‘Lottery Lawyer’ Jason Kurland gets 13 years for defrauding his jackpot-winning clients

The Long Island “Lottery Lawyer” who fleeced his multi-million-dollar jackpot winners drew an unlucky 13 years in prison Thursday, when a Brooklyn judge ordered him locked up in his fraud case.

Jason Kurland, 49, was convicted at trial last year of steering winners’ money into his own merchant cash advance business — and of losing millions of their funds in a Ponzi scheme and a murky deal to sell personal protective equipment to California during the COVID pandemic.

He never told the winners that he was one of the owners of the businesses that he was investing in. He also left them in the dark about the 1% kickback fee that he was receiving.

“Real people have suffered serious consequences of Mr. Kurland’s behavior. I met them at the trial,” Brooklyn Federal Court Judge Nicholas Garaufis said Thursday. “They were lucky winners, but when they met Mr. Kurland, they ended up to be losers.”

The victims included a couple who won a $1.5 billion Mega Millions jackpot and a Staten Island mechanic who scored a $245 million Powerball win.

“The victims believed that Mr Kurland would protect them and further their interests,” Garaufis said. “Mr. Kurland had direct access to their money, and like a burglar, he used the access that he had to pocket the money for himself and his business partners.”

The judge said that the abuse of trust was “grotesque and unfathomable for a lawyer.”

Prosecutors were asking for a sentence on the low end of the federal guidelines of 135 to 168 months, based in large part on a calculation that Kurland’s clients lost more than $60 million dollars.

“To get them to agree to these investments, Kurland lied to the lottery victims time and time again,” federal prosecutors wrote in a May 15 sentencing memo. “Kurland presented these investments as arms-length transactions with third-party companies and purported to recommend them to the lottery victims as their neutral trusted advisor — their attorney, who was there to look out for their best interests.”

Kurland’s lawyers asked for probation and house arrest, describing him as a devoted family man and community volunteer.

The defendant choked back tears as he asked Garaufis for leniency, telling the the judge that although he disagreed with the verdict, he knew he did “stupid, misguided things.”

“I have failed so many, your honor — my clients, my profession, my country,” he said. “I have done everything in my power to keep my family moving forward ... I want nothing more than to make up for my mistakes and somehow improve society, rather than burden it.”

His lawyers countered that the court should only factor his $626,000 in kickbacks into its sentencing calculations, since the more than $60 million in losses was “speculative.”

Kurland worked alongside Frankie Russo, the son of Joseph “JoJo” Russo, a Colombo crime family capo who died in 2007 in federal prison; Christopher Chierchio, described in court documents as a Genovese family soldier; and former securities broker Frank Smookler.

Kurland and his cohorts dumped tens of millions of dollars into a $200 million Ponzi scheme run by Long Island jeweler Gregory Altieri, Pellegrino said.

To cover their losses, Kurland and his accomplices invested tens of millions of dollars in face masks and other PPE in the spring of 2020 that would be resold to the state of California for a profit. The deal fell apart and the money went up in smoke.

All three pleaded guilty in the case, but Kurland maintained his innocence, with his lawyers painting him a victim who was tricked by Smookler and Russo — who stole from him, lied about it and were caught on a wiretap mocking him.

Kurland remains free on bail until Oct. 18, when he’s required to surrender and start his sentence. He said nothing to reporters as he left the courtroom.

Kurland’s lawyer, Telemachus Kasulis, said he disagreed with the judge’s decision and plans to file an appeal.

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