Law Office of Camron Hoorfar, PC

Jay Kurland established a practice providing legal and financial advice to lottery winners. He is now being accused of deception. As the FBI began questioning his insta-millionaire clients, things were not looking good. The jackpots handed over to Jay Kurland by multiple winners seemed to be shrinking. On June 19, Kurland called his neighbor and business partner, Francis Smookler, saying his Staten Island clients were growing concerned. Kurland admitted to bad business moves but denied criminality. Kurland came to be America’s foremost lott0-winner whisperer. He was booked for morning shows and was known for thelotterylawyer.com and @lotterylawyer. In 2018, he started representing the biggest solo lottery winner of all time, a woman who’d bought a $1.5 billion ticket in South Carolina.

As Kurland accumulated more and richer clients, he started innovating to multiply clients’ money. He began dealing more in side hustles, and the list of people he worked with began to look a little different. There was Christopher Chierchio, who ran a Staten Island plumbing business and has been identified in the New York tabloids as a Genovese crime-family soldier; Greg Altieri, a wholesale jeweler turned Ponzi schemer; and Kurland’s own brother-in-law, Scott Blyer, aka DrBFixin, a cosmetic surgeon specializing in Brazilian butt lifts. The morning of August 18, 2020, saw the beginning of the end for this group, however. Kurland, Smookler, Russo, and Chierchio were booked on multiple counts of wire fraud and money laundering, accused of bilking three marquee lottery winners out of more than $100 million. Smookler and Russo were also accused of extortion. Federal prosecutors in New York laid out a scheme predicated on the trust Kurland had built with clients who were wildly unprepared for the opportunities and pitfalls of sudden wealth. Following Kurland’s investment advice, lottery winners plowed cash into high-interest lending businesses run by his associates, for which he allegedly received secret kickbacks.

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The elements of resisting arrest include that defendant reasonably should have known that a police officer was making an arrest, of which there was no evidence, because police officers approached defendant bicyclist without lights and without siren. Failure to raise an objection during voir dire (a preliminary examination of a witness or a juror by a judge or counsel.) leaves only plain error review, and appellant failed to describe plain error in his argument, because appellant did not allege any effect on the outcome. 

STATE OF MISSOURI, Respondent vs. JULIUS D. PARHAM, Appellant 
Missouri Court of Appeals, Southern District – SD37085 

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Statutes provide that the elements of second-degree harassment include “to act ‘without good cause’ and with ‘the purpose to cause emotional distress [.]’” Those provisions apply to communications without implicating First Amendment protections because those provisions rely on purpose instead of subjective reaction, giving notice and a standard, and narrow the application to the unprotected activity of fighting words. Fighting words are outside constitutional protection even when delivered through Facebook, and not face-to-face, so defendant’s threats to his parole officer supported a conviction for the second-degree harassment. Those facts also supported a conviction for tampering with a judicial official, and a separate sentence for that offense was no more than the General Assembly intended, so it did not violate Double Jeopardy’s bar on cumulative sentencing. Second-degree harassment was not a lesser included offense of tampering with a judicial official because the test is not the facts alleged, but the elements of the statutes. The statutes have differing elements, so conviction of one does not necessarily constitute conviction of the other, taking them outside of Double Jeopardy.  
State of Missouri, Respondent, vs. Joshua Steven Collins, Appellant. 

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An instruction is due when it has support in substantial evidence. Evidence showed that defendant shot persons who ran at defendant with a firearm, and punched defendant through defendant’s open car window, so an instruction was due under statute embodying the Castle Doctrine. The Castle Doctrine allows deadly force reasonably believed necessary against unlawful force from a person who unlawfully entered her vehicle. Evidence that the person who struck defendant withdrew immediately does not negate the evidence that the unlawful entry and gunshot occurred simultaneously. Submitting only a general self-defense instruction prejudiced defendant because that instruction required defendant to show that defendant faced death or serious physical injury. When the evidence supported instructions for both general self-defense and Castle Doctrine, both instructions were due. Remanded for new trial.

State of Missouri, Respondent, vs. Andrea Shaunte Straughter, Appellant. 
Supreme Court of Missouri – SC99170

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