Dad and his daughter got millions from IRS after claiming to win lottery

[left-of-center2012]

A Broward County father and daughter claimed the government owed them $175 million in tax refunds on their lottery winnings. The IRS paid them $3.4 million before the agency realized the pair had never purchased a winning ticket, prosecutors say. Now, the pair, who say they’re “aboriginal indigenous Moorish Americans” immune to government authority, are on trial in a Palm Beach federal courtroom accused of tax fraud.

Court documents allege that Danielle Takeila Edmonson, 35, of Boynton, and Kenneth Roger Edmonson, 51, of Oakland Park, began filing a series of bogus tax returns in 2015. Danielle Edmonson claimed an unspecified amount of lottery winnings, and managed to get the IRS to pay her $239,700. With her allegedly ill-gotten refunds, Danielle Edmonson bought a BMW and took out $60,000 from the bank in cash. The following year, the woman decided to ask the IRS to pay her over $80 million in returns on over $141 million of supposed income.

Court filings made by Danielle Edmonson after her March 2019 arrest give a hint as to the duo’s possible motivations. “I am an aboriginal indigenous Moorish American national,” she wrote in a handwritten motion from jail demanding hundreds of millions of dollars from the government as restitution for her allegedly unjust imprisonment. Identifying herself as Moorish Sovereign Citizen in the filings, Danielle Edmonson demanded her immediate release and claimed "nothing stands between myself and the creator.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit that tracks American extremist groups, describes Moorish Sovereign Citizens as a small sect that believes “African Americans constitute an elite class within American society with special rights and privileges that convey on them a sovereign immunity placing them beyond federal and state authority.”

https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/crime/fl-ne-moorish-sovereign-citizens-trial-175-million-tax-fraud-20191216-sca4awrdrrbl5dfosq2zzjbdx4-story.html

[TheBlackAdder]

1. Aborigines that are Indigenous Moors of America?

[jmowreader]

7. Moors are a form of sovereign citizen

The whole Moor thing stems from a misreading of Christopher Columbus’ diary of his first voyage to the New World. As we know from our history books, Columbus believed he could create a shorter trade route between Europe and the eastern shore of India by sailing west. We know now that’s wrong, but Columbus didn’t know about the Americas. Anyway, while he was sailing past Cuba he saw a bunch of people who had been burned black by the sun come out to see his ships, and Columbus wrote down that he saw “Moors” on the shore of an island.

In the 19th Century, Timothy Drew found Columbus’ diaries and decided to create an All New Belief System for the black man in America. His idea was that the original colonists of the Americas were Moors. He started a new church, the Moorish Science Temple of America. He was trying to get the black man to embrace his Moor heritage while assimilating into American society. He got driven off the East Coast by African-American Christian churches because he taught that all African-Americans must become Islamic. He wound up in Chicago, and got killed by one of his followers several years later.

The “aboriginal indigenous Moors” were invented in prison, by people who mixed sovereign citizen beliefs with the Moor theory to produce a uniquely American form of criminal.

[Takket]

2. i.... i have a question.......

winning the lottery means you owe the government MORE money, not the other way around..... so how the heck did they trick the IRS into giving them a refund? Unless their filings include fake receipts for fake payments made i don't understand how the IRS came to believe their OWED these people a refund for winning the lottery........

[Blue_true]

12. Maybe the state awarding the prize over tax.

In that case, the lottery winner would be due a refund.

The dad/daughter pair is crazy. The IRS is a certified ball-busting agency that it's a good idea not to screw around with.

[marybourg]

21. Ignorantly written article. Confusing "returns" with "refunds".

No explanation for the event reported on. My local ad carrier writes on this level.

But, just as an ordinary taxpayer who does her own taxes with paper and pencil: yes if you do a fraudulent RETURN claiming a REFUND, you’ll generally get the refund pending a review by the IRS. If they didn’t send out the refunds before spending the time on reviewing it, people would be howling for their REFUNDS, because for some reason large numbers of people love to give the government an interest-free loan every year, just to get some of it back as a REFUND.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

3. Doesn't the IRS even bother to look at what your earlier returns were?

Plus, as already stated, winning the lottery would mean you owe the IRS, not the other way around.

[roamer65]

4. The IRS doesn't verify this shit with the state lotteries?????

Dumb asses.

[Thomas Hurt]

5. They are just the an African American subset of...

The more prevalent far right white sovereign movement. They think they are feudal lords.

Right wing nut jobs, grifters, and thieves.

The white sovereigns won't tolerate them since they are racists.

[lpbk2713]

6. Greed was their downfall.

They might have been able to pull it off a while longer if they had kept it under a million.

[Vinca]

8. Maybe I'm slow, but I thought if you won the lottery you paid taxes to the IRS, not the reverse.

[onenote]

11. I have the same question.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

14. No, you win the lottery, estimated taxes are withheld, maybe resulting in an overpayment.

But, the lottery commission should have sent 1099 forms to the winner and the state and federal tax systems. Maybe the IRS just dropped the (power?) ball on this one.

[onenote]

17. Florida was required to withhold for federal taxes 24 percent of the winnings.

Hard to believe that someone winning $140 million wouldn't have been in a higher tax bracket and owed more money rather than be entitled to a refund.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

22. Donations to charity (church, etc) can lower the tax.

Or "claimed" donations, since there was no real lottery payout.

[onenote]

23. It's still hard to figure.

To claim an $80 million refund on $140 million: the IRS would have to believe you actually paid (or had paid on your behalf) $80 million - 57% - in estimated taxes and had a zero tax rate. Or that you had, for instance, a 20 percent tax rate and paid (or had paid on your behalf) $128 million (77%) in estimated taxes. That level of withholding/estimated tax payments simply doesn't make sense -- and its quite damning if it doesn't raise red flags at the IRS. As for donations -- the deductibility of charitable donations is capped and large donations need documentation. A lot of forgery had to be involved to pull this off.

[onenote]

9. Lottery winnings are taxable, so why were they entitled to a large refund?

[Blue_true]

13. If their state over-taxed them when awarding the prize.

Regardless of how much a person wins, the tax rate is only a maximum amount.

[onenote]

15. I don't think that information is correct.

If the state "over taxed" them, why would they get a federal refund? i overpay my state taxes, I get a state refund.

And there is no "maximum" tax rate applicable to lottery winnings. As explained in the attached article, the IRS treats lottery winnings as ordinary income. The more you win, the higher your taxable income and the higher your tax bracket. Florida doesn't have any state income tax so that can't form the basis of a refund. Florida is required to withhold, for federal tax purposes, around 24 percent of the winnings, but you're more likely to owe more than the 24 percent not less.

https://blog.taxact.com/lottery-tax-calculator/

[Blue_true]

18. States deduct federal income taxes from earnings and send the money to the Feds.

There is a maximum amount on ordinary income, I think that it is 35%. In the case of my business, I tax plan at 45% then work along the margins, the goal is to build a credit and not end up with a big tax bill. I don't have a state income tax and since that pair live in Florida to, neither do they.

[left-of-center2012]

10. "The Moorish sovereign citizen movement is ..."

"The Moorish sovereign citizen movement is a collection of independent organizations and lone individuals that emerged in the early 1990s as an offshoot of the antigovernment sovereign citizens movement, which believes that individual citizens hold sovereignty over, and are independent of, the authority of federal and state governments.

The origins of the Moorish sovereign citizen movement are difficult to ascertain and often misunderstood. According to law enforcement sources, Moorish sovereign citizens are closely affiliated with the Moorish Science Temple of America (MSTA) and trace their roots to the creation of the MSTA in 1913 and its founder, Noble Drew Ali (aka Timothy Drew).

--skip--

Further, according to Mark Pitcavage, a leading expert in the sovereign citizen movement, “Moorish sovereign citizens emerged in the mid-1990s on the East Coast when some people began to merge sovereign citizen ideas with some of the beliefs of the Moorish Science Temple, a religious sect dating back to 1913.”

https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/moorish-sovereign-citizens

[malaise]

16. So they're off to prison for a BMW and $60,000

People are so fucking stupid that it burns.

[kentuck]

19. ingenious

criminals.

[WillowTree]

20. I love the "soverign citizens".

The youtube videos that feature them trying to convince police officers or judges that the laws don't apply to them can keep me entertained for hours.