Dan Bilzerian’s Dad Charged With Hiding Millions In Son’s Company To Avoid Paying $180 Million Owed To Government

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Things are looking good for Dan Bilzerian’s father, Paul.

On Friday night, the United States Justice Department announced they were charging Paul Bilzerian with fraud for using his son’s company, Ignite, to launder money in order to avoid paying $180 million owed to the government.

According to the Justice Department, Paul would create fake invoices to artificially boost Ignite profits in order to launder millions of dollars without paying money owed to the government in civil judgments due to previous securities violations.

“This indictment alleges a long-running pattern of criminal behavior to avoid a regulator’s judgment, mislead investors, and cheat the IRS,” said United States Attorney Martin Estrada. “My office will continue to use all tools available to protect investors and ensure the security of our nation’s economy.”

Here’s one of the examples presented as evidence against Paul Bilzerian.

Via SEC

The SEC’s complaint alleges that from late 2020 to 2021, Ignite engaged in a scheme, orchestrated primarily by Bilzerian, who controls Ignite’s finances and operations, to report approximately $5 million in non-existent sales of disposable vape pens as part of the company’s fourth quarter 2020 results.

According to the complaint, Ignite issued a series of false invoices to one of its customers for the vape pens in November and December 2020, despite the fact that the customer had never ordered the product. In fact, the SEC claims, the customer repeatedly disputed the invoices after receiving them, including voicing its objections directly to Bilzerian and to Ignite’s then-President and COO, John Schaefer.

Nevertheless, Ignite allegedly went on to tout its historic 2020 performance in a January 2021 press release, which noted that the company’s fourth quarter revenue “exceeded revenue for the previous three quarters combined.”

Dan was not charged because the government felt like he was not running the company behind the scenes.

Blizerian was charged with one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States, one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and securities fraud, and four counts of wire fraud:

If convicted of all charges, Bilzerian would face a statutory maximum sentence of five years in federal prison for each conspiracy count and up to 20 years in federal prison for each wire fraud count