Timothy Schultz:

I am really excited to be joined here today with The Lottery Lawyer, Kurt Panouses, returning to the program today. Kurt, how are you doing today?

Kurt Panouses:

I'm doing fantastic. Thanks, Tim, for having me back on.

Timothy Schultz:

Thank you so much for your time. This is going to be really interesting. You've represented, first of all, all kinds of lottery winners. You can tell me how many, but I know you've represented some prizes over a billion even. For people that are new here, how many winners, roughly, would you say that you've represented? If somebody were to win a billion dollar Powerball jackpot or lottery jackpot tomorrow or next week, what should they do in the first 24 hours?

Kurt Panouses:

Timothy Schultz:

Part one is fascinating. I want to get into more of the CPA and what actually happens. If you were to win, if someone watching or listening to this were to win a billion dollar jackpot tomorrow, what should they do in the first 24 hours? What's vital?

Kurt Panouses:

What you really have to understand there is someone that wins a billion dollars, there's a lot more that goes into that type of planning than someone that wins a million dollars. You might think they're the same but they're really not, because there's certain taxes that come into play. After you win a billion dollars, you have all this money, all this wealth, and you're trying to figure out okay, it's more than I could spend but I want to help people in my family. How do I help them? You have to understand that not only is there an income tax, 37% at the federal level, 24% initially, then 13% the next April when you file your tax return. You might have a state income tax of 5 or 6% on top of that. Also, if you're trying to help people and you say, "Hey, I want to give my brother or my sister some money, or my parents some money or a child some money," that thought process of gifting, you might have a gift tax of 40% on top of it. You pay an income tax, then you also pay a gift tax of 40%. Typically, you want to help them with the planning process and include them. When you include them at a small percentage, they're part of the winning ticket. Instead of one individual claiming the whole billion dollars, you claim these other small parts of it, and you say, "Okay, I'm going to establish this person with a 15% ownership interest, this person with 15, so that's 30, and I'm only going to take 70." Therefore I'm not making a gift to them, they're part of the winning structure. That takes some planning. Before you bring them in, you have to vet out their issues because they're going to be part of the winning ticket. There's a lot more planning that goes involved with that billion dollar ticket than 1 million. If someone wins 1 million, we're just going to go up there and claim it, have all the documents done, go claim it by the following week or by Friday and say, "The net amount, the $600,000 is going to be in my bank account and I'm going to pay off my mortgage and buy a new car," and that's it. A lot more planning goes into that billion dollar ticket. Also remember, it's not a billion dollars. That's the advertised price, but you always have to remember that the actual cash lump sum amount that you're going to end up getting today is around 45%. It wasn't too long ago when I helped people in Pennsylvania and in Michigan that won large amounts. I think the two are right behind me right there, but those people ended up with approximately 70 to 75% of the stated amount. That was the cash lump sum amount. Today, that cash lump sum amount is 44 to 46% and then you have to pay your income tax. The bottom line is it's not a billion dollars. After you take into the fact that you get a cash lump sum amount for about 45% of it, and after you take into consideration your federal tax and state tax, you're going to end up with about 25, maybe 30%. It's not a billion dollars. It's 250 million dollars or 300 million dollars. That's what you end up with at the end of the day.

Timothy Schultz:

Currently, if you want a billion, you would wind up with that much money.

Kurt Panouses:

About 25%, correct. 25-30% tops.

Timothy Schultz:

How do people react when they learn that, when they win the prize and then they don't know that necessarily?

Kurt Panouses:

It's a shake up to them. They don't understand that. They think that there's a fraud happening on them. Bait and switch has been used a lot. The bottom line is they eventually come around and say, "Well, I got $250 million more than I had yesterday. I guess that's a good start." The question is sometimes in their minds, they make plans for spending a billion dollars and what they're going to do with that billion dollars. "I'm going to keep a third. I'm going to give a third to my family. I'm going to give a third to charity." They have all these great intentions. Then after taxes and after the lump sum, you're talking to them and they're going "Shoot, I really can't do all things I wanted to do." They could. The problem is they just can't do it at the level that they thought they could. A lot of times, that makes them change, but it also allows me to get more time with them and say, "Listen, let's slow down. Let's pump the brakes on this, and let's talk about what you need out of life instead of all things you're going to do for other people. Let's take some time and get you into a routine." That's one of the hardest things to do is to take this client who was working five days a week, maybe six days a week, didn't really have a savings or a pension for the most part, working hard, trying to figure out how they were going to make ends meet for the future, when they were going to be able to retire, if they were ever going to be able to retire. Now they have enough money where you could help them through all that process, but you want them just to slow down because they're so eager to try to give things away and to help people. It's hard to get them to take some --

Timothy Schultz:

When you are giving things away and helping people, you mentioned when you win a billion dollar prize, one way in which it's different than a million prize is that sometimes it's claimed by multiple people. Is that common? If you win a billion dollar prize, is that common from your experience to claim it on behalf of multiple people because it's beneficial in some way?

Kurt Panouses:

I've probably had, I want to say close to a dozen maybe rather large wins over 25 million dollars. When you get to that level, you really have to tell the person. I truly believe from talking to financial people that unless you live a very lavish lifestyle, someplace exotic, if you have about 6 to 8 million dollars in savings, you should be able to live a comfortable life throughout your retirement, that you'll never really go through that 6 to 8 million dollars and you can enjoy life. When I get someone that wins $20 million or more, I can tell them with a lot of confidence that, "Hey, you could share this with people." The question is, do you want to wait until you pass away or make gifts during your lifetime or do you want to say, "I'm going to include them with the winning combination?" Again, you have an exemption amount of $15 million that you can give away in life or at death, thanks to the big, new beautiful bill, whatever you want to call it. That got permanent. There's a $15 million exemption. If you win more than that, you'll have a tax either in life or at death, if you're starting to transfer wealth. Again, once someone wins $20 million or more, you really want to talk to them about do you want to keep all that in your name or do you want to include other people, who would you include and why would you include them and how would you include them, how much. Then let me do my job of doing the planning for you and giving you some options, because that's what the attorney is supposed to do is not only be there for the claim. I keep telling people it's not just a claim, it's a plan. You need to claim it, you need to plan it, and you need to put all this together and give some options to your client and say "Here are three alternatives. Which one do you think is best for your situation," and then let the client take some time. I don't like them even making a decision right away. I want them to think it through. We've got time. You work another week or two or three weeks or a month. Let's take our time with this process and do the proper planning.

Timothy Schultz:

If you're on the receiving end of that and say you are friends with their family or someone wants to gift you the 15 million, and that person is doing this when they're planning and claiming the ticket, then how does that work? Are they taxed then, because you mentioned the exemption? Are they taxed then on that money? How does that work?

Kurt Panouses:

The part of the ticket that they own, that percentage, that 10%, 15%, that's income to them, so they'll pay their own income taxes on it. It's not like mom and dad saying, "Hey, this is my portion. I'm giving you this. You're claiming this 10 to 15%, son." That's the son's income. He pays the income taxes on it, or the daughter, she pays her income taxes on it. She has 15 million or he has 15 million that he can give away in the future as well. Again, they're taking ownership in the ticket for that percentage, whatever is discussed and whatever the final decision is of mom and dad. I have clients all the time that say, "I want to go ahead and give them $20 million." That's great and I appreciate that. I know why you want to do it. We have to talk to them, why do we have to do that? Are they married? Yes. How successful is that marriage? It's great. We get together all the time. Maybe we should call your son or daughter to actually talk to them about their marriage to make sure it's solid, because once you make this gift, you can't take it back. You can't put the toothpaste back in. Once they know, or if their spouse knows because he or she finds out through whatever, will they keep it quiet or will they tell their parents? Now your in-laws know, and of course, the in-laws have no duty to keep this quiet at all and they may talk to someone. It could be a very sticky and a very difficult family situation, so you really want to do your planning, take your time, and go through the process.

Timothy Schultz:

I know you specialize in keeping people anonymous so I know you can't name any specific winners, but are there any situations that were sticky that you can talk about in a general way?

Kurt Panouses:

It's the same scenario of they tell you, "This is my family tree" because that's what I ask them for. One of the first things I say is, "I want to see your last pay stub so I know what income you had during the year, so we can do your planning by the end of the year with this wealth." That's number one. Second thing I want do after the claim is just say, "Give me your family tree. I want to know everyone that's in the tree, children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews names, who they are, how are they related, how many ex-spouses are there, what's the relationship." I need to know all this stuff and act as a counselor because when they say they want to do something, I want to make sure that I've done the due diligence for them. Then I might even want to have a joint Zoom conference with the client and this family member to discuss pros and cons of things. Or I might tell that family member, "Before this transfer takes place, before we do this claim, you need to go get a good family law attorney in your state and find out, is the divorce final? Ask them to hurry it up so that you can get a divorce." You may say, "Child support, will this be changed circumstances?" Now all of a sudden, there's wealth. The person was paying child support. Now it might be changed circumstances where state says "Because you have more income, you have to do more child support," things that they never discussed. Now that brings in your ex-spouse involved who's watching the child on a five day a week basis. You might get the child on weekends only, every other weekend, but he or she has them the other five days. Now they get to find out that you were part of a lottery win. Again, they have no duty to keep you anonymous. There's a lot of problems with trying to be anonymous. It's one thing to be anonymous for the client that wins, but you have this other group of people that are now part of the system because you want to help them. You have no say over them. You can't control it. It's like trying to put toothpaste back in the tooth. It's not going to happen.

Timothy Schultz:

For most people that you've represented that have won the hefty prizes of 20 million or more, especially a billion, from what you know of being an attorney, are the social dynamics usually intact or does this prep talk, this preparation, help alleviate that?

Kurt Panouses:

I think the clients understand the need for this because you have to educate the clients. The problem is many of them, instead of this being a real happy time in their lives and things that they wanted to do and all these grand plans, everyone plays the lottery dreams. We certainly like people that have dreams. We don't want to shut that down. Right now, today, I think the mega million is like $400 million so everyone's buying their mega million tickets thinking, "Okay, this is going to be great. These are all the things I'm going to do, all the people I'm going to help out." Then all of a sudden, they win and they're happy and they're ecstatic, and they don't know what to do. They want to tell the world. Then they end up calling me and I've got to be the one that says, "Hey, we've got to pump the brakes on this. We've got to slow down. This is all that could go wrong and why." You hate being that person that brings that to light to them, but someone's got to do it. A lot of times, it's just sad for the clients because they want to do more and they're just unable to do more mainly because I told them if they do more, we have some issues. I don't care because it's not my money, it's not my concern, but I'm concerned about you. You're my client, and therefore, I want to help you through this process. I have clients that want to pay off mortgages for people. You can't just do that. Of course, in today's world, you can go online and check out because mortgages are recorded documents. You can find out, get some information, possibly get the payoff, possibly contact the bank. The bank's not going to give you the exact amount because you're not their customer, but you can round it and basically make a payment anonymously. The person may not know that their mortgage got paid off until the bank notifies them, and then they're going to wonder what happened. It's not like you can call them up and go, "Hey, did anything fun happen to you this weekend," because they're going to know, and they're going to know why did this happen. It's difficult. Things can get done. You want to take your time in doing it, and you want it to be a progression basically. Again, I've told people all the time. You have these big sporting events. I was an athlete and all that. That's probably what got me into this challenge of anonymity. You get to that Superbowl opportunity. You get to game 7 in the NBA playoffs or the hockey playoffs. You have a plan. You have a coach and an administration that's saying, "This is our game plan," so you go into the game with that game plan. Of course, things change as the game starts. You can count out a couple of fumbles in the first quarter. Again, you have to adjust your game plan to things. It's the same thing with winning the lottery. People have to go into it with a game plan and you have to be able to adjust it, depending on what happens and as time changes.

Timothy Schultz:

With the game plan of taxes, because that's a lot too, you mentioned that you don't get nearly as much as what you see, but it's still extremely life changing. It's an immense amount of money, and it's very life changing for a lot of people. What is the reality of taxes when you win a major lottery jackpot of tens or hundreds of millions, and that's what you take home?

Kurt Panouses:

One of the first choices that a winner has to make and that you discuss with them, maybe not in the first phone call but usually by the second or third phone call that maybe takes place over the next day or two after you get the initial, is they have to make that decision between lump sum and annuity, because that's the first thing. I go through that whole process with them. I've run the numbers several times, and the numbers for the most part always turn out better for the clients, even with these lower cash amounts with the cash lump sum versus the annuity. What the client first has to understand about the annuity is yes, the annuity is the full amount. If they advertise 900 million, it's 900 million. It's just going to take 30 years to get there. Of course, what could happen during that 30-year time period is income taxes might go up. They generally don't go down. Usually, income taxes today go up over time, especially for wealthy people. The tax rate, instead of it being 37% right now, might be a lot higher than that. I was going to high school back in the 70's and I never knew it, but if you made money back in the 70's, you were at the 70% tax bracket. That's what the bracket was. Of course, right after World War II, the highest income tax bracket was 90%. Again, there were a lot of deductions back then, but 37% is not a really bad tax rate for people to pay. That's why a lot of people are happy today with being wealthy because they max out at 37%. The question is with the annuity, will things go up and what will your tax rate be? Also, all those annuity payments at the time of your death come into your state and it's called income in respect to a decedent. You have to bundle all that together and say, this is the wealth that I'm transferring. Then you have a transfer tax associated with it. When you go through the numbers with people, you will find that even though the annuity increases 5% a year over that 30-year time period, usually around year 12, if you could start living initially on 3 to 4% a year and then you get to year 12, that's really the breakeven point for the cash lump sum amount to be better than the annuity payments at that time, plus you have the money at the end. At the end of an annuity, the payments stop, and if you haven't saved, you're in trouble. Whereas if you take the cash lump sum and live on 3 to 4% a year, that's your net to spend. After year 12, it starts building up where now you're more than the annuity payments and you have this wealth that's already in your savings account. Again, income taxes come into play. Right now, it's 37%. If you have a state that has a state tax, you have to pay a state income tax. That might be another 5 to 6%. If it's a $900 million win, that's what's posted, and you're getting basically half of that so now you're at 450. Now you lose another 40% with taxes, 40 plus %. You're going to end up with about a third of what you started with. Instead of 900 million, you're going to end up with 300 million after tax. That's what you could put with the investment group and say, "I have 300 million. What does that mean?" 3% of $300 million is $900,000 a year, and that's what I can spend. Most people will say, "Hey, $900,000 is a lot. I'm comfortable with that, so let me just live on that." After year 12, you'll see the benefits of it.

Timothy Schultz:

People that do win that kind of money, my understanding from my experiences and some of the people I've met and interviewed, when they get to that level, oftentimes they'll put it in something very conservative, very safe, without high interest, and just try to be conservative, because the conservative amount is still a lot. If you were to take the annuity, that's way less because it's way more conservative.

Kurt Panouses:

The annuity is based supposedly on treasuries that the states allow to invest in essentially to pay those amounts. Of course, you have to think about what the annuity -- I accept this now and then I have 29 more payments. I always tell clients, you go through the same pain and agony that you're going through right now 29 more times waiting for that check. You're waiting to make sure that the state has the money to make that check payment to you, because that could be an issue. There's so many variables, and then 29 more times that that check has to get to you, that someone may find out that you won because there's 29 more chances of someone finding out as opposed to one and done. There's a lot of issues obviously with the annuity that I think a lot of people discount, but again, with the cash amount you're paying that. You're getting out of the way and you have this money. Now, the problem is that the majority of people that play lottery and that win, they're not people that I saw in my estate planning practice or business practice in the early years that ran a company and sold the company and was dealing with attorneys and CPAs. These are everyday people and they've never dealt with attorneys before. They may never have even met with an attorney outside of a family member, had never had a need for one. Now they have an attorney. Now they have a CPA talking to them. There's a lot more issues that are involved. One of the other issues is the investment people. Now, people don't understand for the most part at that level that if I have dividends coming in, I'm not paying 37% on my dividends, even though there's a lot of money there. There's a dividend tax rate. You might be capped out at 21%. That's not a bad income tax to have, a dividend income tax rate. There's tax rebalance that people can be in better than a CD rate. A lot of times, you can get them set up where if you get them in a state that you live in, they're tax free as well. There's a lot of tax planning that goes involved with this. This is why you want to make sure you deal with someone with experience. I bring people into the conversation that are wealth advisors, that deal with people that have more than $20 million on a regular basis. Their standard accounts or at least the beginning accounts have to be at least $20 million for them to be brought in. You just tell them, "Hey, listen. The client's really not trying to make a killing here. They're just trying to be conservative." The weight value of the investments is instead of there being 70 or 80% in equities trying to build up something, you might be 50, 60% in equities and 50, 60% in tax-free bonds or government securities. That way, your total net might be somewhere in the neighborhood of 5-6% return, and you're very conservative. You go with professionals that know what they're doing that do this on a regular basis, and you get a 5 or 6% basically risk-free return as opposed to just putting it in CDs and then saying, If I'm putting in CDs, I have to get 100 banks and put 250 in each one of them. That's just illogical that you're going to do that. Leave it to the professionals to do their job. You've already won the money. Bring the right person in to put the team together. With a lot of my clients that win big amounts, I oversee their statements on a regular basis. I make sure I get electronic copies of them, so that anytime I can just look at to make sure everything's going in the right direction.

Timothy Schultz:

You mentioned a couple times that people are sometimes hesitant or maybe they've never met an attorney or worked with an attorney. Everyday people I think is the phrase you used that play the lottery oftentimes. If someone wins a prize and they are distrustful by nature, they just have a hard time trusting anybody to handle their money because there are people that feel that way out there, what do you tell somebody like that?

Kurt Panouses:

I try to welcome them and congratulate them when they first tell me of their good fortune. I just say, "Understand that I've done this before. I know what I'm doing and I can help you. The question really is, are you going to let me help you," essentially. Again, once I find out and verify that they have a winning ticket and once I find out how much they won, they all call you up. The first thing they say to you is "I won this amount. What percentage do you charge?" I have to tell them, "Listen, it's not a percentage thing, but I need to get information. Before I even do that, I want to verify that I'm dealing with a winner so I'm going to need to see a copy of the ticket just so I can verify," because you don't know how many times in the course of my career where people call me and say, "I won," and you're going, "Well, I just went online to check and no one won the Powerball last night. No one won The Mega Million. Are you sure it was from last night?" "Oh, yes, I'm positive." Unfortunately, I've had to tell people, "No, the numbers that you're showing me are not the winning numbers." I get people that even send me their tickets in advance of the drawing saying, "Here's my tickets. I'll be calling you tomorrow morning." It's bizarre, but it's funny. I giggle, because I know it's part of their dreaming process. You want to make sure that you're dealing with the winner, an actual winner, so I like to take a look at that. Then one of the first things I like to do is go right online to check the claim form for that state. I like to check some history on the estate. I like to go to my office, get my office information on it, the file on that state to look at it. I might need a day or two before I can even get back to them and say, "Okay, I've verified the amount that you won. There was a winning ticket in your hometown, and this is what I think I can do. This is the amount. This is what I would suggest you do. You want to bring other people into it. Tell me about your family." It might take me a couple of days before I could even give them a price, so it's not like a percentage. When someone calls up and says, "Kurt, I won $1 million or $5 million," I can easily tell them, "It's going to take about 40 hours of my time. At 650 an hour, it's going to be $25,000, $30,000," and they'll understand that. The bigger amounts, you really want to take your time and discuss that more because you want to help the client. You want to make sure that they're doing the right thing with their wealth. They don't know what they can and can't do, so the attorney, the person that they contact has to be the one that explains it to them. Sometimes, they need more than one day of explanation.

Timothy Schultz:

I guess it depends on the amount, if I'm hearing this correctly, but are you able to say how much you do charge them for someone that wins a massive prize?

Kurt Panouses:

Absolutely. You want to know the amount. You want to know the state that they're dealing with, because every state's a little bit different. Some states are a lot easier than others. Some states allow for anonymity and that's great, but I still don't like going in there and saying "Here's our ticket. We want to do this anonymous. I still want to use a trust in those cases, because there's always the opportunity for someone to make a freedom of information request to get the information. The anonymity just says the state won't publish your information. It doesn't mean that someone can't come in and request the information from the state. The state may or may not be able to provide certain information out there, so you still want to claim it in a trust for the person so that they're not identified. I've done that in several states. Sometimes you want to do a group claim, a club, just so that you can claim it where not everyone's exposed essentially. Again, that takes planning, but it's a lot easier to do that when you know someone won a million, five million dollars versus someone that wins 30, 50, 100 million or a billion dollars. You want to take your time with those.

Timothy Schultz:

We spoke about this in a previous interview. You have a giant check behind your head there for Mega Millions, but the Wolverine FLL club was one club that you represented. How much was that?

Kurt Panouses:

That was a billion dollars, a little over a billion dollars in Michigan. When that drawing took place, Michigan said, "You have to be a natural person to claim it." I was going back and forth with the Michigan lottery because they wanted to identify who the winner was, and I said, "If I do a club, then you can only identify the club representative." As long as that club representative was a natural person, I was in compliance. I was actually the club representative for the group. All they could identify was my information, not anyone else's. It was a point of conflict with the state of Michigan. We had to get involved with the attorney general's office and get it approved so that we were still complying with the law. Again, takes time and that's a lot more involved than someone that wins a million dollars on a scratch-off ticket, obviously. Actually, it set the precedent for Michigan going forward at that point in time. Now people are using clubs there all the time to claim anonymously. It felt like I changed the law essentially in Michigan, which is kind of fun when you think about it. Will I get more work out of it? Yes, I have, because I've done it there before. It's not like I get every single call from Michigan now that I have a hotline number that people call me when they win the lottery in Michigan. It's kind of fun because I've seen the transformation of the Michigan lottery. The people that I was dealing with at that time are gone and some new people are in there. I don't want to say they're more friendly, but it does make the process a lot easier today for someone than it did back then. Kudos to the state of Michigan.

Timothy Schultz:

That's very interesting. A lot of times, people think about these large giant jackpots. Real people do win these from time to time and that's extremely life-changing, but even the second place prizes can be extremely life-changing for people in the lower millions. Recently with the Powerball, there was recently, I don't want to use the word anomaly but it was really, really rare where tons of different people won these second-tier prizes on a single night.

Kurt Panouses:

I remember that. I thought that there was something strange about that. I don't recall the details of that, but I do remember that transaction where I think there were maybe 15 winners of smaller dollar amounts, somewhere in multiples like the same states. What you have to understand, and it happens a lot more frequently than people think, when people put their numbers on a card for some of these games, they put their numbers on the card and they go buy their four or five tickets, because they put them all on the card. They do that right away and then they forget, and they go, "I need to make sure I get my tickets," so they find their card and forget that they already bought the tickets. Many times, the same person won multiple times, even though they didn't think that was going to happen. I think that that happened with that particular drawing in a couple of the states. I don't think it was as big as what's been published out there essentially. I guess it could happen, something like that. I think there was some type of glitch that night too for some reason, which happens from time to time. There's so many conspiracy things that are out there these days that you're concerned about with the lottery. I've seen the process at least in the state of Florida where they gave me a tour to actually see the machines. What they do is they supposedly have six machines that they have for each of these major drawings. They bring them all out the morning of and they run them. If the same numbers come up on a regular basis, they eliminate that machine. They want to use the machine that's random. Why are they coming up? Who knows? Are the balls old? Do the balls have any substance on it? There's a protocol they're supposed to go through that's overseen by multiple people, but it has happened before. One of the first frauds that ever took place a long time ago is someone that was involved with the drawing was able to replace six balls with a lighter ball that went to the top quicker. They won over $300 million. They got caught and they all went to jail, but it did happen. Things like this happen. We have a couple of unusual stories out there even today. Again, I don't want to be a conspiracy person. I'm going to use the word alleged when I talk about this because I don't to be responsible. The issue of the Zorro trust winning, that was a concern. You start connecting all these dots of people that were involved. There's so many things that potentially could be said about that, including the company that does the paper and the games was somehow acknowledged to be part of the Epstein book of business of some sort, allegedly. The question really was, how did this ticket get purchased two days after he was sentenced and six hours away from the ranch? Why was there no investigation of the ranch? There's so many conspiracy theories out there with these things that you have to laugh sometimes. When you see a Powerball or a Mega Million and there's 15 winners of small amounts multiple in each of these states, you have to ask yourself, how did that possibly happen? There's supposed to be a lot of checks and balances. We shouldn't be having conspiracies. But again, people from Sandy Hook that supposedly have won the lottery, how did that happen? There's just so many things out there with question marks that are causing a lot of people to wonder, is the lottery legit? Is it not? I think it's probably going to fall off of people that said "I'm not investing anymore in the gaming industry."

Timothy Schultz:

With the Zorro trust that you mentioned, I've noticed online with people speaking about that, correct me if I'm wrong but you can create a trust with the same name in a different state. It's not necessarily the Epstein trust. It's just people have gone to this conclusion without the evidence of that.

Kurt Panouses:

Correct. There may be no contact at all between the two. There's people that have done this deep dive and have written articles about it and tried to connect every little thing. When you start reading it, you're going "Oh my gosh. They might be right. They might be on to something." It could just be someone that just said, "You know what? I'm going to create my trust and call it the Zorro trust. I'm going to create my trust and call it The Donald Trump trust. Do whatever you want to do and just say "That's what it's going to be called." With a trust, you can just give a name. There's nothing that you have to go through the state to get approval on. An LLC you have to get approval on, but with a trust, you can just make up a name. You can get an FEIN number, and boom, you're in business. It could have absolutely nothing, zero percent to do with Epstein or the Zorro ranch or anything like that. There's just a lot of commentary on it and people have done a deep dive of research on it. The big question I always had was, why would someone from New Mexico drive to Oklahoma to buy a ticket? That just didn't make sense. If I'm going to drive someplace, I'm going to drive to Texas. Why? Because I'll buy the ticket in Texas where there's no state income tax. Why do I voluntarily want to pay Oklahoma state tax, albeit less than New Mexico, but I could have just gone right to Texas and got it for free? What's the connection? There's a connection with that store and someone and someone, and there is. That one writer wrote this story about the connections of all this stuff. Conspiracy, I don't know. Alleged, I don't know, but it does drive people to say this whole thing is all a game and is it really a true lottery or are we being fleeced? Who knows? Again, we're starting, if you think about it, a really weird situation now. In this last year, we've raised Mega Million from $2 to $5, and all that's done is cut sales. It's not as profitable as it once was. If you watch Mega Million today, we have a big one coming up this week. It's going up in $20 million increments. From the last drawing to this drawing, $20 million. Initially, it started going up $10 million but they were telling us Mega Million is going to be -- we're going to have more jackpots than ever, and it's not turned out that way. It's only going up in small amounts and the cash amount is only going up 10 million, 50% of which, but you're not getting 50%. You're only getting 40, 44%. It's weird. Again, the state of New York, I think their revenues for Mega Million have dropped to 25% of what it once was. People aren't playing Mega Million in certain states, and certainly not playing at the level they have. That's the issue of Mega Million. But now, we're going to take Powerball and make it this worldwide game. Europe says if you're gambling, you don't pay tax. In Europe, if you win the Powerball, you won't pay income tax. But here in the States, our Powerball we pay the income tax, we lose a good portion of it. We're including Europe into the Powerball. We're paying the tax. They're not. If someone wins, it's going to be people in New York and Florida getting mad at someone from California that wins, but it's going to be twice as bad because we're going to say, "We've put into this all this time. I've been paying money. I've been buying tickets all this time for months now, and now someone from Europe's going to win the Powerball." They're going to say, there was a problem with the timing. They knew the numbers or something like that beforehand. Again, conspiracy.

Timothy Schultz:

Do you think the jackpots will go up quicker?

Kurt Panouses:

They said the jackpots were going to go up quicker with Mega Million. I disagree because we're adding, when you look at it, three more states essentially with the number of people that live in these countries, so three more populous states that will be added to it. That means if people are buying, then there's a better chance that we'll reach that winner, that 292 million to one person that wins the lottery. I don't think jackpots are going to be going up because more people are buying tickets, more chances, more chance for someone to win. It's illogical to me to say that the jackpots are going to be higher. I always see the jackpots getting higher when they start getting around $800-900 million, and then all of a sudden they jump up $100 million or $200 million. Prior to that, they're just going up $20 million at a time. I would think that there's more than 20 million people buying tickets, but they're saying the pot only goes up $20 million. When you think about the population, you would think that people are buying multiple tickets and there's a third of the population probably buying tickets.

Timothy Schultz:

For people that win in the USA that you've represented through courier services -- I don't know if you've represented people that have won on courier services, but there are people that have won that way that I've seen in media reports. I've interviewed a couple of people. What is your opinion on doing that? Is that safe? Is there anything to watch out for from the legal perspective?

Kurt Panouses:

First off, what we have to understand is the courier services are like the Uber Eats of lottery tickets. I can't get out of my chair or my bed and go buy a ticket, so I'm going to use a courier service on my phone and buy it. That's number one. Number two, you're not even using the app. I think you're better off using the app from the state lottery if they have that and do it that way. The problem that I see with courier services is the problem with any type of sports event these days. I can't turn on my TV without seeing a gambling site come on, an ad for a gambling site. Sooner or later, people are going to say, just like they did with tobacco, "I'm bankrupt because I'm gambling too much." They should have known, even though they put a disclaimer there that flashes on the screen and goes away. The biggest courier service out there for lottery is Jackpocket. That's the most common one. Jackpocket is owned by DraftKings. DraftKings, which is the big gambling service out there, number one, through a courier service, someone knows that you won. They know immediately that you won, because there's people that have to handle the transaction supposedly to even put your ticket in a safe place. Your ticket wins the night before. They supposedly put it in a vault for you. They give you an opportunity to come get it, or they'll send it next day mail to you, or UPS, whatever it is. There's more hands that touch it, more people that know that you were the winner. I don't like it from that standpoint. The potential for losing the ticket, I think is also there depending on when you bought the ticket, when the drawing was. Was there a bait and switch on it that possibly could happen? Yes, I think that could happen too. They could say, "This was your ticket" or "We made a mistake. This is your ticket," and the wrong person ends up with the ticket somehow, a friend of a friend somehow. Supposedly that's not part of the deal so it shouldn't happen, but it could happen. I think the important thing to realize is that there's only two states that regulate the courier services. Most states don't have any regulation. They're just in business. What happened in Texas that almost took down the whole Texas lottery is there was a store that had printed the winning ticket. The lieutenant governor went to that store the very next day because there was an issue before with that same store. He walked into that store and it's a video, and it's a game store just to have some board games in one terminal. He was asking some questions online, and he later found out that in the back room that they couldn't bring the camera. There were like 42 other machines there and those 42 machines were running tickets off with pre-printed cards to go after every single combination. Therefore, there was apparently a group that won $90 million out there that had purchased every winning combination for about 20 or $25 million. They netted 60 to $70 million. It was a sure thing. The problem with courier services is, again, gambling's involved with it, supporting it. There's not a good regulation. We already have apps on a lot of these state lotteries, so I don't know why it's in business to be doing that. People are betting all the time on all types of things, and it's unfortunate that our world has gotten to that level. I think we have a younger generation of people that are betting way too much. I see them on their phones all the time. It's made it so easy. Now they may only be betting $5 or $10. When I turn on the TV Sunday morning to find out what game is going to be on and all I see is DraftKing betting odds, pluses or minuses, I'm going "Really? When did we get to this level?" It's a concern. With gambling, you always have a part of society that is probably not the most -- it's not the Boy Scouts. It's not the civil people of this community that are there for positive impact or change. It's a different type of person that's involved with gambling. I'll leave it at that.

Timothy Schultz:

If you do play, anyone watching or listening to this, of course, play responsibly. Never spend more than you can afford to lose. That's very important if you do play. Sometimes people do win these major prizes, and you've represented so many different people that have. If theoretically someone did win on a courier service, do the states -- you specialize in anonymity. The states have different rules for that. I know there's different workarounds with trusts and groups and different ways that you've worked with different states. What about courier services? Do they have to abide by the laws of that state? Is there anything in the fine print that people aren't aware of when they purchase a ticket through courier services when it comes to anonymity?

Kurt Panouses:

Again, supposedly what the courier service is supposed to do is they're supposed to identify your ticket immediately so that you have it before the draw. If it turns out that it's a winning ticket, they're supposed to immediately put that winning jackpot ticket. If it's a smaller amount, they just put the money in your account. If it's a large amount, they're supposed to put it into a vault for the day, contact you, and tell you it's available for you to come get if that's what you want to do, or else they'll send it to you somehow. They have those rules and responsibilities. I think that the problem with anonymity is every state's a little bit different. When your name is already associated with a winning ticket, it's hard to change that. I don't think the courier service would be well-served to announce the winner's name. I think that would be bad for their business. No one would then buy them. I would think that they have some type of confidentiality clause and that's how they sell. I've never bought through a courier service, so I don't know. I would think that that's probably built into their service that if you buy a ticket from us, you are anonymous and we won't tell you. Now, the problem is that you have to work with the state lottery department and your name's already associated with the ticket. There's a couple extra hoops that they have to go through. The major one, from my perspective is if you win a large amount, it may be a lot harder to do that group spreading that I was talking about. Now you have one individual that wins a billion dollars that's going to have to pay 37%, and then 40% in gift tax to give money to family members. After you use up your exemption, it's really hard for even a wealthy person to say, "You know what? I want to give this person a million dollars and then I have to tell them, you can, but you also have to a pay a 40% gift tax." 40% doesn't sound that bad until I say $400,000. To give someone a million dollars, you have to give the government $400,000. That hurts. That's what bothers people when I say not 40%, when I say $400,000 going, but it's only a million dollars that I gave them. I know, but it's a $400,000 tax that you have to pay. It's a lot harder to do that with a courier service and with an app. That's why I always tell people that ask me, go and buy your tickets. Just go buy it, or have someone buy them for you if you can't get out of your house. I realize that there's some people that are physically unable to get out or just sick or whatever, and they want to play and they want to keep playing. There's a better way of doing it, in my opinion, than doing a courier service or an app, to be quite honest with you, if you want to be anonymous, if you're playing big dollar amounts. If it's a million dollars and you want to do it through a courier service, by all means.

Timothy Schultz:

For lottery players, most people watching or listening, is there something out there that people are just getting wrong right now that they're not doing right in general? You've mentioned a few things.

Kurt Panouses:

I think the eagerness to want to do something, they can't hold on to that winning ticket. It's such a joy to them that they want to shout. They want to shout and tell everyone "I won, I won, I won," or at least tell their family members that. They don't realize the potential that could go wrong in that circumstance. The rush to want to tell people, the internal rush in your system to want to just yell it out that I won, that's probably number one. Sometimes when you get to year ends, you want to slow them down. If they do something in December or November, by the time the state gets around to sending them the money, it might be middle to the end of December and then you have to pay income taxes right away the next calendar year. Whereas if you wait until January, you actually have a whole year of using the money before you have to pay the income tax. You may find that to be somewhat funny that I would bring that up. This last year, I was helping someone. I convinced them, instead of claiming it in December, let's just wait till January. We waited till the first business day of January. I had plans to go through the office of that location where the person was in Florida, so I went there. I show up. It's a nice sunny day, and there's 100 people waiting outside this office building. I thought, was there a fire? What's going on? Why are there so many people here? I parked my car and walked up there and I said, "Was there a fire? What's going on? Why are so many people outside?" They go, "Oh no, everyone waited. The lottery office was closed for the last two weeks. Everyone waited today to come claim their ticket." It was like the Department of Motor Vehicles with 100 people waiting outside. I had to go in and get a card. I was number 72 and I had to wait two and a half hours to even go in there to claim the ticket, because they didn't take appointments at that time. But not only that, it was kind of weird because I'm sitting in there with a whole bunch of people and someone just got up and said, "Hey, I know who you are. I've seen you on Tim's show." You're Kurt, The Lottery Lawyer. It was a little awkward to have to deal with that. You're in work and the lottery office is closing down and thinking about when do I want to claim this, is another thing that you have to be dealing with. You want to sometimes, with larger amounts, create a family entity for planning purposes, almost like a family home office, and that takes time. Again, time is not on the side of these people that win and never had this wealth before. They might be working a real hard job. Now they have this ticket that allows them to quit their job, and they don't have to go through any more abuse or anything like that any longer. Then you've got to tell them, "Hey, you need to hang in there for another three or four more weeks till we get this done." "Oh, I don't want to." The eagerness, again, failure to plan, failure to take your time, I think those are really the biggest concerns of people just not understanding what the purpose of planning will do for them because it's a plan. It's not physically there for them. It's not a meal that they could eat that day. It's something in the future. They don't really recognize that when you hire an attorney, you're hiring them for their planning and their ability to help you through things, decisions that you never thought you would have to deal with. Let the attorney do their job. Let the attorney help you with the planning process. Don't sign the back of the ticket. Give the attorney the blank canvas to paint the picture of the family that we need to paint on this to claim the ticket anonymously, to do our job. Most people are so eager, and I understand it. That's why for me, I have to tell people, "Listen, part of the fee that I charge you is I have to drop everything for the next two weeks because I can't do anything else." I have to say no to the next person because I have to help you with this, or that person has to wait at least two weeks before I can help them. I'm a one man operation. I don't have a team of people here that I could assign someone to. The beauty about my practice is I really keep that circle small, no one knows, to help the clients through this process so that people don't find out about it.

Timothy Schultz:

How much time will you spend on a claim? If someone brings in a ticket worth a billion or the annuitized jackpot, then how much time does that require of you?

Kurt Panouses:

You almost have to be available daily for a couple of weeks and you try to stay ahead of it. You try to give the client things to do so they can put stuff together to make your life easier, because they're the best persons to put this stuff together. It's not you asking them questions about it. You need a good solid month of almost daily discussions or emails to put a really good plan together and talk everything through and to help them foresee where they need to go before you can do the claim. Then the claim process takes place. In some places like New York, it takes 12 weeks even for them to cut a check for a million dollars. They have to do all this investigation of the ticket, call the people up that were involved with buying the ticket, do their own security reports. Some states are a little quicker. Some states take a long time. California is another one of those states that takes weeks to pay out the money. Now, it's coincidental that some of these states that take this long time are states that are in financial questioning. Are they making money off of the money for their own income purposes instead of paying it out to the winners? Who knows?

Timothy Schultz:

When they actually do claim, when you have the plan together and you go in there to claim it, because you've mentioned in previous interviews of how you go in there on behalf of the client sometimes, they give you the physical ticket sometimes, and you go in there and claim it. When this happened in Florida, when you were just talking about this and you were number 72 standing in line, I don't know the size of that prize but when you get there, and the lottery official sees what you are turning in, how do they react?

Kurt Panouses:

The people who are winning the lottery, sometimes they don't know who I am, sometimes they do. With larger amounts, with well over a million dollars or five million dollars, I try to call the lottery in advance and set up an appointment where they know I'm coming, that they know I want a private room, and they try to accommodate. There are some states that you just can't do that at. In Colorado, you go to the new office there by the Metro State University. There's two people there. It's a bank, essentially. It's a 12 by 12 room. There's no office to go to, so you have to time that right where there's no one else there. Of course, you can drop off the stuff and then take off and come back a couple of hours later to get the information. In that particular case when I was in Florida, I was on my cell phone telling the client, "You continue to sit down. If I need something, I'll ask you to come to the window. I just want you to continue to sit down. Do not come over and talk to me. I'll handle this up here by myself when it's my time to go claim the ticket." I'm cautious of that because I don't want the client to be seen either, just because they're with me. I communicate with the clients in those manners. Again, with larger amounts, you want to call. You want to set up a time. You want to set up a meeting room whenever possible, but there are some states that it's just not going to happen. Like I said, the downtown Denver office is one of those places that it's just not going to happen.

Timothy Schultz:

Is it difficult for a client to trust you enough to give you the physical ticket?

Kurt Panouses:

I think probably maybe 90% of the people that find me. There's 10% that get referred to me by other attorneys or so, but 90% of the people that find me are people that were watching your show or another show or saw something on TV and they said, "Hey, this guy's legit. He seems to have experience, seems to be knowledgeable. I like him." Helpful that there's people like you out there doing these podcasts that allow me to reach out to people to give them opportunities to do this the right way, to not only do that, but also to help them through the planning process of keeping them on the road to success. What I really enjoy is these people afterwards, talking to them and saying, "Anything you need, just call me. I'll put it in place for you. We'll get it going. Could I have done anything different?" "No, Kurt. It was fantastic. I couldn't have done it without you." I'm so happy that I was able to run you down to help me through this process, me and my family. From that standpoint, I think it's helpful that there's people like yourself out there that do these podcasts that allow me to get in front of people to be acknowledged as someone that's trustworthy.

Kurt Panouses:

Now, the problem is people still don't know who I am and they shouldn't really just do things without doing their investigation, go online to check, make sure the person does have their licenses and stuff like that. It's difficult for me in the state of Ohio to walk in the door with the client's ticket that doesn't have any signature on it at all, and I tell the client "Either wait outside or wait downstairs in the lobby. I'm going up all by myself." Usually when I do that, I tell them at the same time, "You can't come up there with me because you can't be identified. If you come up with me and check in, you'll be identified." What I'm going to do is I have this other phone, and I'm going to be Facetiming you the whole time so that way you can be present without being there. I'll Facetime them all the way through the process, go up there and tell the people at the Ohio lottery, for instance, "My client's downstairs. I didn't want his or her to sign in, so I'm going to keep them on Facetime here so they can watch what's going on. Is that okay?" They usually say no problem at all. That's how I do that.

Timothy Schultz:

That's really interesting. If you are to win hundreds of millions or you win around a billion, you wind up with hundreds of millions, you may have spoken about this before but how do they actually pay you?

Kurt Panouses:

I wait until the money's transferred in and I tell them that they don't have to pay me in advance. Once the money comes to the location, usually it's payable to the trust or to the LLC. I'm the mantra of that, so I get the wire for that information. I tell the client, "Okay, I am now paying my fee. I just want you to be aware of that." Right after that, we transfer the money to the client. I'm the first check that gets paid at that time. They all understand that and they're fine with that.

Timothy Schultz:

How does the lottery pay the prize out when you're talking about hundreds of millions?

Kurt Panouses:

Generally, they want wire information. You have to go there that day when you're claiming with the wire information. This is also the time when if it's a million dollars, you could probably get away using your credit union or local bank, but if it's more than that, you want to use money managers, professional money managers that are used to dealing with large amounts, so private wealth groups. Some of the banks all have private wealth people. You make arrangements with them in advance so you could fill out all the paperwork so that the accounts exist, and then you get that information. I use some very big wealth advisors groups, Palm Beach area, Vero Beach area that I deal with. They're professionals at this, so they give me the wire instructions. I take those wire instructions with the client, do the claim, and then the state lottery will wire the funds into that account that I give them with the wire instructions. It's not an ACH. It's a wire instruction to the institution. Once it comes in, it's available. Once it's there, then I'll get paid and then I wire the funds into the client's account. Many a times, I have the client set up accounts with the same organizations that I set up the wire information. That way, it just gets transferred immediately from the same -- I'll use Goldman Sachs as an example. Open up something with Goldman Sachs. Everyone knows who they are, big financial group. I'll have the trust account with Goldman Sachs, and then all the client's accounts also with Goldman Sachs. That way, the money comes in, I get paid, and they get wired their funds. The trust account where it was initially wired into just disappears. It doesn't exist anymore. There's no reason for it. It was just there to receive the money as a blind trust for the benefit of the client, and the clients have their own Goldman Sachs accounts or something like that. Some big financial institutions I use. I use Northern Trust a lot. I use a global advisory service out of Vero Beach a lot. I have to look at the client and say, "This client, they'll do much better with this group," so I try to introduce them to that group. That way, before the claim even takes place, that group's had a couple meetings, they've talked to the client. They explain how they go about investing money for clients, what to expect from them. The clients can ask all their questions. Then the clients online set up accounts so they're ready to go. If you win and now you're going across the street to your bank to go deposit a check, the person that you see at the bank that you're opening up the account with is going to see you at the grocery store. They're going to see you at Walmart. They're going to see you all over the place that you're going be, and they're going go, "Hey, how are you? How's that lottery winner doing?" You just don't want to do that. You want to go with professionals that know what they're doing, that have dealt with wealth before, and that your 100 million is a drop in the bucket to them because they're used to dealing with $100 million clients all the time. Then there's an element of experience. Just like Kurt has experience working through the lottery offices, these people have experience working with people of wealth so they know what to do. They know what irritates people. They know how they can help people. They know the services they can provide. They offer things to the clients that a bank person is just not going to be able to do.

Timothy Schultz:

You don't want to draw attention to yourself, and that's what you specialize in. In a previous interview, you suggest, at least in some circumstances, that people don't necessarily get up and move and do all these lifestyle changes. Number one, is that correct? Number two, if you win a major prize of hundreds of millions, how do you rein that in? All of a sudden, you'll have all of this ability to do whatever you want, but if you go buy a Lamborghini or something and you're living in a neighborhood where nobody drives one, you're really going to stick out.

Kurt Panouses:

Generally, people understand certain parts of it. The first thing I tell them is "You don't have to sell your house and move. You don't have to bring any attention to yourself. You can keep your house." What I might say is, "Maybe in the first year, we should transfer possibly what our homestead is. Let's maybe look at a state where there's no state income tax. You're in the Northeast. Instead of living in New York and New Jersey, let's consider Florida. Let's consider Tennessee. Let's consider Texas, one of these states that has no income tax that you could say I'm moving there and I'm getting my driver's license there. I'm getting my voter's registration there. I'm going to file my taxes there. I'm going to be a Florida resident. I'm going to be a Tennessee resident. I'm going to be a Texas resident, so I'm moving there. I'm keeping my house up in New York and New Jersey, but I'm just not going to spend the time there." People understand, especially when it gets to be November, December, why someone's not there and they're in Florida or Texas, because it's warmer. You can do this over time. Down in that new location, you can buy a more exotic car if you want. Up north maybe, just get yourself a new car that's more dependable. That's not a big flashy thing for people. Join the country club down in Florida. Don't join the country club there. You're going to feel awkward because you're going to be saying that you're poor, but you have all this money in the bank. Also with the bank that you use, you don't have to change banks. All I want you to do is have the investment group wire money into your account every month so you can pay all your bills. You keep all your real money in the other location and do this over a couple years, and then maybe in a couple of years just tell your neighbors, "You know what? I've had that condo down in Florida. I think I'm going to live there. I'm just going to sell my house and move down there because I'm tired of being 50-50. I just want to be down there." Your life changes. It's just a matter of doing it slowly, planning. I keep using the word planning. You just can't do things overnight and think that you're going to be comfortable. You shouldn't do it that way. You should just do it over time and have your plan and just execute the plan.

Kurt Panouses:

One more thing. Part of that question was about part of their spending. You want to tell them, "Hey, it's okay. Let's talk about you won 200 million. You could spend 4%. Understand you could spend 4%. What does that really mean? 200 million at 4%, that's $800,000. You could spend $800,000 a year and you're never going to touch that 200 million. That 200 million is going to slowly grow. I'm not saying you live off of it. I'm saying you could spend $800,000. They look at themselves and they go, "Wait a minute. I never made even $100,000 in my life. I had to pay taxes as part of that $100,000 and Social Security and this and that." Now you're telling me $800,000 I could spend. Yes, I want you to spend it. I want you to enjoy. I want you to give away. I want you to spend $800,000 next year, because you're never going to touch that 200 million. When you explain to them that way, they go, "That means how much a month can I spend?" You don't have to keep all the money in your account. You keep it with your investment advisors way up here, but you can actually spend it. You can travel first class. You can take cruises. You could do things that you wanted to do. It's not going to be your neighbors going with you. You're just going to be doing stuff and enjoying life.

Timothy Schultz:

Do most winners that win prizes like that that you've worked with have major lifestyle changes like that?

Kurt Panouses:

I think once you explain to them that the money's there and that they don't need to be worried about it, it takes them a while to pull the trigger on it. Once they find out that they can actually do things and they look at their account and their account really didn't change very much, it's like if you have $20,000 in your savings and you go out and buy some for $10,000, you see that. Now I'm down to $10.000. That's it. I better be careful. But when you have a couple hundred million dollars and you spend $10,000-$20,000, you don't even see it. You just really don't see it. You want the client to be able to enjoy their life. That's what the purpose is. Despite the fact that people say it's rigged sometimes, I like to think of it as divine intervention into your life. You're being blessed with this opportunity for whatever reason, whether you're a good person, whether something is owed to you in some manner, you did something good for someone, that you're being blessed with this, but enjoy it. Make gifts, do things. If you want to make gifts to charity, I can do that for you anonymously. We can take care of all that stuff for you. I can do all the anonymous stuff giving away things for you. Just tell me what you want to do and I'll do it. I'm just telling you, as part of your lifestyle right now, you have $800,000 that you could spend and you're never touching. Next year I'm going to come back to you and say, "There's another $800,000 here." The year after that, there's another $800,000 here, and the year after that another $800,000. You have $200 million invested at a return of 4, 5, 6%. You're never going to be touching that, so enjoy it, live off of it. Tell me what you want to do. I'll help you with that process. It's life-changing, but they're in that position. They just need someone to be there. There's something out there called not a family exchange, but some people call it -- it's just having a home office, a family home office. You're running your lifestyle with a home office. You have the attorney CPA, financial person there that is part of this process to help you with things. You're just basically saying, "Hey Kurt, this is what I want to do. Tell me how I should do it. I want to buy properties someplace." "Why do you want to buy?" "I want to live there." "Do you want to live there year round?" "I don't know. I just want to live there." Why don't we just do a VRBO for a month to see if you really like it first before you spend a million or $2 million on a place and then you say, "I don't like it." Let's do some VRBOs different times a year so that you see the weather changes and stuff like that before we buy it. You can afford a VRBO, it's nothing. It's absolutely nothing to you. Do things slowly. Have an advisor there that can help you with these things. You're going to buy property. What are you looking for? How many bedrooms? How many bathrooms? Do you want a view? I'll get a real estate agent in there for you and we'll go through a bunch of things and you'll see a bunch things before you buy. When you buy, we're going to buy with a land trust owning it so no one knows that you're the owner of this property. We're there to help the client. That's my role is to be that manager, that helper down the road. These people that win lots of money, that's what they want me to continue to do for them after the claim. There's the claiming process and there's after the claims. People that win a million dollars, five million dollars, ten million dollars, you help them through the claim, you help them a couple of months after that and they're on their way. They know what they're doing. They don't need that help. I'm available when they call, but they don't really need that ongoing thing like someone that wins $400 million or $500 million. They need a little bit more hands-on experience.

Timothy Schultz:

That's really interesting. I imagine that the more money the more complexities. For lottery players, is there anything that you wanted to discuss or tell them that we haven't brought up today?

Kurt Panouses:

It's more of an informational stage of life. Information technology, we have our phones that wherever we go attracts things and so on. The same thing's happening with the lottery. I think we're going to see more and more machines being put into places as opposed to selling tickets over the counter. Some states have cut out even paying bonuses to companies that have someone selling tickets because they're trying to cut costs. You might just see machines in the future with lottery tickets, and that's it. With machines, they're going to be asking for your driver's license. They're going be asking for your IDs. They're going to be asking for your debit card, tracking information, tracking how many times you buy, where you buy, all these things. It's all information. There's goods and bads about that that bother me. I think that the people just have to make sure that they spend in a manner that they're not spending their life savings. This is not a retirement plan. This is a "I hope I win. I hope I'm lucky enough to win," but it's not something that you're really thinking I'm going to win. It's luck. It's a gamble. Just be careful of that. There's taxation that goes with it. There's some responsibilities with that that you have to be aware of. Tickets are bare documents. I always say, don't sign them and put them in a safe place before. Take a picture of the front and back of the ticket so you could send it to me if I'm going to be your person helping you, so I can read it. Put the ticket in a safe place because you're not going to need the ticket till the day of the claim. No one's going to need to see the ticket till the day the claim. I just need to see the front and back of the ticket so I get the numbers off it to work through the lottery office. Understand that there's a lot of potential negative things that go on when you go to counters. You may think that I'm going to buy my ticket from the grocery store counter or the 7-Eleven counter or the gas station counter. Understand that we have these machines now at these counters that they can go like this on a scratch-off ticket and tell whether or not it's a winner. If I know exactly where I could take my little pen and I could scratch a little scratch in one little area on the bottom of the ticket where the barcode is, and I use that thing, I can actually see that this is a losing ticket. I'm going to keep this here until the next person comes and I'll sell it to them, or it's a winning ticket so I'm going to take it and buy it myself because people that work at these stores can also buy it. Be careful with your tickets. If you get a ticket from a machine and you walk out the door and the ticket's cut in half, it's a ticket that's of no value at that point in time. It's not a winning ticket. Go back in and say, "The ticket got cut off" or "There's this little scratch down here with the ticket. I don't want this ticket. I want a different ticket." Just be careful. It's not run by the Boy Scouts anymore. It's gambling. It's business. You have to be careful who you're dealing with, so just be careful with these tickets. I get a lot of calls from people that say, "I bought this ticket. I got home and I realized that it got cut off in the middle of it. Now they're telling me that I can't get my money back for it." I go, "That's right. Once you walk out the door with the ticket, it's yours. If you see a problem with the ticket, look at it in the store and take it to the store manager real quick and get it replaced. If you see it scratched off on the barcode area, don't accept it because it's probably been checked already. Just be careful and act responsible." There's just so many things that can go bad with this because there's bad actors all over the place and there's lots of money involved here. Be careful and check your tickets. I always tell people even with the scratch-off, even if you think it's a loser, take it to the machine and just check it to make sure because many times, what you think is a losing ticket because you didn't read all the instructions on the back is actually a winning ticket and you're throwing money away. Just be careful with all those things and check them. Have fun with the lottery system, but always do your checks and balances with it.

Timothy Schultz:

Would you suggest checking it at a machine before checking it with a human?

Kurt Panouses:

Yes. I always tell people, if they have a major win, check it three or four times and then maybe take it to one of those grocery stores that you live in where it's safe. Go to the machine and check it there and make sure that you find out if it's a real jackpot ticket or not, because they'll tell you immediately. Whenever you lose touch with that ticket, you're at risk. I don't like that.

Timothy Schultz:

That makes sense.

Kurt Panouses:

There have been stories where people have taken a ticket and run off with it. It's a lot more common than people think, unfortunately.

Timothy Schultz:

Definitely be careful with your tickets out there. We are here with Kurt Panouses, The Lottery Lawyer. Kurt, where can people find more about you or find you if they win a major prize?

Kurt Panouses:

Timothy Schultz:

Thank you so much. I really appreciate your time and all of your insights here. I said this before but I really do feel like a fly on the wall listening to all these stories. It's very interesting, but we will link to your website in the show notes if you're listening to this or in the description of this video if you're watching this on YouTube. Kurt, is there anything else that you want to say today that I don't know enough to ask or that we didn't talk about or maybe just would like to say?

Kurt Panouses:

The important thing to say is after the claim, there is a life that needs to be lived and there's planning that needs to be done. It's not just claiming the ticket and getting that over with. I know a lot of states allow for anonymity and that's great. It just makes the process easier to be anonymous, but don't just run on that thinking, "All I have to do is go to my state because it's anonymous" and sign it. Being on that TV show, lottery winners that buy houses and stuff like that, I really think that when people get acknowledged as the winner, it's probably the worst thing that could probably happen to them because there's going to be so many people that reach out to them. I know I get letters on behalf of clients. I wonder if they're real letters or if they're just scams of some sort, because they're really heartbreaking to listen to and to read. It's just hard to say no to certain people that are making requests that if you don't help them, they're going to kill themselves or something like that. It's a hard thing to do and it makes it difficult for people that win. Get someone to help you through the process so you can stay anonymous, because I really think that that's the best way to be successful.

Timothy Schultz:

Those are letters from people hoping that you'll --

Kurt Panouses:

Handwritten letters to me that hopefully one of my clients will be able to help them out, buy a new car. They're living in a car and they've got three kids. You don't know if these are real or not but they're sad to read. Unfortunately, I read them because I need to read them on behalf of the client because they address them to the particular trust that I created. They claim something and they're reaching out. Again, it's a sad scenario to have to deal with. That's all.

Timothy Schultz:

Absolutely. That's another reason to claim it anonymously if you have the ability to do that. Kurt Panouses, thank you so much for your time today. It's such a pleasure as always. I greatly appreciate all of your insights here. Thank you very much.

Kurt Panouses:

Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.