34-39-46, Powerball 36. The lucky ticket was a quick pick, with the numbers selected randomly by computer. It marked the third time in the past six months Greenwich produced a winner of a jackpot of at least $1 million.

http://www.chron.com/local/article/Friend-claims-Greenwich-trio-is-fronting-for-real-2301798.php

 

When the odds are good enough, it makes sense to buy up a massive number of lottery tickets. It's a pretty simple mathematical computation. I know of at least one hedge fund that did this in the past when the jackpot got big enough.

Whatever the story is, I'd say with nearly 100% certainty it is not the case that one of these blueblood dudes walked into a gas station and purchased a ticket on a whim.

 

Yea maybe they did walk in for someone else, but the reality is the odds are still outlandish. Let's see if they can pull it off again, but then again the story would be...why? For me if I thought I really had an edge for $1 to make millions I'd keep trying, but better yet sell some books and get trips to news programs to sell a phony story and enjoy the money.

 

first it was 3 hf guys pooling their resource to buy a single winning ticket but it seems so far fetch so now it became they are fronting a real winner. The real story maybe they found a golden lottery formula and trying to cash it in quietly.

 

Cash it in quietly would be them asking somebody else to front for them.

The fronting explanation does make sense. They might be able to use the gains against some loss at the company or something similar accounting trick. For them being rich and hassled was already a given. Now the real winner can stay anonymus, and hassle free....

 

But the men quietly admitted this week that they had not bought the winning ticket themselves, as lottery officials had said. Instead, they had formed an investment vehicle in order to collect a lump sum payment of more than $100 million on a client’s behalf, the neighbor said.

“It’d be great, except we didn’t really win it,” one of the managers said, according to the neighbor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect his privacy. “We’re protecting a client.”

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/11...-of-client/?smid=tw-nytimesdealbook&seid=auto

 

Is it really better for them to take the lump sum? Is it realistic for them to make $150 million from the $104 million lump sum over 20 years?

 

Almost everybody takes the lump sum. One bird in the hand...

They would never get the 250 mill anyway. Even if they get it in 25 years, they still have to pay taxes, so they would probably get more over the years than the lump sum, but way less than the 250 mill....

 

I guessed they made it something that can be claimed under their funds as a gain. If the fund has a sizeable loss, the gain would be used to balance it out, thus less taxes are paid.

Let's see if this would work:

The real winner wants anonymity, so he doesn't mind to lose let's say 5 mill for the privilege of not being known. He might also have a tax reason to sell. He knows these HF guys, so they make a deal.
Let's say the fund is down 5 mill for the year (small fund), and the year is almost over. So they buy a 100 mill winning ticket for 95 mill, thus they have just made up the loss. They make it an investment somehow, so it is all legal. The year is breakeven, looks much better on the books than a losing year, and they also get lots of free publicity.

Everyone is a winner....