It concerned money that he received from people who wanted to litigate against the Dutch State Lottery. In addition to embezzlement, the man was guilty of money laundering, forgery and tax fraud, thus the judge.
Dennis Wolters, Ferdy R.’s lawyer in the Lottery Loss case, does not want to tell RTL Z whether R. will appeal.
Years of prizes on unsold lots
Ferdy R. is founder of the Lottery Loss Foundation. That foundation campaigned against the Staatsloterij on behalf of tens of thousands of participants who felt misled because their chances of winning were smaller than anticipated.
Between 2000 and 2008, the Staatsloterij could also win prizes on tickets that had not been sold. R. brought that to light. A statement of the Supreme Court at the beginning of 2015, R. ruled in the right, after which his foundation started preparing a claim for damages.
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2.8 million euros
But part of the money that the foundation received from victims to litigate against the State Lottery, R. transferred from the Lottery Loss Foundation to another company on Guernsey, of which he was also the owner. It was about 2.8 million euros.
R. bought an expensive villa for himself with the money.
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Too little tax paid
In addition, R. did not pay any income tax or turnover tax. His advisors thought that R. should pay sales tax, but he did not.
He also filed an incorrect income tax return for 2014 and 2015. As a result, R paid a total of approximately 1 million euros too little in tax, according to the court.
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‘Clever and calculating’
The court describes R.’s behavior as ‘savvy and calculating’. He ‘entered into all kinds of agreements, set up several companies and prepared false invoices so that he himself could dispose of the amount of money that came from victims of the lottery’.
“He fought against cheating but also acted as a cheater himself,” said the public prosecutor earlier during the handling of the case.
A higher sentence was demanded against R., of four years in prison. But the judge imposed a lower sentence, partly because R. had not been convicted before and because he achieved good results for victims of the State Lottery.
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