Sort of a moot point, the forfeiture of the jackpot.  Guy's 55, with 24 years in prison ahead without possibility of parole.  That puts him 79 years old before he'll see daylight again.

Of course, he won't be alive to see the end of his sentence.

So the State keeps his 2.75 million.

Seems a bit troublesome that he got a far stiffer sentence for two counts of possession with intent to distribute cocaine than he'd have gotten for homicide one.  He could have gotten off a lot easier by killing half a dozen people, raping a few babies, robbing a bank, and spitting on the sidewalk.

Strange priorities we have these days.  Similar to the weirdness that has us making it a Federal offense with mandatory sentencing for killing a cop, but a killer standing a middling chance of doing two-to-five with good behavior for strangling some 3 year old kid.

Jack

Careful, amigo.

Those are the kinds of words that can having them knocking on your door next.  These are the post 9/11 days.  Department of Homeland Security.  Ruby Ridge.  Waco.  Drug Enforcement Administration.  And the guy this story is about. 

Words are cheap, but the price is going up.

Likely you spoke in haste and regret your post.  You might be well served to call your mistake to Todd's attention and request that he delete your post and this one.

Jack

The lost winnings should be used to add to a future Lotto Texas jackpot.

I see where the BTK (Bind Torture Kill) serial killer who terrorized Kansas for a couple of decades just got a sentence not too different from this one, except he's probably eligible for parole at approximately the same time this Mexican winner/loser gets out of the slammer.    But BTK only killed a dozen or so people, whereas the Mexican did something really bad.

Jack

trial court judge's ruling that Betancourt bought his share of the ticket with drug proceeds because that was his only apparent source of income.

And the next thing you know the Gov'ts going to take any lottery proceeds that were not bought with earned dollars.

Hey I bought my winnig ticket with past due payments money. It was not my money it belonged to my creditors.

in the book 1984 was it much different

the govenment makes the rules, sometimes after the fact. it is easy for me to believe this person involved in criminal activities loses his right to the ticket pretty much the same as the governments right to take property that was used in criminal activity.

Great position - be afraid of your own government. Not terroists. Not criminals. Not Mexican Cartel. The U.S. Government. Sheeesh. The day I'm afraid to speak my mind is the day they can have my American borth certificate.

amen chewie

We each speak from our own body of experience, chewie.  There's a difference between being 'afraid', and merely being realistic.

I've got a lot of respect for the ability of this government to decide a person needs special attention.  Such as they did at Ruby Ridge.  Such as they did at Waco.

By all means speak your mind. 

 I gather from your attitude what's in your mind won't offend them, in any case.  You can speak with total confidence they won't do anything.  That's the cool thing about having attitudes unlike the one JPorter has.  You can speak your mind, wave your flag, and bluster about not being afraid to speak your mind.

However, having said that, I agree with you completely.  Nobody should be afraid of this government.  Everyone should feel completely comfortable about posting seditious, statements online.  Shouting them from the rooftops.  Do it with impunity, without fear.

Namely I can say that because I also don't hold those views.  It's none of my business what they do, nor what the government does to them in any acts of reprisal.  I strongly suggest anyone with views the government mightn't like go public with them.

Fortunately, I don't happen to have any of those kinds of views.

Jack

You're confusing fact with fiction Jack.

I am not talking about blantantly violating the lawful direction of law enforcement officers, shooting at law enforcement officers, or spending my spare hours converting my rifles to automatic weapons in violation of Federal Law.

I lost a friend at Waco; he was a decent person, trying to raise a family, and live the American dream. He lost his life following the lawful direction of a Federal Judge. He was killed by some slime balls who NEVER did any thing to improve life in this country, by people who spent their evenings screwing children and beating women.

Both the clowns at Ruby Ridge, and those at Waco, had the ability to end their unlawful way of life and follow the same process as the other millions of Americans who drive between the white lines every day of their lifes. America became America because of those who do drive between the lines, not because of those who have no respect for anything but themselves. They wanted to make a point, and that is what they got - the point of a bullet.

Don't confuse the freedom of speech right with the stupidity of people who willing shoot Americans trying to enforce the law.  Those slime balls at Waco and Ruby Ridge were no different than the D.C. Snipers.

I spent twenty-two years wearing a uniform, and some of that time fighting a war, to enable people to speak their mind. I did not do that so some slime ball could shoot my neighbor in the back and claim they did it for God!

Whew.  One of us has his facts entirely reversed as to what actually happened at Ruby Ridge and Waco.

I won't change your view, have no reason to try.  And my own facts are so accurate I'd never allow you to change them.

Plus, neither of us has any reason to give another thought to what the other believes.

We'll agree to disagree, Chewie.

However, if it helps, I'm willing to believe you spent 22 years in a uniform of one sort or another.  On the other hand, whatever war you might have fought in, you aren't old enough for it to have had anything much to do with protecting my freedom, nor anyone elses.

Jack

Do not "bet-on-court" Mr. betancourt cause you will lose basically everything! 

Timing is everything, weshar.  This guy had purely lousy timing.

If he'd had that money where he could get to it, say, and they'd come down on him with indictments from something he did pre-win, he could have upchucked enough money into the right places to walk.  In fact, probably never would have been arrested enough to reach the newspapers.

As it was, the guy evidently didn't have the good sense to clean up his life.... he was arrested for something he did AFTER he had a winning ticket and knew it.  Maybe he had some inseverable ties with the Mexican Mafia chewie believes he knows something about.

There's a high price to be paid for a certain type of idiocy.  Sometimes, anyway. 

Fortunately for most of us, a lot of forms of idiocy allow us to just keep on, no penalties involved.

Jack

Seems the forfeiture has been based upon the lottery winner not being a US citizen and committing a felony on US soil. 

Also since he had no previous verifiable job history, it was illegal funds received through drug trade which purchased the ticket  .... therefore he didn't legally own the ticket in the first place.

My question is WHY would someone who just won 5.5 mil be still selling drugs???

Likely he already had commitments he couldn't free himself from easily.

The people who carry drugs across the national boundaries have to live with a constant readjustment process.  Where they come from there's not a large body of opinion assigning the 'wrong-right' judgements to the drug issues.  It's all a matter of legal-illegal, with the legality up for grabs depending on the connections.

But once they come into this country they have to rearrange their thinking to keep in mind that the legal/illegal part of the equation is structured and the payoffs a lot more subtle, there's also a mindset among middle class citizens that it's both illegal and immoral, worthy of long-term prison sentences and confiscation of property.  Even the portions of each layer of society involved in addictive or recreational drug use pay lip service to this condemnation, when they're outside their immediate circles.

This guy had a timing problem, a maladjustment problem, a culture shock of sorts. He was out of step with US legality and morality.  Now he's taken care of  at taxpayer expense for the next quarter-century.  Serves him right, I suppose.

Jack

He WON the jackpot fair and square, if I found a dollar on the street bought a ticket and WON or bought a ticket after cashing my pay-check and WON your still winning it shouldn't matter where the money came from.(just my opinion) now if he killed someone for the money too play then he definitely doesn't deserve it.

It would be a similar rule of law applied on the Federal level is he had robbed a a bank, getting the money in an illegal manner .... making the money he got through possession with intent is not lawfully earned by him.  Whatever is gained by using illegally obtained money is considered not the property of the person who got it and subject to seizure.

Similar ruling applied to this Lottery Post article .....

  https://www.lotterypost.com/news/118343.htm 

Finding a dollar on the street is a different matter especially if no one is looking around trying to find what they'd lost saying they lost it.  You wouldn't be stealing anything.

Have to disagree with you Pick 4 Master. There is nothing illegal about finding a dollar on the street and using that money to buy a lottery ticket. But using money from ill-gotten gains (drug money) to buy a lottery ticket and any winnings from that ticket or buying anything else (houses, cars, boats, etc.) gives the gov't the power to seize anything you own. I am not an advocate for an over-empowering gov't but but I do agree with this decision.

I would think the Feds are checking the income status of any one who wwins over $5K, which is the amount the states start notifyiing the Feds of winnings. I hit for $5K and less than amonth later received notice the IRS was auditing all my taxable records. If you hit a BIG one, you have to know the IRS is going to check you out. No tax record has to be a red flag. Yoou either previously died of starvation or haven't been totally honest some where down the line.

If legality and honesty are synonyms then all's well here. 

The guy was convicted.  Therefore he was illegal and dishonest by virtue of his illegality, for which he was convicted and will serve a quarter-century.

The court, which by definition is honest, determned his ownership of all that jackpot money was illegal and therefore dishonest.

The Feds behaved honestly and legally in confiscating the money because the court so ruled.

I'd really never considered that facet of things.  New Mexico, Texas, Arizona and California have an enormous number of dishonest (illegal) aliens in the workforce moving freely around among the general population.

But in this instance, we can relax.  This dishonest guy has been sent where dishonest folks ought to be, and the honest judges and cops have protected us from him, while enriching the coffers of their agencies.

Jack

drug dealer - he needs to rot in jail - period.

I disagree with the basic concept of state or federal property seizures of lottery winnings, if the ticket was legitimately purchased by the claimant, that is, not stolen from someone else.  That is additional, excessive punishment for a crime that he has already been punished for.  He paid his dollar and took his chance like everyone else.  If a slimy drug dealing criminal wins, so be it, but that is what happens in games of chance. If the government doesn't like that idea, let them cancel the lottery.

In this case, he was not arrested or convicted when he bought the ticket and was issued the check, so taking the money afterwards is an even more despicable government act.  This sets up the possibility that any winner could be set up and arrested after winning the lottery with the intent of seizing winnings.  I don't like that idea, do you?

>But using money from ill-gotten gains (drug money) to buy a lottery ticket and any winnings from that ticket or buying anything else (houses, cars, boats, etc.) gives the gov't the power to seize anything you own.

If you spent $90,000 of drug money on a boat, then you had and spent $90,000. In this case, he spent $1 on a $1 lottery ticket.  The winnings are not what he spent.  If the government does have a case to seize, they should only be entitled to seize the dollar he spent on the ticket.

It's part of the War on Drugs and money laundering legislation that was passed during the 80s and early nineties.  It's been going on a while.

The only rights you have are those the government allows you.  This isn't an issue involving ideals, or 'rights'.  It's an issue of what the government is allowed to do (allows itself to do) to any citizen it sees fit.

If the court says what they did is legal, by definition it's legal.

Nobody's been asked to vote for, nor against it in a referendum.  It is reality.

As Chewie says, if you don't like it, burn your borth certificate.

Jack

I'd a whole lot rather they just killed Americans than send them to prison for doing things you don't like.  That way the taxpayers don't have to feed and water them for the rest of their lives.

This send-them-to-prison to rot mindset is one of the things that's running this nation into bankruptcy.  It's not doing a lot for the prisoners, either.  The whole system is a revolving door retirement system for lawyers, judges, cops and prison establishments.  I think it's time people demanded the costs be cut.  If it's an offense that people consider serious enough to send a man to prison for a quarter century, kill him and get it over with. 

If it's not that serious, tie him to a rail and give him 20 lashes and turn him loose.  If he does it again, 30 lashes.  If he does it again, kill him.  Prison isn't working.

On the other hand, I totally disagree that possession of anything short of a hydrogen bomb is a criminal act, except in the minds of people who favor punishing victimless crimes and a government willing to pander to the desires of those people to steal their rights and gain more power.

Jack

He's a 52 year-old drug dealer. It's costing the US a lot of money to capture, try, and incarcerate these career criminals.  If they're making a profit off of their business while the public foots the bill for the societal costs, I see no problem with the government recovering these costs in some manner. 

finally - a sane voice.

the whole concept of the government siezing assets of convicted criminals for those offenses to which they qualify.

A $1 lottery ticket is an asset just like buying a boat gives you an asset. You purchase that ticket you own that piece of paper and any possible winnings attached to that piece of paper. The difference with a lottery ticket is that it may be worth nothing if the ticket isn't  a winner. But it also could be worth millions if it is a winner which would be a big asset.

My impression from the story is that the guy'd already cashed in the ticket.  It was the winnings they took.

Jack

iT'S NOW 2:00PM EST................................

"RIP " your blogs are Fantastic........I love the sarcasm, the cheekishness, cynicism and the intellectual analysis..........I can never be bored reading your "blogs"........ awesome.......

Maybe he can get a return of part of the taxes?

More money to seize!

I was watching an episode of COP last night that showed a guy being stopped for running a stop sign and 5 small bags of power sugar that looked like cocaine were found in his trunk.  They concluded that he was planning to ripe off some drug users and arrested him for having fakes of a control substance.  I had never heard of such a law, but I guess there are "got you" laws in every state that people don't know exist.  I wondered if ones assets could be taken for such an offense.

I got stop one time for touching the white edge line that mark where the road berm begins even though I never touch the berm.  Had I been on a road that only had a center line, I would have been alright.  I only got a warning ticket and looked up the law sighted and it was written mainly to cover crossing the center lines but vague enough to cover any lines white or yellow. 

That kind of thing happens all the time.  When Collen Powers went to the UN to get backing for our invasion of Iraq, he noted that two water trucks had been spotted in a country that's half dessert as proof they they were building chemical weapons and the trucks were being used to wash away any accidental chemical spills.

i can't imagine the UN agreeing with an attack on Iraq only with a statement from General Colin Powel about water tanks in the desert.

i like to believe decisions that large are based on issues that are world affecting, complicated and filled with information not available to the general public.

when playing poker you do not tell the opposition what you are holding or when you are bluffing.

They concluded that he was planning to ripe off some drug users and arrested him for having fakes of a control substance.  I had never heard of such a law, but I guess there are "got you" laws in every state that people don't know exist.  I wondered if ones assets could be taken for such an offense.

RJOH:

I'm wondering if there's anything of that sort involving coffee.  Seems to me there's bound to be a law against possession of decaffinated (fake) coffee. 

If the authorities are opposed to people having fakes of a control substance it's probably just a badly needed means of protecting themselves from snorting powdered sugar.  That stuff could probably damage the nasal passages.

Jack

I've heard of the police taking vehicles that are stopped with drugs. It doesn't matter if the vehicle is owned by the offender or not. I know I'de be really P*$$ed off if they took my car because I let a friend or family member use my car and they got stopped with drugs in my car. That's 1 reason I don't let NO ONE drive my car.

All the judicial system is about is money anyway. I went to Illinois and had neon lights under my car. I drove 7 hours at night with the lights on seeing all kinds of police on the interstate before a State Trooper pulled me over. He told me they were illegal in IL and was going to give me a ticket unless I could turn them off. Well in TN we have only one plate on our cars, so on the front of my car I had a plate that looked like a IL tag that said "Menace". Well, in order for me to turn off the neon lights I had to go under the hood to unplug it. While I was doing that the trooper had a flashlight looking at the front of my car and seen the plate. When I finished and got back in the car he asked to see my drivers license because he was going to just check to make sure they were valid. He was back in his car for about 15 minutes then came back with a ticket. I got a ticket for unlawful use of registration. I later went to court for it and told the judge that they need to have state rules and regs at welcome centers when you come into the state. He said he would throw the case out but he wanted me to pay the court fees. I paid the court fees which were more then the fine but it didn't go onto my drivers record.

The road goes on forever and the party never ends, I reckon.

A friend of mine is a bank director in Belen, NM.  He owns a number of investment properties, which he rents out.

A couple of months ago, the State Police, Sheriff and city police kicked the doors down on one of his rent houses, did a drug search, tore everything up properly..... didn't find the meth lab the warrant had them searching for...

So Sid, my bud, did all the repairs himself.... door frames destroyed, cabinets torn off, doors broken, carpet, the works.

Materials only cost him $1200 to make the repairs to the damage they deliberately did to search for drugs that didn't exist.

They could have served the warrant by knocking on the door, having a cop watching the back door, covering all exits.  But it wouldn't have involved breaking anything.  Where's the fun of that.

Jack

  KYMY......I TOO hope "999" comes out for you in Kentuky.....(BTW...how much would you win)???

HAPPY MONDAY AUG...22ND TO ALL MY HAPPY FELLOW GAMBLERS....HOPE EVERYONE IS WELL...

RJOH....you sound great...."RIP and CHEWIE" are obviously doing very well.....I see you are still  ripping each other apart and chewing each other to death.......I'm LOVIN IT.....(BTW) "RIP" I must correct something you said about (caffeine free/decaffinated coffee) you called it fake coffee. Actually, it's not fake coffee at all, it's genuine coffee.....ie SANKA....it's still coffee, made with coffee beans, they simply removed 90-95% of the caffeine from it.  This applies to decaffeinated FOLDGERS, MAXWELL HOUSE....ect......And you can make them as strong as you like......

"RIP".......WHAT the Sheriff and Police did  to your Friends property was an absolute obomination......and "They should be held responsible by the LAW to reimburse him for ALL DAMAGES.......Afterall, how can they expect the civilian populaiton to respect the laws if they themseleves don't respect  and uphold it???????

Hi libra:

Sorry for the coffee faux pas ... or whatever it was.  I'm thinking of going to some sort of ersatz coffee I used to drink a long time ago.... I think it must be made from burned bread crumbs or something.  Postum, it was called.  But I'd like to get away from the high dollar end of caffeine addiction.  Those Columbian cartels will be drifting over into the coffee end of things if the price keeps skyrocketing.

I don't know whether Chewie's ripping me up, or he isn't.  I quit reading his posts so as to not be tempted to devote further thought to his world view.  Fired a Parthian arrow with a blog entry and sent an entire sphere of human opinion off to never-never land in one fell swoop.

I love that new feature.  It's a bit like wearing a surgical mask over your face when there's plague stalking the land.  The surgical mask also hides the grin underneath.

Jack

What they did was legal.  The war on drugs legislation of several years ago opened the door for a wider range of behavior in serving search warrants without announcing ones self.  The door opened further with various Patriot Act passages.

Nowadays they can do just about what they want.

.......Afterall, how can they expect the civilian populaiton to respect the laws if they themseleves don't respect  and uphold it???????

They're clearly expecting the apathy of the people who believe it will never happen to them to keep things firing on all eight.  In addition to that, there's the fear response that will kick in if they begin doing it enough to wake the sheep.  Nobody will want to say anything for fear they'll be next.  (This is actually fairly smart behavior, even today.  I wish I had sense enough to practice what I preach)

Then, there's the major segment of the population that just figures they wouldn't have kicked the door down if they didn't think something was in there, and you can't make an omlet without breaking some eggs.  Justifiable to sacrifice a few rights if we can catch a few more drug dealers.

That's the way my bud, Sid, felt until it happened to him.

Jack